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Always.Learning

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  1. Excellent review of this most interesting recording session, Rajiv. Like several others who have commented, I'm struck by the super high fidelity experience you describe with the listening mix and the Sennheisers. And, assuming that the final product does not equate to this earlier experience, I'm wondering where in the recording chain some fidelity is lost. I guess the short answer is a) you need to listen to the final product; and b) you may not ever know the answer to this question. A couple other questions/observations: 1) Do you have plans to try to attend and describe other recording sessions? It would be really interesting for you, and for us, to see how different record companies and producers and engineers approach these sessions. 2) Given that so many orchestral recordings, especially of full orchestras, are now accomplished by recording two or three live performances, and then stitching these together into a single recording, I'm wondering how the recording process differs in this situation. I would also be especially interested in hearing the producer's opinion on the musical advantages and disadvantages of recording live performances vs. studio recordings. One of the revelations of your article was just how intimately involved the producer is with purely musical decisions during the recording process.
  2. @jhwalker: How would you describe the sound at Meyerson? I've never been there.
  3. They did a very good job and I've read that they were tweaking the hall after the orchestra began to play in it late last summer. Safe to say that part of the process in designing a hall these days is ensuring that it can be physically tweaked to some degree after the initial design is tested in the real world, and part of the process is for the resident orchestra(s) to listen carefully and adjust their sound to that of the hall. I've read more than once that Geffen has allowed the musicians to hear each other in ways they were never able to before.
  4. New York Philharmonic - Geffen Hall -- May 19, 2023 -- Gustavo Dudamel conducts Mahler 9 Two weeks after catching the BSO at Symphony Hall in Boston, we caught one of the hottest tickets in New York. In February, the NY Phil announced it was hiring the 42 year old Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel away from the LA Phil beginning in 2026 (classical music has ridiculously long planning cycles). This was Dudamel’s first engagement with the NY Phil since that announcement. Geffen Hall was sold out and the excitement was palpable. Mahler 9 happens to be my favorite Mahler symphony. The first movement encompasses the world with huge climaxes and beautiful chamber music interludes; the second and third movements dance and must be played with passion, bite, and flair; and the fourth movement starts with massed strings in holy communion, builds to overwhelming climaxes, and ends with a poignant, sighing, expiring farewell. Mahler died without hearing it performed. We sat behind the orchestra, six rows up, facing the conductor. In terms of height, we were on the same level as the third or fourth row of seats in the first balcony on the opposite side of the hall. We heard the NY Phil at Geffen last October and at the time I noted the huge improvement over the old Avery Fisher Hall. The sound at Geffen is extremely clear, relatively bright, conducive to soft passages, and balanced. Bass is satisfyingly clear but does not thrum like Carnegie or the Concertgebouw. Since that October concert in a brand new hall, it seems the NY Phil has adjusted to the new acoustics — there were times in Bruckner 7 (conducted by Jaap van Zweden in October) that the trombones sounded so loud as to be assaultive. In this concert, the brass blended better with the orchestra and dynamic contrasts were better controlled. One more audiophile observation from our seats behind the orchestra. Unlike the vast majority of orchestral concerts where I sit at a greater distance from the stage, the “imaging” did not dissolve into a cloud above the orchestra. Even at the Concertegebouw, where we sat behind the orchestra and even closer than in New York, the imaging was not pinpoint. At Geffen Hall, in our seats, you could close your eyes and locate solo wind players with precision and ease. The strings sounded a little more distant, and the horns, with their bells facing and just below us, were almost bigger than life. The low brass section, which was to our far left, sounded pretty far left. None of this really detracted from the music. This concert was a peak experience for me. Dudamel gave a well-crafted interpretation that was cohesive from start to finish, injecting magesty, humor, tenderness and beauty in all the right places. Other conductors might opt for more grotesquerie, coarseness, or pain (all of which are fair game), but this was still hugely emotionally compelling music making. Geffen Hall’s transparency revealed subtleties that I have never heard in a recording. We were exceedingly lucky in one regard: the NY Phil somehow persuaded Stefan Dohr, long-time principal horn of the Berlin Phil, to serve as guest principal horn for this set of concerts (NY has been without a principal horn for years). WIthout an assistant principal horn to lighten the burden in this extremely demanding symphony, Dohr’s playing was a combination of power and poetry: gigantic sound and tone (when