Hi Folks
I have a NAD c325BEE rated @50W per ch paired with Wharfedale Diamond 9.2s rated at 20 - 100 W with 86db sensitivity @ 6ohms. CDP is the Marantz CD6002. Cables are DAC 16 guage and CDP<>Amp interconnect is Profigold 4201 co-ax. :beer:
On the whole my setup sounds failry detailed, thanks a lot the excellent Marantz CD6002. The CD player is able to seperate all the instruments in a complex mix and the amp is able to power the signal with the touch of musicality that the NAD is famous for. :cheers:
One of my personal favorites is the album titled "Rare Pulse" by Prof Krishna Raghavendra (Label: Kosmic). It is a beautiful blend of Carnatic Indian instruments like the Veena, Flute, Tanpura, Kanjira,and Mridangam backed and supported subtly by Afro/Latin percussive instruments like Maracs, Handclap, Rio, Bodran, Hadgini, Caxixi, Djembe,Rio, Talking drums,Saturn drums, Zills. Shakers, and Crickets. On many of the tracks I can almost feel the air displaced as the palm of the hand comes down slapping the skin of the drums. The system is capable of reproducing an incredibly tactile feeling on hand driven percussive instruments. It is also capable of detailing the periodic sharp inward sucking-in of the flautist's breath during an extended solo or the faint smack of the lips at the end of the flautists melodic progression. The wail of a violin, quivering notes played tenderly, slight variations in the pressure applied to the bow, or in the location along the length of the strings can all be discerned with material recorded by accomplished sound engineers. Accordions sound bright and airy as they should - you can tell they are driven by the wind pumped into them and sometimes almost picture when the bellows are being pushed/compressed and when they are expanding. The sharp twang of acoustic guitar strings, the slap of strings against fretboard, the metallic and gritty or whining overtones produced by the occasional fret buzz or sliding fingers can all be enjoyed with this player.
hyeah:
The examples I am referring to above can all be heard in the CD release titled "Laksminarayana Global Music Festival - Oslo" ( 2CD set Label Sony/BMG). I also heard on this set, one of the most beautiful pieces ever in a track titled "J. Svensson" by the famous Norwegian violinist Arve Tellefsen on CD1. I promptly shortlisted it as deserving to be on the same CD alongside Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in my all time favorites list.
To sum up, the CD6002 delivers a full bodied sound unlike the thin and familiar ice cool sound we associate with digitized CD music.
As for the NAD c325bee amp, the sound is natural and warm without too much of that electronic or digital sound. Bass is adequate without dominating and delivered with kick and punch when needed and only when needed. I am not sure if it is this quality that prompts some people to call it a tad anemic.:indifferent14: After weeks of experimentation, the best setting I found for for tone controls was with treble just below 2 O'CLock and Bass just below 1. But of course each amp is going to have its own best setting. The amp sounded grainy the very first time I played it, but SQ improved after about 12 hours of play. True to some reviews you will read on the web, I feel it can sound cloudy at the lower end - but it is apparent only on certain material and that too when nit-picking for flaws and obsessing over SQ :argue:. The casual listener is unlikely to notice it. I feel that when listening to material like "Geat conductors of the 20th century" series by EMI which are symphonic recording made in the 1940s and 50s. Maybe it is the age and technology of the time. I do not feel the cloudiness in recent well recorded material.
Moving on to the Wharfedale Diamond 9.2s - Mid range sounds as warm and full bodied as digital music can. Listening to Kadri Gopalnath on the Sax, the timbre sounds just right and bright without being harsh and even reproduces the occasional squawk of the Sax in a sort of nice way. Playing Stan Getz and his seductively beautiful track "It never entered my mind" (Album: Ultimate San Getz, Label: Verve), the smokey and steamy quality of this rendition is very evocatively laid out, capturing all the transmuted passion that the artist breathes into the Sax.
