Coimbatore HFV Nano Meet

Hi,

I used to buy things based on my own research and the one thing which made me rethink is after this meet. I was more shocked than you, believe me or not.

The specs and reviews on maverick do look good and the additional thing that attracted me was the "tube."

That gives me some hope!

Cheers!

Its all in the room, Santhosh . All the very best and dont give up.

bala,as i remarked to santhosh,i truly feel the same.anyway,am sure our dear 'gadget freak' will figure a way to tame it .all the best!!cheers

The changes I made today require me to change my style of working entirely. But I gained a bit today in music. For the first 200 hrs with IO2, I had not listened, just went on nightly burn-ins. Later, as I wrote in another thread, my brain got burnt-in to the sound. At that point of time, I've been listening to the setup for over 30-40 days without a break. Funny thing this brain is - Even if you give it a EP-630 for a month, it will start 'liking' it until you show it what a RE0 is capable of

So, to purge all my audio memory, I went 20 days without any music, not even switching on the setup. A couple of days ago, I went back to my IEMs, Phonak PFE and RE0 and listened for a few hours.

Yesterday, before I began the exercise, I prepared a short playlist of two songs from Opeth. After each major step in the exercise, I stopped to listen. As Titus complained, there was no bass, no resolution of any sort in the beginning. By the time I went to bed, slight hint of bass was available, the mids had cleared up, but felt recessed. The vocals were still not clear.

In "Apostle in Triumph", an Opeth song from "Orchid" album, RE0 would give me a hint of how 'open' Akerfedt's throat is during the death growls. Also, towards the end, he whispers a line before launching into normal vocals. Both these were completely missing in my setup - the vocals were unclear and to hear the whispered line, I needed to make a very conscious and hard effect.

Actually, this song has two beginnings - the recording engineer mistakenly recorded the end of the previous song to the beginning of this song and then there's the actual beginning . Today, after nearly completing my planned changes, the change was distinct the moment the song began (actual beginning) - the guitar was finally sounding alright. The mids had cleared up, bass was a little more evident and I started hearing more details than I have so far heard (or remember) with this setup. Though I still need the vocals to clear up a bit more and would still need a bit more width & slight depth to the sound stage, I did hear the whispered line clearly - both with STX -> TP20 and STX -> "Analog" of D1 -> D1 Line out -> TP20. I could at least get some hint of the change in growl dynamics, for lack of a better term.

Also, there was a biting harshness at certain frequencies, which shouted out. Now, from my limited time thus far, I did not notice that. Earlier, IO2s felt muffled, veiled or more like chained monsters waiting to be unleashed. Now, that has cleared a lot.

I still would need to test it with another Amp to see whether TP20, though it managed to drive Bala's Harmony ones, struggle with IO2. A bit of proper room treatment, may be an amp upgrade and hopefully, I don't need to think about selling the speaker setup and going back full time to IEMs

PS: I still need the "golden ears" to validate what I hear

(I did not know whether to post this in the "Dac" thread or here.. anyways.....to continue svenkateshsmart's question on D1's quality, I thought better to post here)

I wrote a crude comparison sometime back here.

With a better sounding setup and armed with just one song, Opeth's "Closure" (Track #4 from "Damnation"), I listened again. This time, the difference was much more apparent.

Setup:

Gigabyte 785GMT-USB3 USB out -> MX "shielded Gold Plated" USB cable -> D1 ("USB Input")
Asus Essence STX -> RCA Out -> Blue Jeans LC-1 IC -> D1 ("Analog")
Asus Essence STX -> SPDIF Out -> MX RCA-RCA -> D1 ("Coaxial")
Marantz 63SE -> Optical Out -> MX Optical -> D1 ("Optical")

TP20 volume knob at 11 o' clock unless noted.
D1 was in Direct mode (No volume control) through out.
SPL Meter used is Scosche Boom Stick SPL-1000

Software Setup:

foobar2000 v1.0.1 -> Kernel Streaming in 32-bit, TP20 @ 11 o' clock. foobar volume at -11.5db. For USB source, foobar was set to Kernel streaming with the USB driver link mentioned in the earlier post. For STX, the same beta drivers mentioned in the earlier post was used.

"Blabber" / Impressions / Comparison / Whatever:

"USB" was missing lot of details, a tad too forward with mids. Drums were sounding like something else. Imaging left a lot to be desired. SPL was low too by 6-7 dB at listening position. So, had to pump up the Amp a bit. There was simply no body to instruments.

