aerius

I was the youngest person at the meet. I'm pretty sure I'm a guy, but some people think I'm not, I don't know why. It had one of the Solen upgrades along with a stepped attenuator. Impressions, Part 1 I heard a PPX3 at a meet some time ago and thought it was about even with the proof of concept build of my tube amp. The PPX had the edge in the highs while mine was better in the lows, otherwise it was pretty even. My amp has gone through a ton of changes so I was curious how it would stack up against the MPX3 with 6BL7's. The MPX3 had a NU 6SN7 on the input with 2 GE 6BL7GT's, I decided to make it fair and use the exact same tube on the outputs on my amp along with Mullard ECC40's on the input. The MPX3 is a pretty good sounding amp, it sure as hell beats the crap out of all the Chinese tube amps I've been hearing in the last while. You really do get what you pay for. However, it comes up short in some areas, namely weight, authority, and dynamics. It can't match the transformer output tube amps in those areas with either high or low impedance headphones. Playing say, "Wait for You" or "Somebody to Love" by Nelly Furtado and the MPX can't slam the bass as hard, deep, and in control as either my amp or my friend's custom dream job. The bass on those songs is huge, on speakers the woofers will flap around even at a pretty moderate volume. If I crank the volume on my headphones, the bass should give me an uneasy feeling or even a mild headache, the MPX3 can't quite do that. It also seems to have issues dealing with big bass hits in rapid sequence, the first hit is fine, but following hits don't have as much texture and sound slightly blurred & softened. It sounds like the amp can't recover in time to keep control of the headphone drivers. Soundstage is nice, but surprisingly it isn't as big nor as defined as my tube amp, which I found rather disappointing since I'm using $20 toroidal power transformers as the OPT's of my amp. With 6SN7's on the outputs of my amp the soundstage is about the same, but once the 6BL7's are in there the soundstage expands and comes into better focus at the same time, leaving the MPX3 behind. It doesn't have as much depth & height, and there's a slight soft-focus feel to the imaging, it doesn't feel quite as "there" and solid. For instance, the mandolin on the Sarah Harmer version of "Salamandre" doesn't really come forward and pop out of the background in the instrumental part like it should. Instead of taking a couple steps forward and really ringing out, it only takes a step & half forward and sounds somewhat soft & lacking in authority. I wouldn't say it's veiled, but it isn't as vivid and solid as it should be. Overall, I'd say the MPX3 needs to be paired with an authoritative and hard-hitting CD player like the Naim, so in that respect my buddy made a good match in his system. Speaking of which, the Naim CD5x is probably the CD player to get for rockers & metalheads, or any kind of music which depends on keeping a mean groove. This player is all about PRaT, put on any music with a good beat and you'll soon be boppin' your head along. It doesn't have the big enveloping soundstage of the Capitole, but it's still a good size and very well focused and precise. The tone isn't as rich & full as the Capitole, yet it manages to have more weight behind the notes in the bass and a bit of the lower midrange. Yet it's not a one-trick pony, it's not going to fall apart if you feed it "audiophile approved" music. The Naim can do refinement, the Cowboy Junkies' "Trinity Sessions" album keeps all its nice air & space, every instrument has its place in the soundstage and it all sounds very solid & layered. The percussion will echo off the walls and define the space and you can hear Margo's voice echo & fade. The difference between the CD5x & Capitole is the latter makes you more part of the performance, kinda like the difference between watching a movie at a cheap theatre with a small screen and watching the same movie in a good theatre with a nice full-size screen. It's a different presentation. While it doesn't have the big analog-like sound of the Capitole, it doesn't sound "digital" either, I didn't find it to have harshness or the other usual digital nasties. Compared to my Denon, the Naim adds more of everything except soundstage size. I can definitely dig the Naim. Where it comes up short against the modded Capitole is resolution & detail, not too apparent on either the MPX3 or my tube amp, but glaringly obvious on the DHT amp. The Capitole passes a lot more information, it's like going from a normal movie theatre to IMAX, well, not that big of a difference but it's still a pretty big gap. A lot of stuff which sounds like random noise and gets filtered out by the brain as such with the Naim will resolve into low-level details such as decay trails from cymbals, echoes fading into the background, and recording boo-boos among other things. Kinda like seeing random specks in the background on normal film resolving into people and space planes in IMAX. More later...