appropriate), extreme confidence and delicacy in exposed solos, and incredible dynamic range. Dohr’s performance did not go unnoticed. After the final notes faded into profound silence, and the hall remained dead quiet while Dudamel held his baton steady; the audience began a seven-minute standing ovation, with the loudest bravos and shouts reserved for Dudamel. Not surprisingly, when Dudamel had each principal from the wind sections take bows, Dohr elicited the loudest bravos and shouts. As an old frustrated horn player, I was in heaven. How did the sound compare to Symphony Hall in Boston? Boston had the edge in air (that amazing reverberation!) and timbral purity. Both were super transparent. Geffen had a big advantage in terms of immediacy, but I chalk that up to the very different seats we had in the two halls. In terms of emotional engagement, Shostakovich 13 (performed in Boston) simply cannot compare to Mahler 9. The latter is one of the greatest symphonies ever composed. I love Shostakovich but a well-performed Mahler 9 is almost incomparable. In terms of peak experiences, I rank this concert up there with my all-time best orchestral performances: Bernstein conducting the NY Phil in Mahler 2 in 1989 (Avery Fisher); MTT conducting the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven’s Eroica (Benaroya Hall, 2019); Valery Gergiev conducting his Mariinsky band in an all-Russian program at Benaroya circa 2010; Mariss Jansons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony at the Concertgebouw in Dvorak’s New World and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony in 2019; and Gerard Schwarz conducting the Seattle Symphony in Mahler 5 about 20 years ago at Benaroya. Here is a photo from our seats at Geffen Hall:
  5. Surprisingly, there does not seem to be an active concert reviews thread here on AS. I did find a thread that went nowhere in about 2017. I go to a lot of classical and jazz concerts and would love to read about performances -- of any music -- that others have heard live. I've been writing informal reviews for audiophile friends (and some other friends) for years. To kick off this thread, I thought I would share a review of a Boston Symphony performance I heard three weeks ago. Once that posts, I'll share a review of the New York Philharmonic's recent performance of Mahler 9 with Gustavo Dudamel at Geffen Hall. Boston Symphony -- Symphony Hall -- May 6, 2023 -- Andris Nelsons conducts Shostakovich 13 and Britten's Violin Concerto (Augustin Hadelich, violin) This was my first visit to Symphony Hall. I’ve been to the good and great halls in Seattle, LA, SF, Chicago, NY, Cleveland, London, and Amsterdam, but somehow missed the concert hall widely considered the best in the Americas (and among the top three in the world). Before the concert, we took a tour of the hall with a volunteer tour guide. Unlike tours of other halls we’ve been on (e.g., Disney Hall and the now defunct Avery Fisher Hall), this one really focused on the hall’s acoustics. The man most responsible for Symphony Hall’s pristine acoustics was Wallace Clement Sabine, a physics professor at Harvard in the late 19th century (the Hall opened in 1900). Sabine taught himself the fundamentals of concert (and lecture) hall acoustics, focusing particularly on reverberation time. The unit of sound absorption, the Sabin, was named in his honor. The tour guide told us that Sabine was paid nothing for his pioneering work on Symphony Hall. So what did Symphony Hall sound like? We were in the balcony, more or less center: I would describe the sound as exceptionally pure and transparent, with beautiful instrumental timbre, especially strings. Lots of air — the excellent reverberation is immediately apparent. Brass has a brilliance that is thrilling. The overall sound is lighter and brighter than, say, Carnegie Hall or Orchestra Hall in Chicago. Bass is clear but you don’t get the thrum of Carnegie or the Concertgebouw. The one issue I had was that, from my relatively distant vantage point, I felt the sound could have been more immediate and present. Next time we’ll sit closer. Based on this one concert, I would say I still prefer the sound at the Concertgebouw, which has greater bass presence and probably immediacy while remaining pure and transparent. Not sure I’ve heard a better hall in the U.S., though. Now, the program. For me, the meat and potatoes was Shostakovich 13. After eight years, four Grammys, and one pandemic, Andris Nelsons has now completed his traversal of all fifteen of Shostakovich’s symphonies. And a brilliant traversal it has been. I’m fairly certain the concert we attended was being recorded for another DG release. The “Babi Yar” symphony is a massive, choral symphony with an all-male chorus and a bass/baritone soloist in all five movements. It is a searing memorial to the worst single massacre of WW2: the Nazi murders of some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941. Another 100,000 or so victims were later dumped into the ravine outside Kiev during the German occupation. Needless to say, the subject matter is dark and highly emotional. World class German baritone Matthias Goerne sang the solo part with power and conviction, though at times even his powerful voice was overwhelmed by the huge orchestra. The orchestral playing was generally brilliant and I preferred Nelsons’ interpretation to the recordings I had been listening to the most before the concert (Muti/Chicago and Nezet-Seguin/Berlin). Overall, a great experience.
