The Bigblog!

Centrally placed above the switch and a decent size, I’d go for. What are your thoughts?

Yes, I get what you're doing, it's blank at the minute and you're putting on what you describe above but why would you do that when the original designer/manufacturer doesn't? That's sort of what I meant....

I see what you're getting at now.

Right, at the minute, it has no identity as Antonio rightly points out.

Also, as Tom doesn't sell them as a finished product and this was a demonstration unit he too to Burning Amp (DIY MEET) in Canada.

It was never Intended to be "out there" so now that it is, I think it needs some form of ID on the front.

His 286 amp kit (Full kit Inc case) has his name on the front so I thought I'd do that for this amp.

Ah ok got it, so this isn't necessarily just for you it's for him too...

I like the look, typeface, scale and also the two colons. A prefect reference for you.

Interesting development today.

I'd spent a few hours pissing about with toe in, triangles and Jamies method of speaker placement the other day. I had seen some some improvement in imaging and and soundstage, even channel balance and thought I'd cracked it but over the few hours I've been listening I just felt something was missing.

It was.

The LF had basically become completely recessed. I was really struggling to follow bass lines.

Having a clean up (gear everywhere) I realised that as I'd aligned the stands for the speakers, the rear of the speaker was further away from the wall than I had them set up previously.

Having another play now, I can basically adjust the level of bass I can get by moving them backwards and forwards. I realise that this is pretty much a well known thing but for some reason it had completely slipped my mind to check for it.

Realigned and at the right distance from the rear wall to suit my tenancies, all is well again.

Ye it's a shame but if I could get the wife to bin the totally unused piano, there'd be another 8" I could use,

She aint having it though.

I suppose so but it's whether she'd go for it. It gets bloody cold in them and I'd suspect itd ruin it over time.

As long as it is dry - the cold won't harm a piano. You could always wrap it in lagging if it's a concern.

What, the toe already broken or the one about to BE broken?

Is there no end to Oliver’s talents.now he’s playing a bloody piano with his toes...... broken ones at that!

Not far off mate lmao

Seems to measure impressively

www.lessloss.com/page.html?id=80

Angus's visit - 27/08/19

Today saw Angus (phonomac) visit the city of Wolverhampton and with him came some very interesting items.

As usual, there is always a reason for a visit and this time the motivation was the delivery of my new 32mm Panzer plinth. However, we aren’t starting todays instalment there, oh no no no!

Today we start with the “Avalon” (working title for now)

The Avalon is Angus’s first attempt at building a phonostage. I had spoken with Angus a few days earlier in anticipation to hearing the phonostage but was informed the MC section had some major hum problems. It looked as though it wouldn’t make the journey. To my surprise, it did make it here and yes, it had a major hum problem. We listened to a few tracks via my Tonearm cable splitter box and a pair of Spotfire cables with AECO plugs (it matters what the cables were later in the tale)

Low level hum plagued the replay and even though I tried, it masked a fair bit of transient detail. We tried a few tracks more and whilst I thought it sounded good, I wasn’t “involved” , it was at this point that Angus informed me that his SPOTFIRE Tonearm cable buzzed even worse! I couldn’t believe it but he was right. It was buzzing badly when we tried it. We pulled out Angus’s Ortofon SUT and we used the MM side of the phonostage. We also substituted the Spotfire cable for an AT602 (?) arm cable. Instant silence. A real kick in the balls for me.

Straight away I noticed that even though there was no hum, the soundstage had flattened out a fair bit and Angus’s phonostage became splashy and had an amount of leading edge. We did a few tracks via the Bigbottle and the Avalon and yes, I felt the Bigbottle was still in the lead due to its better imaging and soundstage, even with the AT cable, but the Avalon lead in terms of clean lines and being able to clearly hear synthesized sound vs organic sounds. The Bigbottle didn’t do that quite as well, but I have a theory on how to fix that which we will investigate at a later date.