As for the lows, this is where I decided in favor of the 9.2 versus the 9.1. During the audition, I was clearly impressed with the clarity of the mids and highs in the 9.1 over the 9.2 So did I abandon two good things to reap one single benefit of better lows? While the 9.1 stands out immediately, the 9.2 is not bad in the mids and highs either. The sound has not disappointed in the main area for which I selected the wharfedales - sweet non-fatiguing sound. As one Internet reviewer put it, "... these are speakers you can live with day in and out". If you ever have a requirement where the music will be on 10-12 hours a day, these are the speaker series to go for. Unless you want your ears to hurt and head to throb and feel like you hate that noise they call music.
Treble does not pierce your ears with any kind of harshness at all.
But is it capable of any great soundstage and imaging? 15 minutes into a listening session, the vocals usually get better and well centered. Percussive instruments are almost always centered. On the beautifully atmospheric album titled "Vikku - The Great Potter" (Label Kosmic) there is a piece where 6 or 7 performers sit in a row with ghatams tuned to different swaras. One can image each ghatam player as sitting next to the previous and the sound source appears to move laterally as they play their turn. As always there is a very tactile sense to the sound of ghatams and it is not restricted to goat-skin instruments that boom. One can make out when the ghatam is positioned differently against the belly and played and the slapping of palms to the surface of the clay pot feels real. :licklips: I recommend you folks pick up this album for late night listening :licklips:
Until now I have only been raving about the best points about my setup. But it is not without its shortcomings. :sad:
More precisely I am not able to obtain the concert hall sound with western classical music. Apart from a set of 6 CDs of great conductors series recorded in the 1940/50s, I also have a 24-bit remastered performances of Schubert by George Solti (Label DECCA Legends series) recorded 1991 I think, and one with Ravel's Bolero conducted by Adrian Leaper (Label BMG) both of which should be fairly representative of modern recording technology. The latter is a hypnotic and enchanting piece I would recommend everyone to listen.
When I first played a classical piece on my new setup, I was hoping that notes would soar in the air, and my system would soar along, letting me ride it like a magic carpet
. Well .. needless to say nothing happened the first time or anytime after that. I tried again and again, playing the CD over and over. No luck. The notes did not soar, the system did not fly through the air, nor did it take me anywhere. The system just sat there and the speakers belched out the symphony like one long continuous burp with a hiccup here and there. While I sat there glaring at it for having failed me so dissapointingly. It is more like a rabble of frogs :lol:. You know what I am referring to right? What they call vertical imaging ... its totally absent in my speakers. Maybe it is unrealistic to expect to recreate a large 1000 seater concert hall experience in a 10x10" acoustically non-treated room. That too with a budget setup. Either ways the system simply does not scale. The sound of a symphony does not rise above your head like a tsunami wave, crash and splash onto your floor before receding. That kind of imagery and dynamic range (headroom is it? :licklips
is absent. It can sound louder when the music is louder, and fainter when the music is faint, but without the "special effects" on your mind that qualify it to be a Hi-Fi.
Rock music though is fine. Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker sound deliciously acidic as ever with Cream - like my favorite cup of java beans. So does Lynnyrd Skynnrd's hard driving groove well the speakers. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane retains the sexy oomph in her voice that people simply love so much, and Eagles sound lovely as ever. Mark Knopfler and his strings on Dire Straits in another story ...
The other quality I noticed is that absence of that weighty and authoritative sound that some systems have, also alternatively described as lush sounding. You know that feeling even if you haven't heard one - the same emotions when you see well watered fields ready to be harvested and swaying in the breeze, or the lovely shrubs and forests in the western ghats on a trek during and after the rains ... The lack of it is apparent at times when listening to music like a symphony at low volumes with large dynamic swings in output. That quite authoritative sound delivered masterfully at low to moderate volumes with a sense of impeccable timing is absent :sad:.