  6. I'd like to chime in on PGGB-256. Prior to PGGB-256 I had hundreds of albums that I had "blasted" (processed or remastered) at 64, 128, and 192 bits. With the advent of PGGB-256, I have re-blasted many of those albums at 256 and have also listened to many new albums blasted at 256. As part of the group that helped perform listening tests with the new software, I also experienced various technical advances during the process of refining PGGB-256. The jump in sonic quality from earlier versions of PGGB to the 256 versions is very real. Generally, what I hear is greater precision, truer timbre, and simply more lifelike reproduction. Transparency was already high with earlier versions. Comparing native files to the same files processed with 256, the leap in transparency is astonishing -- the kind of change that hits you in the face. It is also worth pointing out that 256 is working magic on SACDs and DSD that has been ripped or downloaded. I always considered my Chord DAVE to be a PCM champion and so tended not to listen to much DSD. That has changed. Listening to SACD rips of Kind of Blue, Abraxas, and Ella and Louis has been one of the great surprises and pleasures of 256. For $1000, the PGGB license is gigantic bang for the buck. The license is very reasonably priced in light of the ability to improve virtually every digital source file, but there are two factors that I know have kept some people on the sidelines: 1) the cost of hardware needed to run PGGB; and 2) the time required to run the program. The good news is that these barriers to entry have become much easier to surmount with 256. You no longer need a server class computer to run PGGB. A wide variety of much less expensive consumer class machines will work. See remastero.com for more details on hardware requirements. Further, processing time is much, much faster now. You can easily process 10-15 albums in a single day -- way more than you'll be able to listen to in the same time frame. I have zero financial interest in PGGB -- I'm just thankful I have access to this amazing tool.
  7. @muski: I am almost certain that one needs to buy a Sean Jacobs power supply before or with the caps board. One reason is that it cannot be installed in the DAVE without first removing DAVE's original SMPS power supply. Another is that Sean Jacobs, and his U.S. helper, @Nenon, are doing this mainly as a service to existing DC4 ARC6 owners. I will say again, however, that the ARC6 is just incredible.
  8. Yes, I read your review and it sounded like the top end of the two DACs was a critical factor in your preference for DAVE. I would agree that the caps board's reduction of digital glare in the top end is critical but I also find that the caps board fleshes out a little more detail across the frequency spectrum and this is very welcome in the mid to upper bass range.
  9. Feel free to forward on my mini-review to Sean, @Fourlegs. And thank you for participating in the listening tests -- you landed on some really sweet sounding caps. I am also very happy listening to my DAVE these days, thanks in large part to the efforts of Sean Jacobs and folks like you.