I got a call this morning about a meet which I'd discussed in passing a few weeks ago and then promptly forgotten about. We listened to a stock RS-1, my K340, and a modded RS-1 along with a Grado 225. The rest of the gear list is as follows: modded Audio Aero Capitole Naim CD5x modded Denon 650F EML 20B & 2A3 tube amp SinglePower MPX3 w/6BL7's my experimental tube amp The short summary. The MPX3 was not as good as I expected, I thought it would at least hold its own against my tube amp but it got beaten in all respects once I swapped 6BL7 tubes into my amp. The Naim and my Denon are quite similar in terms of sound signature, but the Naim has more resolution and refinement, and it carries a mean groove. Of all 3 CD players, the Naim has the most authority and PRaT. The stock RS-1 is still really good, but it loses a lot of information in the treble compared to the modded one. We supect the #1 culprit is the cable. Other notes. It's pretty hilarious when you have a meet with a guy & girl in their late 20's who look quite respectable, and a guy who's old enough to be our dad who looks like he stepped out of a Harley-Davidson ad. Detailed impressions tomorrow or later, cause I drank too much booze during the latter part of the meet and after the meet, and now I have a headache, and I want to sleep.

I thought Bacon Salt was some kind of Head-case in-joke, then I looked it up on Google and found to my horror that it actually does exist.

A bagpipe concert at a local park, it was part of a Scottish heritage festival. Man those things are loud, and the sound easily carries for well over a mile.

I'd disagree. The Nottingham Analog Dais with a good cartridge & phono stage will smoke the Capitole.

Staying within the $5k limit, the best players I've heard are the Audio Aero Capitole Mk2 and the Simaudio Eclipse, the latter I believe is discontinued but they still turn up a bit on Audiogon from what I hear. In terms of resolution, they're pretty much the same, rather, it's the presentation which is different. The Capitole has a more liquid sound and big analog-like soundstage, while the Eclipse is more weighty & solid at the expense of that big airy soundscape. They are both really nice and it does come down to taste, though given the McIntosh tube amps I'd personally lean towards the Eclipse. Price no object? Simaudio MOON Andromeda. The best of both worlds, with even more resolution.

Don't know, don't care, moot question in any case since I sure as hell ain't going back there even if they unbanned me. They're not worthy of my presence anymore. To be honest I should've gotten the fuck out of head-fi sometime in 2005 at the latest.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=133765 That's probably about as good as a review as you're gonna get. There have been several modifications to my K340's since then to reduce the midrange colouration and get more extension in the treble, which has been successful for the most part. But given that my personal pair has way more mods & fine-tuning than any other in existence, I'd say the above review is an accurate representation of the typical modded K340. The soundstage is rather crippled by the Gilmore Lite clone, but otherwise, everything else stands.

Well, "without further adieu" would translate to "without further farewells" so I don't think that's right either. I believe the word he's looking for is "ado".

I dare you to use 813's on the output.

Well, it can come in handy if you have a hearing imbalance in your ears, or if you happen to get a weak tube but still want to use the amp while waiting for the new tubes to come in.

Is that on the B+ or the low voltage filament heater supply?

Tyrion was being a fucking idiot as usual and clogging the board with lawyer-speak. I mentioned that you'd have a better chance of crapping out a TS Round-Plate (a rare and expensive 6SN7) than you would of getting a straight answer out of the dipshit. Hirsch noted that he'd have to check his toilet more often.

It is actually surprisingly good. There are of course a few drawbacks; Being an open baffle dipole, they needs some room to breath, just like electrostatics You're not going to get big bass, but you won't get that from a monitor speaker anyway Treble's going to be kinda soft Given the needs of hungrych, the first point pretty much rules them out as he wants to stick one of them on a desktop close to a wall. Unfortunately I can't really answer the question as small desktop or bookshelf type speakers are something I have little experience with.

Sting & Copeland were mouthing off at each other after every few songs, and for I while I thought Copeland was going to whip his drumsticks at him. Despite all that, they still put on a pretty good show.

After seeing their antics last night, I'd be surprised if The Police manage to make it to the end of their tour without killing each other.

In a few hours, The Police.

I just log on to the city library network and reserve myself a book, and within a couple days it's delivered to my local branch for pickup.

Next step, order a balanced autoformer volume control...

Speaking from personal experience?

Half frozen watermelon. I left it in the freezer a few minutes too long.

What's wrong? Afraid of getting perm-banned from Head-fi? Oh no, what a tragic loss that would be, however will you live if that happened?

It's a big change from my normal light reading (John Ringo's books for example), the style's quite different and there's a lot more layers & subtlety so it takes some concentration to keep everything sorted in my head. I'm liking it so far, the political intrigues can get a bit tedious though.

Finished Children of Dune a few days ago, just started on The God Emperor of Dune.