You wont know it unless you've heard a setup that sounds like that and remember its sound. I am guessing maybe this is why the NAD has been termed as anemic by various people at times :argue:. Note that its not lack of bass I am referring to. The amps reputation and pride is in its natural and musical reproduction, not thumpy bass heavy humpy bumpy sound. Its not that the NAD 325 cannot generate volume while still retaining its musicality either - My normal listening levels are with the volume knob between 8 (sleeping) to 11 O'clock (awake). The SPLs get too much for comfort in my small 10x10" room beyond that, unless I grin and bear it for a while to desensitize and deafen myself a bit. Moreover the reflections from the walls become dominant at higher volumes.
I read somewhere that speakers need an amp rated at 1.5 to 2.5 times its continuous power rating. Going by that thumb rule, the Diamonds rated @100W should ideally paired with an amp of atleast 150W per channel to let it know whos the master and boss. Right now it doesn't sound like the speakers are being very obedient, or controlled and driven in the absolutely slavish fashion that they deserve, by the poor 50W per ch. NAD to get that authority effect. The obvious evidence of this is that the amp struggles to drive the speakers with the volume knob @3 O'clock. Its not the speaker distorting as much as the amp straining and the roll-offs. I'm thinking If I want authoritative delivery with my NAD at low volumes maybe I need to get a speaker rated below 50W? But which speaker is there with a 6.4" driver cone and a > 86db sensitivity @ 50W rating? None. I may be wrong about this theory though and would like to hear some comments from the old timers more knowledgeable on this matter :sos:. I am not clear about when a 50W amp delivers 50W? If I play at absolute minimum volume barely audible, is it delivering 1W or 50?
The last other shortcoming does not specifically does not have anything to do with my setup. It is the fault of the redbook format
. I grew up ( I was lucky) with a Garrard turntable with a Philips amp and lovely sounding DIY kit speakers, my dad built. I am unable to trace the model of either on the Internet. The T.T does not look like a 301/401 or 501. There isnt a single site that lists all models on a page, so I keep searching now and then.
In any case amongst all the lovely music on vinyl I had, I often remember clearly a number and an artist "Up where we belong", a duet featuring Joe Cocker with Jennifer Warnes. The way he sounded on the T.T with his sandpaper grated voice, was incredibly captivating- rich, throaty and alive with a here and now presence. Simply stupendous is an understatement to describe it:yahoo:! So much so that I have remembered the artist often in the intervening 22 years since I last heard that T.T, like he was fixated in my mind although I never got around to stepping into a store and purchasing his CD. Until last week that is.
So did I get nostalgic? Did he come alive once again a few feet away from me, to floor me with that incredible rendition? Sorry. My reaction was more like Joe Cocker who? Why did I even remember this guy's music for the last 22 years?:indifferent14:
I tell you the 16-bit 44.1 khz thing is the biggest marketing fraud pulled on consumers in the world, considering the scale of success CD sales have seen. It was chosen to allow 70 minutes of symphony to be stored in the new CD format, sacrificing true audio quality on the stealth, for sales and marketing benefits of the companies that sell them. Thanks to Philips and Sony for developing and providing the technology to exceed the 20min playing time of majority LPs of that period. No thanks to them for also tricking us all in the process:indifferent14:.
I am now going to audition 24/192 DACs and a tube pre-amp and if they don't satisfy might just end up getting a T.T:licklips:. The DAC+tube might just get me to where I want - rich and mellifluously warm with the sense of immediacy and presence to mimic the T.T ( I haven't forgotten the sound of that huge Bush valve radio in my grandma's room that would render Ameen Siani's voice with great effect). Since vinyl sources are so rare, not everything cut on CD is ever cut on vinyl also, and this seems to be the most sensible path to experiment as I still get the benefits of a much wider choice of material.
Shortcomings aside, the setup sounds very good for a budget and mid-fi. It is quite a natural nice sounding and detailed system :cheers: Perhaps it may also be this natural sounding quality that I and many others sometimes mistake for being inadequate. I am not convinced fully that it is anemic yet, but remembering other lush sounding setups I've heard, I keep vacillating on this suspicion. I would want to listen to my setup in a much larger room setting preferably acoustically treated before I confirm my own opinion on this. Once I change my existing place ...