The Avalon boasts a RIAA curve of 0.03db (I think that’s right, but I will check) accuracy. It’s hard to beat that lol

We decided to see if we could diagnose the problem with the hum. The answer came in the simplest form possible. AECO plugs. Yup, we experimented, and it seemed that the Avalon doesn’t like KLE plugs OR The Neutrik RCA sockets on the back weren’t making good enough contact with the plugs. We changed to the AECO plug version and yes, the hum receded hugely but didn’t go away completely so I took off the ground wire and voila! Silence. Absolute silence.

Madness but whatever works lol.

Now we had the TT directly into the MC side of the Avalon. Within the first few bars of the track it was obvious that this was far better than when we had the SUT in the signal path. The Avalon gave an outstandingly clean sound and did it whilst keeping the ‘human touch’. I haven’t experienced this from a SS phonostage before, even though I have heard some excellent SS phonostages in the past. We listened on and yes, I was impressed.

We broke for dinner and discussed what we had heard and how this Avalon could get even better.

Turns out that on the inside of this case, the wiring is at the ‘make it work’ level in terms of quality of PCB, wires, sockets, transformer, switching (MMtoMC) and wire routing. I sat at the table, eating, thinking, Sh#t! This could be bad news for my own attempts lol. We returned and did a few more comparisons and the general consensus was that both of us believed that the two units were closer in performance than they were apart. A result for me, 100% happy with that lol.

This Avalon Phonostage has some serious potential. Angus is going to make sure this hum issue is solved!

So whats next?

A rather large brown box had been occupying some floor space and I hadn’t asked what was inside.

Townshend Speaker isolation bars!

I must admit to laughing when I saw them because I had this vision of the speakers falling over. We placed them under the speaker stands, and Angus quickly set them up.

First track we listened to I was focusing so intently on what happened to the bass, expecting some reduction in bass power of something, that it took about half the track for me to notice what was happening. The only way I can think to describe it is, the track went from 1080p to 4K. Yep, bonkers.

Right, so how do these springs make this change? Easy! room interaction is reduced enormously. Now I just want to add that these were not set up as well as if you owned them. We were running out of time but wanted to see what happened over a few tracks.

I’ll attempt to explain what i heard.

On the first two tracks, Private investigations and Bohemian Rhapsody, the detail I was picking up on was outrageous. There was just so much of the little things that obviously just couldn’t be heard before, regardless of how much I have spent on my system, it COULDN’T be heard. Little filigrees and touches of strings that went under the radar. The imaging improved and top to bottom scale was huge. I was quite surprised to say the least. However, if you understand how these things work, It all makes sense.

The Springs deliberately neutralise resonance via the floor across a pre-determined frequency range. So, all those bass notes that usually get a bit of help from the suspended wooden floor are no longer getting as much help. What I hadn’t realised is how much of that finer detail was being masked by it. It’s an absolute shock to the system.

However, knowing this, I had heard 2 tracks up to this point but I wanted to push them harder to see if I could get them to slip up. I kind of managed too.
Everything we had listened to had been quite an acceptable type of music to listen to in front of anyone. I wanted to put something on that really tested these bars.

On went “The God That Failed” by Metallica.

This track starts with a really meaty bass line. I took my shoes off and felt the floor very intently. The bass line started, and it was tight and fast. The floor barely vibrated. The drums kick in and it was all a bit sharp and to be honest, it sounded utter Sh#t. No guts and no glory.
As I feared, this bass heavy track was having the rug pulled from under it by the isolation bars. No head banging with this anymore. In fact, it sounded like old age digital done badly.

This track, without the floor's help, just couldn’t get ‘gutteral’ and I wanted it to be.

In my opinion, formed over 4 or so tracks, these bars are now on my ‘must get something similar’ list hahaha! They are too rich for me (£700) so Angus is gonna do his thing and find a cheap way of doing it here.

Honestly, I didn’t expect the result we got from these today and if I had the money, I would be ordered up already.

It’s important to note that if you listen to heavy stuff regularly, it may take more away than it gives on those tracks. I need a longer demo to try with a wider range of material to be 100% on that.

That said, my system has never sounded that good at any point. BOOM!

As usual, Angus has given me another direction in which a significant improvement can be made to me listening experience.

Thanks Angus!