It will be interesting to hear what others think of the recordings. I suppose it could be a combination of the recordings and the room.
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It will be interesting to hear what others think of the recordings. I suppose it could be a combination of the recordings and the room.
Just had a listen to the Donald Byrd album. It's a good quality recording with good dynamic range. After the first couple of tunes I couldn't detect any issues at all so I cranked the level right up beyond what I would normally listen at and played the rest of the album like that.
I used an Oppo universal player into a Soncoz SGD1 DAC into a Krell KSA100 Mk2 into JM Lab Electra 926' - volume controlled via the DAC.
But I couldn't hear any issues, it did not sound 'up front'. There was no break up on any instruments at any time.
Have to say I would not expect to hear any break up on a professional recording like this. It's a multitrack, they are not live takes so if there was a problem with overload on one track they'd just re-take, they wouldn't use it. Bear in mind if there was any overload then it would sound even worse on direct playback in the studio than it does playing the finished product at home.
I d be interested if anyone else who has this album or access to it would try and see if they can hear the flute issue.
Anyway - Caveats - The power amp is on the smooth/warm side of neutral, and my room is well damped with some treatment in one corner. There were a couple of occasions with the trumpet where I could imagine that in an underdamped room with a lot of hard surfaces, it might be too much and there'd be some ringing.
I just played it as well, sounding better in my system now, still a few passages with spiky treble though. Since I changed all the valves to Gold Lion and put the speakers right back in the corners, more bass balances out the harsh treble I was getting, although with some music sounding a bit too warm/syrupy, leading to a sound which could be clearer. Overall though with jazz its better. I'll experiment with finer adjustments with speaker positioning and cable. What size is your listening room? I would consider moving flats, but where I live I have a lot of freedom to play music as much as I like at decent volume as I have so few neighbours.
I feel I must remind you why you started this thread:-
Valve amps, great with Jazz, shit with everything else
You have acknowledged the issue is your room. I just want to be clear that this whole exercise has been a wast of time. Do you think possibly that you should adjust the title to "room acoustics can really suck"
To recap, all valves in S500 now Gold Lion, mains regenerator in the attic, soon to be seen in the classifieds ('makes a huge difference'!). Audionote confirmed the old versions of the AN J I have are fine in corners, so I shoved them reet back in there, along with the spiders, and its great to get them out the way. Sofa - which I've always - silly me - had reet back up against the wall, now out about 2 feet into the room, this was a slight improvement, i could tell the moment I did it, bass less boomy. As usual it will take a few weeks to see whether I really like these changes, as I haven't had my TT set up for a while, don't know how that will sound, most of my rock is vinyl based too, so see how that sounds as opposed to just jazz (90% of my cds). In time I can see myself trying other speakers, and keeping the valves, but who knows.
Never mind this bollox, have you fitted that SC35C and NOS stylus yet?:ner:;)
Marco.