Adrian

This is going to sound bitchy but… I have heard a few of his amps at length and in shows and I really like them in all areas bar one.

(I have had a longer exposure to the Pass Aleph 3 and the Threshold S200 in particular.)

But, I find the timing in both quite ploddy and I place great importance on timing.

Sounds ridiculous?

I certainly believe some amps are more on the beat than others.

And some companies cheat by rolling off early in the bass, mentioning no Names…

Usually, amps which are full bodied/overly full bodied will sound less on the beat particularly in the bass.

But these were rather ploddy sounding without being overly full bodied.

A down side of Class A perhaps?

Any comments welcome?

Had a bit of a shock lately.

The strong suspicion that a fake Blue Alps outperforms the genuine article.

More musical and lively partly because it has a more Linear, incorrect, arc of movement.

Please report back anyone who has done the comparison…

Was really surprised to hear some terrible lag from this popular dac into its USB port from a laptop.

Poor implementation of its USB port when used with a laptop with an effect like wow and flutter.

A rather disjointed flow of the music at times.

I recommended the customer buy a cheap USB to SP/DIF converter (RCA end going into dac) and problem was solved.

I have always argued that the voice is the sound we recognise the best because we are most attuned to it from our mother’s voice as a baby and onwards through life to wanting to hear the exact characteristics of a favourite singer’s voice.

I went to the Milan Hi Fidelity show last weekend and the same 3 things struck me as happens in just about all the Hi-Fi shows I attend.

1) Some absolutely dreadful Muzak is played just because they are excellent recordings. This means that when I request a decently-recorded CD track I know well to be played, I am nearly always disappointed compared to my own system.

2) Some systems have impressive bass; more than I am used to. From experience, having owned some bass behemoths in the past, I know that – for me at least – it is just a novelty that soon wears thin. I much prefer a fast, transparent bass to room-shaking depth and the compromise in midrange clarity that comes with that. The unrealistic desire many have to recreate orchestral scale in their rooms detracts from the delicacy needed for World Music, Jazz or Folk.

3) And now for my most controversial point. I am used to what some would dismissively call ‘pipe and slipper’ speaker designs such as old Spendor BC1s, Harbeth HL Monitors and Rogers LS5/8s. As often happens, I heard a track I knew well at the show, a viola da gamba track played by Jordi Saval. The speakers were Brave New World designs built from what looked like solid aluminium billet. The natural resonances and reverberations I expected were, for the most part, bleached away! Many recordings seem to lose much of the natural resonance and 3 dimensionality of the music. The approach of most modern Hi-Fi systems is to be clean, focussed, tighter-than-reality and rather uninvolving. Valves add a global 3 dimensionality often lost.
There is an intuitive understanding that for music to sound real something more Yin and Yang than simple resonance control is required. It is not that subjectivists condone adding colouration, as many objectivists claim, but that they instinctively seek that extra connection and engagement you get with the original performance which the recording often lacks. Furthermore, valve amps generally sound more natural than transistor probably because the signal travels through a vacuum rather than silicone.

I have tried cleaning records in various ways over the years.

From tap water and washing-up liquid which can leave a calcium residue to wood glue which  can get stuck in the grooves where spread too thinly.

I recently tried Covid hand sanitiser rubbed gently into grooves with my finger tips and used warm water to rinse it off. This works very well and leaves no calcium deposits. By using finger tips one can feel how much attention each record needs before it becomes clean.

Record sleeves even with specialist pressings are often made of cardboard and put fine scuffs on the records every time they are removed. This can cause surface noise. E.g. Aldous Harding – ‘Party’ my most recent buy. I have had to buy plastic-lined paper inner sleeves which work well but the original cardboard one doesn’t fit alongside them.