  10. This thread isn't nearly as active as it used to be but it still seems like the appropriate place to post impressions for a mod to the Chord DAVE's power supply. If you scroll up this page, you will see my impressions of what happens when you replace DAVE's stock power supply with, first, the Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply, and later, the Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply. In short, the ARC6 is one of the most transformative changes I have made to my system in nearly twenty years of system building. The subject of this post is another mod from Sean Jacobs. Sean makes a small capacitor board that fits very neatly into the space formerly occupied by DAVE’s switch mode power supply. The idea is to lower impedance even further than the ARC6. The cost of the board is $500 and @Nenon helps put these together for Sean in the U.S. and sells them in the U.S. It requires some minor surgery on your DAVE but no soldering or other special skills. To cut to the chase, I am very pleased with what I’ve been hearing. It’s only been three days but the changes were easily heard within the first hour. I don’t think there is much of a break-in period with these. Describing those changes is a bit of a challenge – on the one hand they are subtle and on the other hand they are musically important. One word that comes to mind is ineffable, which sort of means indescribable. Nevertheless, here are some other adjectives that come to mind: inviting, relaxing, beautiful, beguiling. There is a slightly lusher sound but no real softening of transients. The caps board achieves this without doing any harm to the DAVE – ARC6 signature qualities: transparency and resolution, time domain precision, recovery of ambient information, transient response, microdynamics, image depth and imaging/soundstaging in general, speed, and purity and accuracy of timbre. Indeed, the caps board takes one of these qualities – transparency – and manages to recover even more significantly musical detail than before. Normally, a change in one’s system does not achieve both a more relaxed sound and increased detail. That is definitely what is happening here, however. I can see more deeply into recordings, particularly of dense music. Greater detail emerges across the frequency spectrum, and is especially welcome when disentangling music with substantial bass. The other change that is worth highlighting, I think, is a decrease in digital glare, especially when dynamics peak. When I first started using the Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 to power DAVE, I was floored by the new muscularity and vibrancy that it brought to the table. On certain recordings, however, I felt there was an excess of treble energy. Granted, some of these recordings were problematic to begin with. Over time, as the ARC6 settled in and burned in, the excess treble energy lessened but was still there on a relatively small number of recordings. A further improvement occurred when I replaced a Shunyata Alpha NR v2 power cord with a Sablon Prince. The caps board goes further, reducing glare, hardness, excess treble energy, whatever you want to call it. This is evident on recordings as diverse as Cecile McLorin Salvant’s “The Window” (female jazz soprano), Lou Reed’s “Rock ’n Roll Animal” (explosive electric guitar), and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on period instruments. My conclusion: if you own an ARC6 DC4 or are thinking about getting one to power DAVE, spend the extra $500 for the caps board. It complements the ARC6 without taking anything away from the DAVE – ARC6 combo. Truly an outstanding value.
  11. My first post in this thread. I already sent the following in an email to friends and it was easy enough to copy and paste here so why not: We are spending five days in NYC visiting our son, who is in grad school here, and partaking of the city. It’s an extended Indian summer here with temps ranging from the mid-60s to mid-70s. Spent yesterday morning at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Great time of year to go: not too busy and gorgeous fall colors. We eventually made our way to Manhattan yesterday, where our first stop was Julliard, the famed music/dance/drama school. Every year the school has a piano concerto competition that any piano student can enter. Three finalists each played the full Brahms first concerto with partner pianists playing an “orchestral reduction” (i.e., the orchestra part of the concerto transcribed for piano). The finals were open to the public (free) and took place in Paul Recital hall, a 275 seat space that is optimized for recitals and chamber music. The sound was excellent. All three finalists were Asian or of Asian descent. We watched the first finalist and were completely gobsmacked at this young woman’s poise, technique, musicality, and