Other than that it gives me much enjoyment :beer:. There is one album I play every now and then titled "Khanak - Visual music for classical dance" by Bageshree Vaze. Listening to it I can't help close my eyes and visualize a live Kathak performance right there in front of me. Thats the beauty of this modest setup. For its budget price, It can evoke feelings and stir my imagination
On the gyaan side, some of the deficiencies I attributed to budget equipment turned out be problems of resonance. Earlier I observed an vastly improved SQ with improved punch and attack after I placed the amp/cdp on spikes. For a couple of weeks after that, I still used my speakers without spikes. Needless to say SQ especially muddiness improved after I put the diamonds on spikes. Now my speakers are resting on stands which are two logs of Sal tree wood 2 feet tall, and 15" diameter, each weighing 78kgs. The surface was a little uneven as using a large chainsaw on a large tree trunk is not going to give you precision smoothness even after using a grinder (which I did). Hence I procured two 12mm polished copper colored glass rounds, 15" dia and attached each to 5 suckers nailed with 1" thin pins to the logs. Guess what? The SQ improved in low frequency clarity even further after this. For the skeptics who dismiss ideas like putting equipment on spikes - I listened to my amp for about 30 days on the floor before I moved the setup to my DIY audio rack. There was no mistaking the difference for a mind attuned to the original resonating "floor-standing" amp. What I experienced was a kind of revelation for me, something I would have simply read and dismissed normally. Do you recall the school science experiment where a vibrating but inaudible tuning fork is brought close over the mouth of a partially water filled test tube? The water ripples violently. And the fork is not even audible!! Same story with your loud amp and the sound waves hitting objects in the room. Remember - everything resonates ... including your nuts :lol:
And I thought these were "flaws" in my budget quality amp!!
Anyways me and my big mouth, sorry to drag this review endlessly. Hope it helps you decide on what to purchase, or if nothing, killed your boredom for a while. :signthankspin:
If you have answers or suggestions for my doubts, please do respond :sos:.
If you simply want to poke me in the ribs for this long punishing article, then do not hesitate either (Ouch!).
Regards
I have a NAD c325BEE rated @50W per ch paired with Wharfedale Diamond 9.2s rated at 20 - 100 W with 86db sensitivity @ 6ohms. CDP is the Marantz CD6002. Cables are DAC 16 guage and CDP<>Amp interconnect is Profigold 4201 co-ax. :beer:
On the whole my setup sounds failry detailed, thanks a lot the excellent Marantz CD6002. The CD player is able to seperate all the instruments in a complex mix and the amp is able to power the signal with the touch of musicality that the NAD is famous for. :cheers:
One of my personal favorites is the album titled "Rare Pulse" by Prof Krishna Raghavendra (Label: Kosmic). It is a beautiful blend of Carnatic Indian instruments like the Veena, Flute, Tanpura, Kanjira,and Mridangam backed and supported subtly by Afro/Latin percussive instruments like Maracs, Handclap, Rio, Bodran, Hadgini, Caxixi, Djembe,Rio, Talking drums,Saturn drums, Zills. Shakers, and Crickets. On many of the tracks I can almost feel the air displaced as the palm of the hand comes down slapping the skin of the drums. The system is capable of reproducing an incredibly tactile feeling on hand driven percussive instruments. It is also capable of detailing the periodic sharp inward sucking-in of the flautist's breath during an extended solo or the faint smack of the lips at the end of the flautists melodic progression. The wail of a violin, quivering notes played tenderly, slight variations in the pressure applied to the bow, or in the location along the length of the strings can all be discerned with material recorded by accomplished sound engineers. Accordions sound bright and airy as they should - you can tell they are driven by the wind pumped into them and sometimes almost picture when the bellows are being pushed/compressed and when they are expanding. The sharp twang of acoustic guitar strings, the slap of strings against fretboard, the metallic and gritty or whining overtones produced by the occasional fret buzz or sliding fingers can all be enjoyed with this player.
hyeah:The examples I am referring to above can all be heard in the CD release titled "Laksminarayana Global Music Festival - Oslo" ( 2CD set Label Sony/BMG). I also heard on this set, one of the most beautiful pieces ever in a track titled "J. Svensson" by the famous Norwegian violinist Arve Tellefsen on CD1. I promptly shortlisted it as deserving to be on the same CD alongside Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in my all time favorites list.
