Impromptu apartment mini-meet

[aerius]

I'm currently taking a break from a mini-meet, it got pretty intense and my friend & I are taking a break to go grab some food and catch up on things a bit before returning to the listening. A little teaser, we have a modded Audio Aero Capitole, a custom built 2A3 amp, and a balanced RS-1 recabled with copper litz wire. For shits & giggles, we decided to compare a regular store bought CD (Tori Amos - Boys for Pele) with a CDR copy burned on a Fujifilm CDR. I've heard people saying CDRs sound better but never heard a difference on my system, so since we had a top-notch system at our disposal we decided to test it out. Shockingly, the CDR sounds better, and I was like "what the fuck?!" More to come later...

[postjack]

Shockingly, the CDR sounds better, and I was like "what the fuck?!" More to come later...

interesting. I'd like to see a shoot-out between that CDR and a MAM-A gold archival CDR.

[aerius]

Impressions. Today I heard the best headphone setup I've ever heard in my life, and by a good sized margin, it was one of those rare experiences which redefines for me what is possible with headphones. I learned that a tweaked & recabled RS-1 is capable of shockingly good sound, it made my K340 sound broken and smoked it in everything except soundstage size. That ain't an easy thing to do. I also now know that I MUST build a DHT amp, a great DHT amp is as far above my amp as my amp is above an entry level tube amp. It's not a "yeah there's a bit of a difference", it was literally a "Holy fucking shit!!!" kind of difference. The Capitole CDP, well, not much needs to be said about that other than it fucking rocks.

I'll start with the amp, it's a balanced amp using a transformer phase-splitter input to a pair of 6C45P tubes, to a switchable interstage transformer to a pair of 2A3's, then the output transformer. CCS's everywhere with glowy VR tubes and a separate tube rectified PSU with damper diodes & those motor run caps I love. What hit me from the start was the resolution, speed, and texture, it was like making a jump from 128k MP3 to the original CD, there's just more of everything which I never knew was there.

One of the first songs I played was "Sweet Ones" by Sarah Slean, fun song which I hadn't heard in a while since I overplayed it a few months ago. Anyways I always figured the chorus part was just multitracked vocals with a bit of a chorus effect, but I found out through the amp & RS-1 that it was a lot more than that. Today, I heard that each vocal track got its own chorus & echo effect before getting multi-tracked, and the last chorus of the song had a vocal track which was itself multi-tracked. The ability of the amp to resolve and separate out all that in the middle of a band playing full-out is freakin' wild, I've never heard this kind of resolution before, even on a high-end speaker rig. Talk about hearing all the layers of the recording, this was nuts. It was pretty much the same idea for the next few songs I played, it got pretty intense.

We took a short break while I redid the wires on my K340 so I could use it with the amp, and redid my amp so she could use the RS-1 with it. Then we flipped the amp to high-gain and plugged in my K340. Going from the RS-1 it was a letdown, yes the K340 sounds better than it does in my system but it still got stomped. It fell far short of the speed & resolution of the RS-1, it was congested & confused, especially in the bass & upper midrange where it couldn't get textures right and blurred tones & details. Guitar notes & tones sound a bit too alike, for instance SRV's Fender and Albert King's Gibson start sounding a tad similar when they're jamming and playing fast & hard with the band going full-tilt.

When things get busy & loud, the K340 starts losing its ability to keep sounds separate and prevent them from blending. Same idea in the bass, the K340 isn't fast enough to keep notes from blending and more importantly, preserve the unique tone & texture of each note from each instrument. These are usually the strongpoints of my K340, and it's handily beaten almost every headphone in these areas, and here it was getting wasted by an RS-1. I haven't experienced anything like this since my first Head-fi meet, where Biggie's RS-1 setup make my Senn 580 sound like a broken piece of crap. Oddly enough, the RS-1 strikes again.

After a break for snacks we got back to more listening, this time with both tube amps running off the Capitole. It turns out that my amp still has some performance left "in the bag" and my CD player is definitely holding it back a bit. It and my K340 are pretty well matched in performance though, so neither of them is really holding the other back. The RS-1 sounds better out of my amp now than it did out of my CDP, but it's still got a ways to go to match the 2A3 amp. 27's, 37's, ECC40's, 1633's, and 6BL7's are pretty good tubes, but they ain't DHT's. There's still a big gap in speed, resolution, tone & texture, and the ability to yank out those low-level details from a recording making it sound whole and complete.

It was around this point where I remembered something I first heard from the guys at Fab Audio, that is, a CDR copy can sound different and sometimes better than the original. So we decided to test that one out, and I'll be damned cause it's true. In this case, we both agreed that the CDR copies sounded better, it was pretty much impossible to tell the difference with my K340, but with her RS-1 it was fairly apparent, though it's not that big of a difference. The CDR is more analog-like, there's more space and blackness which allows a bit more of those low-level details to come through. It's a little smoother & more musical, and I think for long listening sessions this could all add up to a big difference in enjoyment and lack of fatigue. This was a consistent difference we noted with all the CDR copies I had on hand to compare to the originals. I guess this means I'll have a lot of CD copying to do if my system ever gets good enough. For those who want to try and replicate this, my CDR copies were burned at 4X on a Matsushita 32/8/4 CDR/W on Fujifilm (Taiyo Yuden) CDRs after ripping on EAC on secure mode.