presence. We grabbed dinner afterwards and couldn’t stop talking about how insanely great she was. It turns out that she won the competition and will perform with the Julliard orchestra in about a month. Next stop: Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for a NY Phil performance. From the perspective of welcoming ticket holders (or just the general public) and inviting you into a relaxing atmosphere where it is just fun to hang out on comfortable furniture, grab some food or a glass of wine, and socialize before the concert, Geffen’s makeover is a total success. The first half of the concert featured Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 with Yefim Bronfman and Jaap van Zweden leading the orchestra. The performance was pretty straightforward, beautiful in a surface kind of way but, to my mind, not plumbing too many depths. After the orchestra tuned up before the first note, I turned to my wife and said it sounds better already (than the old Avery Fisher Hall). And indeed it does. With this Mozart, what really stood out was the overall clarity of the sound, especially the winds. The sound is warm, natural, clear, and balanced. The whole experience is way more intimate, psychologically and musically, than the old cavernous hall where great distances seemed to separate you from the stage (like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, as Bernstein once said). The second half of the program featured Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. This is a big Romantic symphony that will test any orchestra and conductor. I’m still acquiring a taste for Bruckner but this concert went a long way towards convincing me that he wrote some masterpieces. Before departing for NYC, I listened to four or five different performances of this work, and that definitely helped (I particularly liked Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden). But a live performance of something with this scale is just a completely different experience. Van Zweden was in full command of this virtuoso orchestra and they gave a dynamic, powerful, passionate account of the music. The sound was very good. If I had any complaints, I would ask for a little more resonance and air when the whole orchestra is performing, and I would like the strings, especially cellos and violas, to be more audible when they are called on to sing over the rest of the orchestra. The hall really captures wind sound beautifully, especially in the softest passages, where the clarity and timbre of the instruments was breathtaking. And when the orchestra was in full cry, the sound could be almost unbelievably loud, and thrillingly so. As a former horn player, I thrilled to the sound of the full brass section, augmented in this symphony by four Wagner tubas. The low brass (trombones and tuba) just kicked butt in this concert. Our seats were in the second balcony, on the side, about midway back. Next May we will hear Dudamel conduct the NY Phil in Mahler 9 in this same hall and we will sit behind the orchestra, practically within reading distance of the percussionists’ music. Looking forward to that. Tonight, for something completely different, we will see Rhiannon Giddens and some of her banjo-playing friends at Carnegie Hall.
  12. View Classified Sean Jacobs DC3 Power Supply for Chord DAVE Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply used to power Chord DAVE. This is a three-rail power supply as required by the DAVE. The DC3 has been discontinued by Sean Jacobs but appears to be built like a tank and does not pop up often on the used market. It has performed flawlessly for me. Standard black DC3 chassis measures 9.25" wide x 11.75" deep x 3.25" high. There are subtle paint blemishes on the chassis but no dings or scratches. The umbilical that connects the supply to your DAVE is .5 meter (about 20"). The supply incorporates Mundorf caps, a Furutech NCF IEC inlet, and SR Orange fuse. Compared to DAVE's stock SMPS power supply, the DC3 elevates the DAVE to a completely different level. The degree of improvement with respect to noise floor, dynamics, and tonal richness is significant. I have upgraded to the Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 ($10,000), which is at another level, but the bang for the buck provided by the DC3 is special. If you have an unmodified DAVE, you will need to remove the DAVE's SMPS power supply and connect the umbilical from the DC3 to the DAVE. This is a straightforward procedure even for someone who is "all thumbs" like me. The procedure will void your warranty but is completely reversible. Unit will be double-boxed. Continental shipping, insurance, and PayPal fees including in asking price. Seller Always.Learning Date 07/25/22 Price 2,300.00 USD Category Power Supplies / Power Products  