To sum up, the CD6002 delivers a full bodied sound unlike the thin and familiar ice cool sound we associate with digitized CD music.
As for the NAD c325bee amp, the sound is natural and warm without too much of that electronic or digital sound. Bass is adequate without dominating and delivered with kick and punch when needed and only when needed. I am not sure if it is this quality that prompts some people to call it a tad anemic.:indifferent14: After weeks of experimentation, the best setting I found for for tone controls was with treble just below 2 O'CLock and Bass just below 1. But of course each amp is going to have its own best setting. The amp sounded grainy the very first time I played it, but SQ improved after about 12 hours of play. True to some reviews you will read on the web, I feel it can sound cloudy at the lower end
- but it is apparent only on certain material and that too when nit-picking for flaws and obsessing over SQ :argue:. The casual listener is unlikely to notice it. I feel that when listening to material like "Geat conductors of the 20th century" series by EMI which are symphonic recording made in the 1940s and 50s. Maybe it is the age and technology of the time. I do not feel the cloudiness in recent well recorded material. Moving on to the Wharfedale Diamond 9.2s - Mid range sounds as warm and full bodied as digital music can. Listening to Kadri Gopalnath on the Sax, the timbre sounds just right and bright without being harsh and even reproduces the occasional squawk of the Sax in a sort of nice way. Playing Stan Getz and his seductively beautiful track "It never entered my mind" (Album: Ultimate San Getz, Label: Verve), the smokey and steamy quality of this rendition is very evocatively laid out, capturing all the transmuted passion that the artist breathes into the Sax.
As for the lows, this is where I decided in favor of the 9.2 versus the 9.1. During the audition, I was clearly impressed with the clarity of the mids and highs in the 9.1 over the 9.2 So did I abandon two good things to reap one single benefit of better lows? While the 9.1 stands out immediately, the 9.2 is not bad in the mids and highs either. The sound has not disappointed in the main area for which I selected the wharfedales - sweet non-fatiguing sound. As one Internet reviewer put it, "... these are speakers you can live with day in and out". If you ever have a requirement where the music will be on 10-12 hours a day, these are the speaker series to go for. Unless you want your ears to hurt and head to throb and feel like you hate that noise they call music.
Treble does not pierce your ears with any kind of harshness at all. But is it capable of any great soundstage and imaging? 15 minutes into a listening session, the vocals usually get better and well centered. Percussive instruments are almost always centered. On the beautifully atmospheric album titled "Vikku - The Great Potter" (Label Kosmic) there is a piece where 6 or 7 performers sit in a row with ghatams tuned to different swaras. One can image each ghatam player as sitting next to the previous and the sound source appears to move laterally as they play their turn. As always there is a very tactile sense to the sound of ghatams and it is not restricted to goat-skin instruments that boom. One can make out when the ghatam is positioned differently against the belly and played and the slapping of palms to the surface of the clay pot feels real. :licklips: I recommend you folks pick up this album for late night listening :licklips:
Until now I have only been raving about the best points about my setup. But it is not without its shortcomings. :sad:
More precisely I am not able to obtain the concert hall sound with western classical music. Apart from a set of 6 CDs of great conductors series recorded in the 1940/50s, I also have a 24-bit remastered performances of Schubert by George Solti (Label DECCA Legends series) recorded 1991 I think, and one with Ravel's Bolero conducted by Adrian Leaper (Label BMG) both of which should be fairly representative of modern recording technology. The latter is a hypnotic and enchanting piece I would recommend everyone to listen.
