The later presses clearly are more open sounding. The Angels sound a bit thick and compressed in comparison.
The Angels are ... not as dynamic as the second presses.
Any guesses on the reasons???
Further to that, I think you mostly preferred the Angels with the EMT built-in phono.
So, what has happened to make you change your prefernece?
How much does the phono contribute to it?
Naturelover, with the EMT phono I did like the Angels better. EMT is a 70s SS phono. What I have now is a modern tube phono. Suppposedly it’s state of the art. Also I guess bandwidth of modern phonos is higher. It’s the only reason i can think of.
Also when speaking to people who have really really high end vinyl set ups, they all seem to prefer the 140 g vinyl to the 180 and 200 g vinyl. The second presses are all 140 g. The first presses are usually much thicker. So maybe that is also coming into play.
Similar story here. And my city has hardly any DIYers and serious / passionate lovers, I know of. Few ones I know are more impressed by big brand names even before they actually listen to a setup and I have hardly any brands and / or they under wraps…. (Not playing)
My setup is 90% DIYed (it was 100% including R2R DAC earlier and now ECDesigns PDR makes it 90%) , so no brand names to showcase to anyone.
Will be awaiting impressions / details on your upcoming rendezvous….
Imo, subjective listening is very personal and judged by a listener in just 2 minutes. You like it or hate it. Nothing inbetween. Each person listen very differently. I can give examples of speakers built by me. Though i don't like them all myself, my customers like them very very much.
Btw, my passive DAC with LPF is still in prototype stage as I have used only available stock 5% carbon resistors for the impedance matching network. I shall be ordering precision thin film resistors next week with exact value resistance. Currently I/V conversion tolerance is 17% due to this mis- match.