  13. For two weeks now, I have been listening to a Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply hooked up to my Chord DAVE. It replaced a Sean Jacobs DC3, so I had already modified my DAVE to remove the stock SMPS. I bought the ARC6 used; a new one with the proper connections to a DAVE will cost you $10,000 USD. Admittedly, that is a lot of money for a power supply, especially one that powers a DAVE, which can be bought on the used market for somewhere around $8000 USD if current listings are to be believed. Nevertheless, if you own a Chord DAVE and if you have the funds, I am hard pressed to think of another change for the same money that will improve your sound this much. I’ll try to be succinct. The first words to enter my mind, approximately ten seconds into my first listen, were space and bass. That was followed quickly by vibrant. Then “resolution monster.” You don’t strain to hear these changes. They practically hit you in the face. Maybe it’s a cliché, but the ARC6 makes every single track sound new and better. Every single one. I’ll just quickly summarize my listening notes: deep black silence, easily heard improvements to bass in both quality and quantity (actually measurable), vivid colors, tonal density and richness, serious magnification including a lot of newly intelligible vocals, beautiful and true timbres, and powerful, controlled micro- and macro-dynamic swings. Here is a brief overview of my system: 10 AWG dedicated lines > Shunyata Everest > Shunyata Sigma v2, Alpha v2, and Sablon Prince power cords > Taiko Extreme > PGGB files played by TAS and Roon; Qobuz and Tidal streaming > Shunyata Omega USB > SRC-DX > HFC 3D CT-2 SPDIF > Chord DAVE (Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply) > Crayon CFA 1.2 integrated amp > Devore Gibbon X speakers > cables from WyWires and HFC > HiFiMan HE1000 > vibration control from Stillpoints, Soundecks, and EVPs > Finite Elemente rack > acoustic treatment from Stillpoints Apertures, DAAD Acustica Applicata, A/V RoomService 123 Now I have not heard other replacement power supplies for the DAVE, so I can’t compare solutions from Farad or others. What I can do is give you a sense of the magnitude of the change I am hearing with other changes to my system. I certainly can’t think of any other power supply that has made anywhere near this impact, including the Farad Super3, Uptone LPS 1 and 1.2, and Uptone JS-2. None of these powered my Chord DAVE, but none had nearly the impact on the devices they did power. Paul Hynes made me a one-off custom power supply for my phono stage, but its impact is also dwarfed by the ARC6. Probably the closest is the Sean Jacobs DC3, but going from DC3 to ARC6 (I skipped the plain vanilla DC4) is quite clearly a larger leap than DAVE solo to DAVE plus DC3 (not that the DC3 is chopped liver – it is a huge and worthy upgrade for a fraction of the price, if you can find one). In terms of overall system upgrades, perhaps the closest and most apt comparison is to the Taiko Extreme, which, not coincidentally, employs a heroic power supply. The Extreme and the ARC6 bring some of the same things to the table: increased tonal density and vibrancy, dynamics, bass quality and quantity. The overall magnitude of change in my system has been roughly similar. The Shunyata Everest, combined with a nice selection of Shunyata Sigma and Alpha power cords, was another great upgrade that transformed my system and did so across both digital and analog. But the sonic impact was not as great. If I were advising someone on what to buy and when to buy it, I would prioritize an ARC6-DAVE combo over an Extreme or similarly priced server. This is especially the case if you already have a DAVE, but even if you don’t, a used DAVE plus ARC6 is going to cost you maybe 65% of what an Extreme will cost you (and that’s with a Euro that has declined a lot relative to the US dollar in recent months). All of this assumes that you already are using something better than an off-the-shelf computer as a music server. Apart from the Extreme, I can’t think of any other change to my system that has been this dramatic, save for speakers. But I put speakers into a separate category, one that is highly personal. Actually, if you own a Chord DAVE, I can think of one change that will give you greater bang for your buck: PGGB (see remastero.com and various threads on this website for more info). For a comparatively minimal investment, and assuming you can dedicate an appropriately powerful computer to remaster albums in your library, PGGB provides an incredible sonic lift. The combination of an ARC6-DAVE and music that has been PGGB’d is sublime. I have a nice vinyl setup (TW Acustic Raven, Raven tonearm, Miyajima cart, and Crayon phono stage) and PGGB albums sound better than all but a vanishingly small percentage of the same music on vinyl (and that was true before the ARC6 upgrade; the chasm has only grown since then).