When I first played a classical piece on my new setup, I was hoping that notes would soar in the air, and my system would soar along, letting me ride it like a magic carpet
. Well .. needless to say nothing happened the first time or anytime after that. I tried again and again, playing the CD over and over. No luck. The notes did not soar, the system did not fly through the air, nor did it take me anywhere. The system just sat there and the speakers belched out the symphony like one long continuous burp with a hiccup here and there. While I sat there glaring at it for having failed me so dissapointingly. It is more like a rabble of frogs :lol:. You know what I am referring to right? What they call vertical imaging ... its totally absent in my speakers. Maybe it is unrealistic to expect to recreate a large 1000 seater concert hall experience in a 10x10" acoustically non-treated room. That too with a budget setup. Either ways the system simply does not scale. The sound of a symphony does not rise above your head like a tsunami wave, crash and splash onto your floor before receding. That kind of imagery and dynamic range (headroom is it? :licklips is absent. It can sound louder when the music is louder, and fainter when the music is faint, but without the "special effects" on your mind that qualify it to be a Hi-Fi. Rock music though is fine. Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker sound deliciously acidic as ever with Cream - like my favorite cup of java beans. So does Lynnyrd Skynnrd's hard driving groove well the speakers. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane retains the sexy oomph in her voice that people simply love so much, and Eagles sound lovely as ever. Mark Knopfler and his strings on Dire Straits in another story ...
The other quality I noticed is that absence of that weighty and authoritative sound that some systems have, also alternatively described as lush sounding. You know that feeling even if you haven't heard one - the same emotions when you see well watered fields ready to be harvested and swaying in the breeze, or the lovely shrubs and forests in the western ghats on a trek during and after the rains ... The lack of it is apparent at times when listening to music like a symphony at low volumes with large dynamic swings in output. That quite authoritative sound delivered masterfully at low to moderate volumes with a sense of impeccable timing is absent :sad:.
You wont know it unless you've heard a setup that sounds like that and remember its sound. I am guessing maybe this is why the NAD has been termed as anemic by various people at times :argue:. Note that its not lack of bass I am referring to. The amps reputation and pride is in its natural and musical reproduction, not thumpy bass heavy humpy bumpy sound. Its not that the NAD 325 cannot generate volume while still retaining its musicality either - My normal listening levels are with the volume knob between 8 (sleeping) to 11 O'clock (awake). The SPLs get too much for comfort in my small 10x10" room beyond that, unless I grin and bear it for a while to desensitize and deafen myself a bit. Moreover the reflections from the walls become dominant at higher volumes.
I read somewhere that speakers need an amp rated at 1.5 to 2.5 times its continuous power rating. Going by that thumb rule, the Diamonds rated @100W should ideally paired with an amp of atleast 150W per channel to let it know whos the master and boss. Right now it doesn't sound like the speakers are being very obedient, or controlled and driven in the absolutely slavish fashion that they deserve, by the poor 50W per ch. NAD to get that authority effect
. The obvious evidence of this is that the amp struggles to drive the speakers with the volume knob @3 O'clock. Its not the speaker distorting as much as the amp straining and the roll-offs. I'm thinking If I want authoritative delivery with my NAD at low volumes maybe I need to get a speaker rated below 50W? But which speaker is there with a 6.4" driver cone and a > 86db sensitivity @ 50W rating? None. I may be wrong about this theory though and would like to hear some comments from the old timers more knowledgeable on this matter :sos:. I am not clear about when a 50W amp delivers 50W? If I play at absolute minimum volume barely audible, is it delivering 1W or 50? The last other shortcoming does not specifically does not have anything to do with my setup. It is the fault of the redbook format
. I grew up ( I was lucky) with a Garrard turntable with a Philips amp and lovely sounding DIY kit speakers, my dad built. I am unable to trace the model of either on the Internet. The T.T does not look like a 301/401 or 501. There isnt a single site that lists all models on a page, so I keep searching now and then. In any case amongst all the lovely music on vinyl I had, I often remember clearly a number and an artist "Up where we belong", a duet featuring Joe Cocker with Jennifer Warnes. The way he sounded on the T.T with his sandpaper grated voice, was incredibly captivating- rich, throaty and alive with a here and now presence. Simply stupendous is an understatement to describe it:yahoo:! So much so that I have remembered the artist often in the intervening 22 years since I last heard that T.T, like he was fixated in my mind although I never got around to stepping into a store and purchasing his CD. Until last week that is.