Stay tuned for more...I'm still trying to digest and think over today's events.

[postjack]

I learned that a tweaked & recabled RS-1 is capable of shockingly good sound...

Can you expand on this? What was the RS-1 recabled with, etc.

Thanks for sharing your impressions.

[cotdt]

if the 2A3 already sounds this good i wonder how my Bugle 45 will perform

[aerius]

Can you expand on this? What was the RS-1 recabled with, etc.

Thanks for sharing your impressions.

The RS-1 was redone with copper litz wire, didn't ask who made it though. It also had some mods done to the drivers. Basically, take everything about an RS-1 that's not so good and make it all go away, or almost all of it. Then take all the things that the RS-1 does well and crank it up to 11.

[ojnihs]

weird about the CD-Rs.

i agree, wonder if this means that i should really be burning cd-r's. problem is that they don't last forever

[hYdrociTy]

They have those archival cdr's that claim 100 year life, so i say even being safe at 50 years, that is still a pretty long life. Who knows what will be even in 25 years?

3 minutes to copy a cdr onto a 10 cent blank. That is my justification for the medium

[deepak]

What pads were the RS-1 using?

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Going from the RS-1 it was a letdown, yes the K340 sounds better than it does in my system but it still got stomped. It fell far short of the speed & resolution of the RS-1, it was congested & confused, especially in the bass & upper midrange where it couldn't get textures right and blurred tones & details. Guitar notes & tones sound a bit too alike, for instance SRV's Fender and Albert King's Gibson start sounding a tad similar when they're jamming and playing fast & hard with the band going full-tilt.

When things get busy & loud, the K340 starts losing its ability to keep sounds separate and prevent them from blending. Same idea in the bass, the K340 isn't fast enough to keep notes from blending and more importantly, preserve the unique tone & texture of each note from each instrument.

Your friend has the rig I always wanted. Highend cd player + custom 2a3 amp + modded rs-1's (as refined as the rs-1's are, I always felt like it wasn't enough, and the ps-1's proved that). I even tried to get in contact with a out of business high end amp maker that used to mod rs-1's. I won't complain about what I have though.

At the last mini-meet I went to I had the same problem with the k340's. Slipknot turned to mush on the k340's vs. ps-1's. Seems like the dynamic drivers can't keep up with the electrostatic drivers.

I found the 2 biggest differences between the ps-1's and sr60's is the poor imaging of the sr60's and the sr60's inability to reproduce notes accurately (in that similar notes all sound exactly the same).

Biggie.

[postjack]

They have those archival cdr's that claim 100 year life, so i say even being safe at 50 years, that is still a pretty long life. Who knows what will be even in 25 years?

Mitsui MAM-A Gold CDRs

claims archival quality for 300 years. anyway its what I use, they are pretty.

[aerius]

if the 2A3 already sounds this good i wonder how my Bugle 45 will perform

I doubt the Bugle 45 will be as good. There's a reason the designer has since moved on to using WE417A & 437A along with 6C45P tubes in his designs. More power, more goodness, less distortion. The Bugle's a good amp, but it still leaves a fair bit of the 45's potential "in the tube".

Actually I was quite interested in the technical aspects of my friend's 2A3 amp. One of the coolest things was what's known as the Western Electric Harmonic Balancer, it substantially reduces 3rd & higher order harmonics and makes the sound a lot cleaner. It cancels out harmonics the same way Broskie's Aikido circuit cancels out PSU noise, by using it against itself. Apparently, this distortion reduction technique was invented over 70 years ago and then forgotten about for decades.

What pads were the RS-1 using?

Flat pads, the way god meant them to be used, IMO.

[Nanoha]

So Aerius, any plans regarding what you're going to use in your future amp build?

By the way, are there any DHT designs out there that I should consider building this summer?

[cotdt]

So who made the 2A3 amp? Do you have the schematics?

[deepak]

Sarah Slean, fun song which I hadn't heard in a while since I overplayed it a few months ago.

I'm listening to her CD Night Bugs, it's really good. Her voice reminds me of Neko Case in certain parts.

[aerius]

So Aerius, any plans regarding what you're going to use in your future amp build?

By the way, are there any DHT designs out there that I should consider building this summer?

The answer to both questions is at this point "I have no freakin' clue!", unfortunately. I've barely started reading up on DHT designs and familiarizing myself with their design concepts and how they work, I just don't know enough about them right now. I have bits & pieces here & there and some things carry over from IDHT's, but I'm still quite a ways from putting together to make a working picture.

So who made the 2A3 amp? Do you have the schematics?

One of the instrumentation guys at my friend's company, apparently he used to build 'scopes & other stuff at Tektronics. I have the schematics for the amp but not the PSU, but don't even think about building it. I'm told the 6C45P is twitchy as hell, so the wire routing and grounding has to be absolutely perfect. It took the guy a couple tries to get it right and he has many years of experience with high-performance tube circuits, so us mere mortals are most likely SOL.

[aerius]

When we came back from our food break I wanted to see what it would take to trip up the RS-1 system, if this was in fact possible. So I pulled out some Metallica, Slayer, and Fear Factory, go fast hard & heavy as hell and see what happens. I wanted to see if the sound would hold together with the volume cranked up a bit. It laughed at Metallica, even the loudest busiest parts of S&M with the full orchestra going were no problem. Same thing with Slayer, the last couple minutes of "Raining Blood" with the crazy fast drums & cymbals hit with a new level of dynamics & clarity. Then I put on "Messiah" by Fear Factory to see if the ultra-fast bass drums would expose a weakness, nope, I just got whacked with the hardest fiercest drum sound I've heard outside of a live Slayer concert. At this point I gave up and we went back to listening to more normal music. We then traded some CDs, wrapped up the meet, and went out to dinner.

Over dinner, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff, had a few drinks, and I learned the secret of the RS-1 mods. It apparently has something to do with edge interfaces and how they reflect energy to cause resonances & screw up transients & low-level details. By applying a specific damping pattern to the driver, it's possible to significantly reduce the reflections and the amount of resonances & stored energy in the driver. I'm not a physicist or mechanical engineer so I don't know how it works, but it does work. I was referred to this page for further info, I think I understand like 10% of it and I haven't even looked at the patent yet.

I'm listening to her CD Night Bugs, it's really good. Her voice reminds me of Neko Case in certain parts.

Sarah's pretty amazing, I've been lucky enough to see her live a few times, including once when I was literally close enough to reach out and touch her. If she tours in your area, go.

[Thelonious Monk]

damn. that girl has really done her homework and knows her shit, i don't know of anyone who's even thought about messing with headphone drivers to reduce standing waves. glad to see grados in truly high-end systems. makes me reassure myself that i'm not kidding myself with my grado love.

[Augsburger]

i agree, wonder if this means that i should really be burning cd-r's. problem is that they don't last forever

MAM golds are supposed to last 100+ years, so your grandkids can listen to grandpa's funky tunes in 2075. Assuming vintage cdps are still around to play them.

[philodox]

Cool impressions Eaphan. At least I know now how much I would have to spend to be happy with the RS-1's.

Slipknot turned to mush on the k340's vs. ps-1's.

LOL

What do you expect? I feed my K340's a steady diet of downtempo beats and then you come in with that shite!

"What the fuck is this, I thought I was supposed to play music?"

[CD44hi]

The RS-1 was redone with copper litz wire, didn't ask who made it though. It also had some mods done to the drivers. Basically, take everything about an RS-1 that's not so good and make it all go away, or almost all of it. Then take all the things that the RS-1 does well and crank it up to 11.

aerius,

could you find out more on this mods on the RS1 cans? Who made them? where? $$?

Thanks

[aerius]

aerius,

could you find out more on this mods on the RS1 cans? Who made them? where? $$?

Thanks

My friend contacted Mr. Purvine who holds the patents to the EnABL process and got the specifics on how to apply the pattern to the RS-1 driver and housing. Then she got her sister to apply the pattern on the RS-1 drivers & housing after practicing on a cheap walkman headphone. The cable build and recable job was done by one of her university classmates. No idea of cost, but she said it was a pretty delicate procedure and there's no way in hell they're doing it with other people's headphones. According to Mr. Purvine's posts on DIY audio, the best bet is to get a kid to do it since they have the best eyesight and hand-eye co-ordination.

[postjack]

...the best bet is to get a kid to do it since they have the best eyesight and hand-eye co-ordination.

*envisions a hot warehouse in east timor filled with children modifying RS-1s*

[n_maher]

No idea of cost, but she said it was a pretty delicate procedure and there's no way in hell they're doing it with other people's headphones.

If I remember correctly the biggest problem with the RS-1s is that the driver housing is a single piece unlike other Graods with have a driver housing and then the "cup" portion that are simple fastened together with hot glue. In order to recable an RS-1 you have to separate the driver from the wood which is, as your friend so correctly put, a very delicate operation. The glue they use to affix the driver into the housing is not nearly as forgiving as the hot glue they use on the cups. The only person I've ever heard of that successfully did this was doobooloo and in his case it was only because his RS-1s were so old that the drivers were falling out of the enclosures already.

[CD44hi]

Thanks aerius,

Yep, the RS1 is a very difficult beast to deal with in terms of mods.

I actually have an old school RS1 (golden letters, brown headband) whose hot glue is dried up. SO it should not be hard to open up. However, since this a rare can, I haven't convinced myself to anything with it. Tempting but not an easy decision. As n_maher points out, I do remember doobooloo doing this in a similar dried up glue on older RS1.

I think the high risk of damaging the chambers is why headphile won't do RS1 mods. Oh, and btw, Headphile mods the drivers as well. I don't know whether the "pattern" of the headphile dampening on grado drivers would match that of your friend's drivers. But I know for a fact that he applies dampening material to the back of the grado drivers.