"Analog" was much better. I heard so much of detail and body with this setup. Bass was much better, tighter. Mids were much more detailed here. I could pick up many more things that I simply did not hear with the "USB".

"Coaxial" was similar to analog. Again a tad lower on volume, but slightly missing the impact "Analog" had. To explain, it seemed to be ever-so-slightly plastered to speakers and not as "reaching the ears" as with Analog output.

"Optical" was much louder (5dB higher than "Analog" at LP) even with TP20 lowered to between 9 and 10. The imaging was much better. The drum beats were moving from center to left in the beginning of the song. I did not notice / hear that in other setups thus far. Cymbals were excellent here. Instead of a one note cymbal thus far, I was able to hear the cymbals louder (may be due to SPL?) with more details. But to my ears, I preferred "Analog"'s mids here - may be the slight fatigue due to higher SPL? I'll do a SPL matched comparison later.

I re-inserted GE NOS tube in it's slot since there were problems with it - like left channel missing sometimes. I tried it with the "USB" even before this, but was left unimpressed. May be it had to do with the fact that I screwed up with the drivers and was unable to get foobar to play via KS. Or may be it needs a 50 hour burn-in as they say at Head-fi.

While this is a n00bish bad ears comparison, the result anyways is (CDP) Optical >= (STX) Analog > (STX) SPDIF >>> USB > Toob. Very source dependent?

To do

I should be getting opamps and tubes for rolling next month. Will try to update on them. It would be interesting to test the D1 both with my motherboard's SPDIF Out and also with XTreamer. Also, a fair comparison between Tube Pre-out and Line out should be done once I do some "burn-in" with the still new GE NOS tube.

Santhosh - why not try the ASIO drivers for foobar? Or even the ASIO ones that Xonar Essence supplies you with? Why go for Kernel streaming?

so true - esantosh!!

the best way is to listen to disparate systems (once a week) - three or four different systems (ranging from "terrible" to "terribly good") - then the ennui will be kept at bay!

of course, there are some - who say " grow up man - enjoy the music - whatever gear you have"

but then - there are people ( who "also" make this universe whole) - who nitpick and -
do not enjoy the music - but look for perfection - insofar as reproduction of the original audio event is concerned.

and here - the "instant mortal moment" is ignored -

instead - the "small" "incremental" accretion to the "pursuit of perfection" - (towards the goal of perfect reproduction) is the goal.\

the thinking mind - is fickle in it's aims!

of course - if you are sure that you are going to die tomorrow - or if you are not sure - then you have to "grow up" in a hurry and enjoy whatever you have today - music, your car, your hobby, your whatever -

but if you believe you are going to live forever - and want to have something to think about - nitpicking about the audio equipment and worrying about it's inadequacy makes a very good case for itself.

Next time, I will try the ASIO4All drivers and do the comparison. May be it will even out all the driver differences.

I must add two things:

• GE NOS is still better than the Chinese stock tube. It at least does a few things right. And may be with different inputs, it might do better.
• The USB failed to impress, both with line out and Tube Pre-out possibly because of this - Maverick Audio TubeMagic D1 (DAC/Amp) - Condensed FAQ and Info Thread - Head-Fi.org Community - Spanky's first post under USB Driver mentions...
  
  
  Quote:

  There was information in this thread to get 24-Bit / 96kHz supposedly bit-perfect working with the USB on the D1. It has since been discovered that even though the rate can be changed, there's some kind of hardware issue (either design or chip limitation) and only 16-Bit / 48kHz is being sent to the DAC itself. Because of this, any other format that's sent through USB is resampled to that. Depending on the format you send, it may noticeably degrade audio quality. However, it should be bit-perfect if you send 16-Bit / 48kHz but there's no real way of knowing.

very true

very interesting titus! I've also taken around my TP20 and tried it with various speakers with varying results. But the Lyrita Harmony Ones were one of the best matches that I hav e ever heard for that amp. And I am yet to hear the AD700 but I understand it's similar sounding to my ANC7 and I can totally understand why you found it entrancing

Vinay, Yes your amp was sounding great with the Lyrita full rangers.

As for the Audio technicas, from my experience, the ad700s are definitely superior to the anc7s. The former sounds much more balanced. Separation is much better too IMHO.