attunement

attunement, Are you using a sub with your KEF/NAD combo? Bill Interesting that you brought that up. I'm setting up two (hopefully) audiophile quality listening areas in my house and have elected to use the KEF LS50s in both of them (one of the rooms is very small, basically a computer desktop setup. The other room is smallish to moderate size, just at the edge of what the KEFs can reasonably support.) The computer desktop station is pretty much baked in with the NAD C 390DD paired with the audiophilleo 2, KEFs and a WIN 7 computer with JRiver Media Center. I was on the fence about getting a 2nd NAD C 390DD for the other listening room since I wondered if I could improve on things with a different preamp/amp dedicated DAC situation. But as soon as I plugged the audiophilleo 2 with the purepower option into the NAD, that put the NAD over the top and made it a no brainer to get a 2nd NAD C with accompanying 2nd audiphilleo 2 (with purepower as well.) That basically makes the NAD C a $3600 unit rather than a $2600 one. But given that it is a preamp and amp along with the DAC and gives the "sound of my dreams quality" sound, I'm not sure there is a similar combination in the $3600 range (preamp/amp/dac total) that would beat it. But that brings up the question of subs. I love to listen to symphonic/classical music, along with popular music. And whereas a Beethoven Symphony going through my current desktop system sounds WAY better than it has any right to sound (given how small the KEFs appear to be), I can't help but think that an audiophile sub wouldn't bring out that critical element of Bass to bring such dynamic music home. So, as a long way around to answering whether I have paired a sub with the KEFs/NAD, the answer is that I intend to in the second room. The speaker, NAD and audiophilleo are all arriving today. I will be setting those things up and let them play a little to see how things sound and feel. In the meantime, I am looking for a sub that would fit nicely into this arrangement. A real perk of the NAD C seems to be the easy way it allows one to hook a sub up into the unit and neatly control the filtering directly from the NAD itself. So I'm excited to try this out. Right now I'm looking at something like the Rythmik 15" Compact High Output, shown on this page: Subwoofers. I haven't ever had a sub before so this will be a new experience for me, in terms of discovering how it adds to the sound and how it can mess up the sound in ways that one never thought possible, etc. I'll put in an order for the Rythmik 15" next week unless, in the meantime, research and feedback points me in a superior direction. I'm happy to report how it works out, as it seems a great sub/KEF LS50 could result in a great sounding system for all types of music, from classical, acoustic and electronic popular. I'm happy to report back on the results once I have a chance to figure/try things out.

I've been lurking on this site for several months, but this is my first post. I got a NAD C 390DD a few weeks ago and thought I'd share my results. First thing I noticed was how extremely transparent and detailed it was. But after listening for a couple of weeks, I became increasingly aware of a number of somewhat disturbing artifacts. On some tracks both my girlfriend and I could detect a subtle, rattling distortion that was hard to identify. Was it a part of the music, or were we hearing a physical defect rattling in the speaker (KEF LS50s)? Female singers could sound wincingly harsh when belting out a high note. And music tracks with a lot of layering of instruments seemed to lose focus, causing the sounds to start to mush together. Granted, these things were subtle and not a deal breaker, but significant enough to deter me from thinking that I had found my dream system in the NAD C 390DD. I read on this site and other places that a USB/SPDIF processor between the computer USB port and the NAD could improve the NAD. I, like many, was skeptical on this, feeling that NAD surely would have taken care of any USB flaws in the asychronous USB connection, at least in the audible range. Despite my skepticism, I ordered the Audiophilleo 2 with the pure power option, just to see for myself. While waiting for it to arrive, I went through my music library to find a number of tracks that I and my girl friend thought had troubling/unpleasant artifacts that I'd test the Audiophilleo on. After the unit arrived and I plugged it in, I called up the 1st track of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds new CD Push the Sky Away. In the first track there was a muffled kind of distortion that I couldn't tell if it was coming from the synthesized keyboard instrument or from something rattling in a damaged speaker. But with the Audiophilleo, an increased sonic clarity was brought to the track that made it obvious that the distortion was in fact an intentional processed artifact in the sonic material. The distortion was clearly an intentional part of the sound. Being able to hear sound files on this level of pinpoint clarity was an amazing experience for both my girlfriend and me. I then brought up the first track of Patty Griffin's new album American Kid. There, in the chorus, she really belts out a high note that without the audiophilleo became more shrill than musical. But with the audiophilleo the high note stayed sweet and musical, even though the volume had increased. I became so excited that I began going through all my files that might have something a little unpleasant about it, or where the elements in the music got so layered and dense that the sounds began to blend together and lose their individual space. To both my girlfriend's and my amazement, I couldn't find anything that sounded shrill. The audiophilleo just seemed to take all that digital nastiness away. And no matter how complex the music became, in terms of sound components, we could always pinpoint and clearly identify what was going on, whether it was a brush in the background on a snare drum or a violinist stroking out a couple of notes. My girlfriend, who is no audiophile but is a music lover, began waxing like a reviewer in full bloom, saying things like, "The music seems to be rising out of this deep black silence," and "the detail and character of the music is just amazing. It's like you can hear every single little part." Another benefit that I noticed is that the sonic quality of all musical instruments became subtly, but significantly, more realistic. For example, I have some albums of jazz pianist Bill Evans. I am a pianist myself so I know what the piano should sound like. On my NAD without the audiophilleo, the piano on those albums always sounded a little thin, tinny, and not quite real, which always kind of disappointed me. With the audiophilleo, the realism was delightfully enhanced. Male and female voices were similarly enhanced. I could really go on and on giving examples where the audiophilleo added subtle but oh so important improvements to my listening music. I am beginning to think that the weak link in my computer system ended up being the USB port itself, which was adding just enough jitter and distortion to get accentuated by the NAD C 390DD processing and transmitted by the highly detailed KEF LS50 speakers. Adding the USB/SPDIF processor removed that weak link and allowed the other components to enter into audio nirvana.