Spectral Morn
01-04-2010, 12:02
During my visit to the London Hi-Fi show last weekend, I was able to meet up with John the Music Room moderator. Firstly it was really nice to meet him and be able to put a face to a fellow member of the management team but the second reason for meeting, was that he had offered to let me hear his system.
Now I am pretty sure he was nervous about this. Lets face it its not often you meet a Dalek ;) and knowing, before hand the potential difficulty I might have getting to hear his system, he may have feared being exterminated.
After our initial meeting at the show and having a bit of a chat and allowing him time to look round the show (Daleks can be generous) we arranged to meet later at Dave Cawley's stand, before he took me to his house. During this time I also meet Barry D Hunt (very nice guy a real gentleman), another member of our community and fearsome vampire slayer; who has battled the Technics valve forces of Count Marco, his coffin speakers, the terror of the white door and lived to tell the tale.
John agreed to give Barry a lift to a tube station, so he could get home so after all of us piled into John's car we travelled across London, stopping at Perivale station (so Perivale is a real place ! DR Who fans will understand my reference), before travelling on to Golders Green, where we gathered provisions in the form of quite a nice Chinese. Now the concept of a self service Chinese, where you buy a large tub, or small depending on how hungry or greedy you are, is unknown where I come from. In my home land a Chinese carry out is provided for you. We order, watch it prepared (if your lucky some kitchens are screened off. what are they hiding ? :eek:) and receive it wrapped in paper. The self service idea allows you to pick one type of meal or mix what's available....interesting.
The sun was beginning to set, when we arrived at Cayhill Towers...John's home. He ushered us through the door and up the stairs. Now anyone who thinks they know about Daleks and feel that a flight of stairs will present us with a challenge.....well no it wont, your wrong. Anti Gravity units allow us to rise above such problems. So the fact John's system was upstairs was no issue. I was surprised it was upstairs and not downstairs but in fairness to John I can't recall if he had ever told me where exactly it was located.
Arriving on the landing a problem confronted me. John's listening room and system was located in the roof space above our heads and the only way up was a very thin, less than confidence building, pull down ladder :eek: The opening above was narrow, so the thought of blasting a hole in the ceiling (not a particularly nice thing to do when your a guest) to allow levitation was rejected. I decided instead to leave my armour and crawl up the ladder...not a pretty sight.
The system was unique, with John taking a DIY bespoke approach to a number of the elements of his system. A glass Optimum stand housed a now unused Philips CD player, a Duncan Tube Hunter mk 1 DAC, and on top a pair of chip board boxes with electronics built into them. Either side of the Optimum stand stood a pair of large open baffle speaker built(he admits crudely) by John's own fair hands. The front of the speakers are covered in felt, with that being stretched over a birch ply lamination. The top drivers are 15 inch Iris dual concentric and the bottom bass drivers are Auggies. The design is a Hawthorn one and not an original by John.
John explained that the chip board boxes on top of the rack, contained the BK BSBP 300 Subplates which drive the bass drivers and the large piano black box sitting to the right side of the Optimum stand, being a Glow Master KT88 power amplifier, which drives the top Iris dual concentric.
Behind the stand an early prototype MAD Balanced mains transformer feeds all the electronics, its self receiving electricity from a separate CU unit. John uses unbranded silver cables, a Base 01 isolation platform under the BK subplates and Soild Tech isolation under the Glow Master amplifier.
So far I have not mentioned the source component....I could not see one. The CD player was not switched on, I allowed my eye to scan the cables which traced back to his ACER Lap Top...oh boy computer audio.
I had brought some CDs which John loaded into the computer. First up was Yello-One Second. The sound was open detailed, clean and effortless. His system was blessed with great musicality and drive. However there were a few immediate problems, solved by moving my listening position. The music now gained depth, width and focus. From my original listening position the sound had been smeared and lacking low and mid bass.
With that problem gone I asked to hear Nightmares on Wax-CarBoot Soul. John looked a bit panicky when he realised it was electronic music, with very deep bass. However he need not have been as concerned as he appeared to be. There were a few issues which after examining the speakers, I would ascribe to a lack of construction skill. The tightness of driver mounting, lack of spikes to level and too much flexibility in the front baffle mounting to the bottom plate resulted in very low bass notes being distorted. This was not down to amplification but purely mechanical. I have heard this sort of thing before when drive units have become loose. I suggested some cures to these problems, some of which John said he might look at in the future.
He then played Jeff Buckley song, which was quite fitting I though, Lovely you should come Over. We had heard it in the car on the way to John's house and it sounded very good indeed.
John has achieved the foundations of something very good indeed. He is rightly proud of his creation and only a lack of DIY skill, is robbing him of the last say 20% of what his speakers can do. He, it must be stated does not listen to Dance Music, but in my opinion if he improves the rigidity of his speakers, all the music he listens to will benefit. After all bass is the foundation stone on which everything else is built.
Maybe a fellow AOS member who has access to better tools and his gifted with higher construction skill,can help John hone his speakers further. In my opinion they deserve it. Despite the problems, they are very special as is the whole system. If we had access to other kit we could have swapped items around to see what exactly was doing what but we did not have access to any other items. This was frustrating as I for one would love to have worked out how much the Tube Hunter Dac was doing to achieve the sound we were hearing. As the entire system was made up of items I had not heard ever before I can only say that as a complete system it works very well, especially in a small roof space room. Maybe some day I can get to hear a Tube Hunter Dac in my own system.
With the visit over John took us back to the Park Inn hotel.
I really enjoyed my visit to hear John's set up. He was insistent about me not talking any photos, so I honoured his request and took none....sorry about that AOS members. However I hope my report paints an accurate enough picture of what he has and how it sounds, that you can picture it in your imagination.
Well done John, very nice system indeed.
Regards D S D L
Sorry if this isn't up to my usual standard...I still feel pretty yuck...bloody Flu.
Now I am pretty sure he was nervous about this. Lets face it its not often you meet a Dalek ;) and knowing, before hand the potential difficulty I might have getting to hear his system, he may have feared being exterminated.
After our initial meeting at the show and having a bit of a chat and allowing him time to look round the show (Daleks can be generous) we arranged to meet later at Dave Cawley's stand, before he took me to his house. During this time I also meet Barry D Hunt (very nice guy a real gentleman), another member of our community and fearsome vampire slayer; who has battled the Technics valve forces of Count Marco, his coffin speakers, the terror of the white door and lived to tell the tale.
John agreed to give Barry a lift to a tube station, so he could get home so after all of us piled into John's car we travelled across London, stopping at Perivale station (so Perivale is a real place ! DR Who fans will understand my reference), before travelling on to Golders Green, where we gathered provisions in the form of quite a nice Chinese. Now the concept of a self service Chinese, where you buy a large tub, or small depending on how hungry or greedy you are, is unknown where I come from. In my home land a Chinese carry out is provided for you. We order, watch it prepared (if your lucky some kitchens are screened off. what are they hiding ? :eek:) and receive it wrapped in paper. The self service idea allows you to pick one type of meal or mix what's available....interesting.
The sun was beginning to set, when we arrived at Cayhill Towers...John's home. He ushered us through the door and up the stairs. Now anyone who thinks they know about Daleks and feel that a flight of stairs will present us with a challenge.....well no it wont, your wrong. Anti Gravity units allow us to rise above such problems. So the fact John's system was upstairs was no issue. I was surprised it was upstairs and not downstairs but in fairness to John I can't recall if he had ever told me where exactly it was located.
Arriving on the landing a problem confronted me. John's listening room and system was located in the roof space above our heads and the only way up was a very thin, less than confidence building, pull down ladder :eek: The opening above was narrow, so the thought of blasting a hole in the ceiling (not a particularly nice thing to do when your a guest) to allow levitation was rejected. I decided instead to leave my armour and crawl up the ladder...not a pretty sight.
The system was unique, with John taking a DIY bespoke approach to a number of the elements of his system. A glass Optimum stand housed a now unused Philips CD player, a Duncan Tube Hunter mk 1 DAC, and on top a pair of chip board boxes with electronics built into them. Either side of the Optimum stand stood a pair of large open baffle speaker built(he admits crudely) by John's own fair hands. The front of the speakers are covered in felt, with that being stretched over a birch ply lamination. The top drivers are 15 inch Iris dual concentric and the bottom bass drivers are Auggies. The design is a Hawthorn one and not an original by John.
John explained that the chip board boxes on top of the rack, contained the BK BSBP 300 Subplates which drive the bass drivers and the large piano black box sitting to the right side of the Optimum stand, being a Glow Master KT88 power amplifier, which drives the top Iris dual concentric.
Behind the stand an early prototype MAD Balanced mains transformer feeds all the electronics, its self receiving electricity from a separate CU unit. John uses unbranded silver cables, a Base 01 isolation platform under the BK subplates and Soild Tech isolation under the Glow Master amplifier.
So far I have not mentioned the source component....I could not see one. The CD player was not switched on, I allowed my eye to scan the cables which traced back to his ACER Lap Top...oh boy computer audio.
I had brought some CDs which John loaded into the computer. First up was Yello-One Second. The sound was open detailed, clean and effortless. His system was blessed with great musicality and drive. However there were a few immediate problems, solved by moving my listening position. The music now gained depth, width and focus. From my original listening position the sound had been smeared and lacking low and mid bass.
With that problem gone I asked to hear Nightmares on Wax-CarBoot Soul. John looked a bit panicky when he realised it was electronic music, with very deep bass. However he need not have been as concerned as he appeared to be. There were a few issues which after examining the speakers, I would ascribe to a lack of construction skill. The tightness of driver mounting, lack of spikes to level and too much flexibility in the front baffle mounting to the bottom plate resulted in very low bass notes being distorted. This was not down to amplification but purely mechanical. I have heard this sort of thing before when drive units have become loose. I suggested some cures to these problems, some of which John said he might look at in the future.
He then played Jeff Buckley song, which was quite fitting I though, Lovely you should come Over. We had heard it in the car on the way to John's house and it sounded very good indeed.
John has achieved the foundations of something very good indeed. He is rightly proud of his creation and only a lack of DIY skill, is robbing him of the last say 20% of what his speakers can do. He, it must be stated does not listen to Dance Music, but in my opinion if he improves the rigidity of his speakers, all the music he listens to will benefit. After all bass is the foundation stone on which everything else is built.
Maybe a fellow AOS member who has access to better tools and his gifted with higher construction skill,can help John hone his speakers further. In my opinion they deserve it. Despite the problems, they are very special as is the whole system. If we had access to other kit we could have swapped items around to see what exactly was doing what but we did not have access to any other items. This was frustrating as I for one would love to have worked out how much the Tube Hunter Dac was doing to achieve the sound we were hearing. As the entire system was made up of items I had not heard ever before I can only say that as a complete system it works very well, especially in a small roof space room. Maybe some day I can get to hear a Tube Hunter Dac in my own system.
With the visit over John took us back to the Park Inn hotel.
I really enjoyed my visit to hear John's set up. He was insistent about me not talking any photos, so I honoured his request and took none....sorry about that AOS members. However I hope my report paints an accurate enough picture of what he has and how it sounds, that you can picture it in your imagination.
Well done John, very nice system indeed.
Regards D S D L
Sorry if this isn't up to my usual standard...I still feel pretty yuck...bloody Flu.