  14. This thread has been inactive for some time now but I thought I would add my thoughts about the SRC-DX. I've been listening for about a week now with the SRC-DX in the system. Also in the system is a pair of the Audiowise DC Block connectors. The SRC-DX is connected to a Shunyata Omega USB cable that connects to a Taiko Extreme server. On the downstream side, the SRC-DX feeds a pair of High Fidelity Cables CT-2 3D cables with RCA terminations. I use cheap BNC adapters to connect to the DC Block connectors, which are connected to dual BNC inputs on my Chord DAVE. Here is the entire digital system in summary form: 10 awg>Shunyata Everest power conditioner>Taiko Extreme server>Shunyata Omega USB>SRC-DX>HFC CT-2 3D cables>Chord DAVE (powered by Sean Jacobs DC3)>HFC CT-2 interconnects>Crayon CFA 1.2 amp>Wywires/Daedalus speaker cables>Devore Gibbon X speakers Ethernet cables: Sablon/SOtM Signal cables: Wywires/HFC Power cables: Shunyata/Sablon Vibration: Stillpoints/EVPs/Soundecks; Room: Apertures/DAAD/AVRoomservice I am also a big, big fan of PGGB upsampling. Getting the SRC-DX to accept a 705/768 data stream was a bit rocky in the beginning because of driver issues. I enlisted the help of a friend who is much more familiar with the Windows environment of the Taiko Extreme and he was able to clean things up and get my music player software (Taiko Audio Software) to recognize the SRC-DX. Since then, the SRC-DX has been problem-free. I would also mention that it took 24-36 hours for the magnetism of the HFC cables to take effect. Before then, the music sounded lifeless, which has been my experience whenever I have inserted these magnetic wonders into my system. So how does the SRC-DX (and DC Block) change the presentation of the system? I would say the changes fall into three categories: 1) Speed: The very first thing I noticed was that everything sounded "faster." There is more speed, verve, and life to the music. A word that kept coming to mind is "effervescent." Music that swings had more swing. Music that emphasizes pace, rhythm, and timing exhibited more of those good things. You don't notice this on all music, of course, but I heard no deleterious effects on slower, less rhythmically inclined music. After a relatively short amount of time, I found that my ears adjusted to this newfound speed. I haven't removed the SRC-DX to see if music would sound slower or more bloated, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. 2) Better transients: Whenever an instrument is struck, plucked, strummed, touched, bowed, rubbed, brushed, shaken, or thwacked, there is more information conveyed in that transient. You hear the quality of the touch. The performer's intent comes through more clearly and you can hear more texture (if that is present) and/or more information about the materials involved in the transient. This is really noticeable with percussion instruments (and I include piano in this category). The SRC-DX makes a really nice difference if you enjoy listening to jazz drummers, for example. Attacks are rendered with more precision and with real punch if that's on the recording. 3) Less noise: I say "less noise" because I don't have any other explanation for being able to hear a little deeper into my music. This isn't a night and day thing, but I am noticing lower level details that escaped my attention before. Timbre and tone might just be a little more accurate as well. It's possible that the presentation is more quiet because DAVE's USB input is bypassed and whatever noise that was contributing is eliminated. Or it might be that the Audiowise DC Block is helping prevent low level noise from entering DAVE. So how big are these changes? I would say that, in a moderately resolving system, you should be able to hear the changes. I would further characterize them as musically significant but not transformative. Other changes I've made in the last year have had a much greater impact: replacing my power conditioner with a Shunyata Everest and Shunyata's latest generation of power cords; powering my DAVE with a Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply; and, especially, using PGGB to upsample my favorite music. With the exception of PGGB, these and other changes I've made over the years tend to be more expensive than the SRC-DX plus DC Block. In a highly resolving system, the combination of PGGB files, and SRC-DX feeding Chord DAVE is really a feast for those who love high quality, fast transients. Of course you have to add the cost of cables from the SRC-DX to your DAC. I was able to take advantage of a sale on HFC cables and get them for 60% off. From what I've read, however, even relatively inexpensive digital cables will reveal the positive attributes brought by the SRC-DX. One other note: most folks who are using the HFC cables are apparently using them with RCA terminations and then buying RCA-to-BNC adapters to connect them to their DAC and to the SRC-DX. This is because the magnetic effect/benefits of the HFC cables is said to be greater with the RCA terminations. I'm curious to know if my sonic impressions align with that of other folks who have used the SRC-DX in their systems, especially those folks who are using Chord DACs.
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