Decided to visit Dick a couple of week's ago. Just hadn't written it up yet.

Here's a pic of Dick's system, a good percentage of which is DIY.



The speakers are all SEAS drive units, shoved into an extremely rigid and probably quite heavy set of cabs. As I understand it, the bass enclosure is completely separated from the mid/treble unit, and the cabs feel very insert on tap tests.

As a result, you get what you expect, or at least I suspected you would, from such a design. It sounds clean, clear, and very coherent, especially for a box speaker. There's arguably some hardness which Dick complains about, but I think is at acceptable levels.

Which leads me onto a point. I can sit there with my guitar plugged into my guitar amp and make it sound very hard indeed, just by messing with tone controls. If a system cannot reproduce hardness, it is surely wrong in some sense. In order to be accurate, it surely MUST be able to reproduce hardness.

There are plenty of very pleasant to listen to systems around that don't appear to be able to really do that. No one really likes prolonged exposure to a hard sound, and I'm sure that's why some people love such systems. My point is that such systems aren't quite right.

Sure, it can sound a little hard, and we were using the Nine Inch Nails track Sanctified from Pretty Hate Machine on both vinyl and via my Lampizator Level 7 DAC to make judgements on it. But to be honest, this track is mixed with a cutting lightweight lead guitar for a reason, I think. To express the hellish feeling the guy in question, be it Trent or whoever, is going through whilst being totally obsessed with some woman. If you don't know this track check it out, and the one after. Prime examples of lyrically excellent expressions of female obsession.

Of course if you actually are currently obsessed with some female, don't listen to it. It definitely will NOT help

Anyway, back to the system...