Experimenting with the current systems a little

Teck, from Singapore, played a female vocals CD in our room, and likely a few lucky other rooms as well, at RMAF, and kindly and generously sent us a copy of it:

And, uh, it is surprisingly difficult to render well. The second track, specially, the singer has lotssssssss of sssssss’s in her ssssssinging that can caussssssse ssssssibliance when played back [i.e. sharp S sounds instead of delicate, sweet s sounds]. Luckily, the completely optimized system we took to the show played everything perfect, but some of our experimental systems, that otherwise play flawlessly [more or less] have difficulty here, and truth to tell, the playback in general on this CD could be better.

I think the answer will turn out to be a combination of the fact that we are playing it LOUD [what? L-O-U-D!!! Anybody else have these strange conversations when the music is loud? That usually end in “Forget it. I’ll Tell!… You!… Later!…”. “WHAAAAT!?”], the equipment is sitting very nearly right in front of the speakers, and the bass needs adjusting because the room is so large – we got used to using an integrated, and I do not think we have used solid-state on the main towers for over a year.

So we struggle, changing power cords, cleaning the CD, changing cables etc. to try and figure out what thing[s] are responsible. Everything to avoid having to move things or put a rack between the speakers [on the other hand, Neli is happy as a clam to have Mike move things, including racks, to and fro, fro and to].

System 1

Lamm L2 linestage’s power supply

Lamm L2 linestage. Just about everything is on HRS M3 Isolation Bases.

Emm Labs CDSA CD / SACD Player.

Anyway, that is what’s happening here. The Vidar has not yet arrived so we are not burning in anything that needs to be burned in. So, we are circling the field waiting to land.

System 2

Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier

Audio Note DAC 4.1x Balanced

Audio Note CDT Three transport

And, yes, Teck, your other CD arrived to [Thanks SO much!]. But, uh, I accidentally left it in the Emm Labs CDSD SE which, uh, is unplugged and at the moment away from an outlet, and I need to find a power cord for it somewhere [can I use a stock $2 Belden power cord? Of Course Not :-)] and plug it back in so I can eject the CD [See, I TOLD you all that I do this ALL THE TIME. Don’t know what it is… some kind of curse because I ‘let’ Neli clean all the CDs (and records, too) or something… :-)]

We like the CDs. We are certainly playing them a lot. The soundtrack is a little like the Gladiator soundtrack… I mean, doesn’t it seem like soundtracks have their own genre -they’re not classical and they’re not pop. Cool depth of field though, and amazing drums.