So did I get nostalgic? Did he come alive once again a few feet away from me, to floor me with that incredible rendition? Sorry. My reaction was more like Joe Cocker who? Why did I even remember this guy's music for the last 22 years?:indifferent14:
I tell you the 16-bit 44.1 khz thing is the biggest marketing fraud pulled on consumers in the world, considering the scale of success CD sales have seen.
It was chosen to allow 70 minutes of symphony to be stored in the new CD format, sacrificing true audio quality on the stealth, for sales and marketing benefits of the companies that sell them. Thanks to Philips and Sony for developing and providing the technology to exceed the 20min playing time of majority LPs of that period. No thanks to them for also tricking us all in the process:indifferent14:. I am now going to audition 24/192 DACs and a tube pre-amp and if they don't satisfy might just end up getting a T.T:licklips:. The DAC+tube might just get me to where I want - rich and mellifluously warm with the sense of immediacy and presence to mimic the T.T ( I haven't forgotten the sound of that huge Bush valve radio in my grandma's room that would render Ameen Siani's voice with great effect). Since vinyl sources are so rare, not everything cut on CD is ever cut on vinyl also, and this seems to be the most sensible path to experiment as I still get the benefits of a much wider choice of material.
Shortcomings aside, the setup sounds very good for a budget and mid-fi. It is quite a natural nice sounding and detailed system :cheers: Perhaps it may also be this natural sounding quality that I and many others sometimes mistake for being inadequate. I am not convinced fully that it is anemic yet, but remembering other lush sounding setups I've heard, I keep vacillating on this suspicion
. I would want to listen to my setup in a much larger room setting preferably acoustically treated before I confirm my own opinion on this. Once I change my existing place ...Other than that it gives me much enjoyment :beer:. There is one album I play every now and then titled "Khanak - Visual music for classical dance" by Bageshree Vaze. Listening to it I can't help close my eyes and visualize a live Kathak performance right there in front of me. Thats the beauty of this modest setup. For its budget price, It can evoke feelings and stir my imagination
On the gyaan side, some of the deficiencies I attributed to budget equipment turned out be problems of resonance. Earlier I observed an vastly improved SQ with improved punch and attack after I placed the amp/cdp on spikes. For a couple of weeks after that, I still used my speakers without spikes. Needless to say SQ especially muddiness improved after I put the diamonds on spikes. Now my speakers are resting on stands which are two logs of Sal tree wood 2 feet tall, and 15" diameter, each weighing 78kgs. The surface was a little uneven as using a large chainsaw on a large tree trunk is not going to give you precision smoothness even after using a grinder (which I did). Hence I procured two 12mm polished copper colored glass rounds, 15" dia and attached each to 5 suckers nailed with 1" thin pins to the logs. Guess what? The SQ improved in low frequency clarity even further after this. For the skeptics who dismiss ideas like putting equipment on spikes - I listened to my amp for about 30 days on the floor before I moved the setup to my DIY audio rack. There was no mistaking the difference for a mind attuned to the original resonating "floor-standing" amp. What I experienced was a kind of revelation for me, something I would have simply read and dismissed normally. Do you recall the school science experiment where a vibrating but inaudible tuning fork is brought close over the mouth of a partially water filled test tube? The water ripples violently. And the fork is not even audible!! Same story with your loud amp and the sound waves hitting objects in the room. Remember - everything resonates
... including your nuts :lol: And I thought these were "flaws" in my budget quality amp!!
Anyways me and my big mouth, sorry to drag this review endlessly. Hope it helps you decide on what to purchase, or if nothing, killed your boredom for a while. :signthankspin:
If you have answers or suggestions for my doubts, please do respond :sos:.
If you simply want to poke me in the ribs for this long punishing article, then do not hesitate either (Ouch!).
Regards
Last edited:
