The present & the future...

[Reid Malenfant]

I finally manged to get the dCS kit installed even though it's only going to be on a temporary basis. Right now i'm spinning some familiar tunes & thoroughly enjoying things, even though i'm also running in some brand new cables into the bargain

As it is right now the Monarchy Audio DIP 24/96 is still connected in between the CD transport & the Purcell upsampler, i'm not sure if it's going to stay this way. Connections between the Purcell & Delius are via the Oyaide 60CM firewire cable & the word clock output of the Delius to the Purcell which puts the Delius in "master mode". Again i'm not sure this will remain the same either as every so often something loses the plot There is a slight pause in proceedings (a second every 10 minutes or so) & i have a feeling this is due to the Krell transports clock not being at precisely the same frequency as the word clock output of the Delius. Upscaling is via DSD as things are wired right now.

I think i'll rewire it shortly to use the AES3 connection (dual AES/EBU) & upscale to 24/176.4 as then no word clock is used & the clock is retreived from the transport itself & these slight pauses in proceedings should be eliminated at a guess

How does it sound, well considering i'm burning in a brand new set of balanced cables it pretty good already (only been listening for less than 1 hour). Bass has more weight & depth, treble does seem to have greater extension & lots more air. The whole soundstage is improved with near on pinpoint positioning of sounds in the presentation. The whole lot just sounds more analogue & less digital in all honesty

Time to dig out some stuff with vocals on it & see how voices sound, meanwhile here is a pic




I'm quite happy with the already noticeable improvements over the Monarchy Audio DAC, things can only get better


E2A:- These slight interuptions are getting further apart, something is warming up & clocks are getting closer together. I'll leave it connected via the firewire connections this evening & see what happens...

[Welder]

Looks the dog’s bollocks Mark. Pleased it’s working out for you
Not exactly cheap is it

Oh arr, if you want your music to sound analogue why don’t you just buy a bloody record player like the others

[Reid Malenfant]

Looks the dog’s bollocks Mark. Pleased it’s working out for you
Not exactly cheap is it

Oh arr, if you want your music to sound analogue why don’t you just buy a bloody record player like the others

Not cheap no, but definately worth what i payed imo & that's only a couple of hours in listening to it all. It's scarily good John

As for a record deck i have one sitting underneath the dCS kit There is no comparison to this though imo, i'd need to spend more on a record deck that these to get anywhere near this sound quality No, my £3,350 went in the right place

[Reid Malenfant]

Things are about to get pretty grim around here as i'm about to strip the rack out This means i'll be reduced to whatever i can cobble together to listen to music until things go back together

I think i'll have a bit of a blowout tonight & tomorrow & then gut the thing on Sunday

Not sure how long it'll take me to get everything back together again, it's probably more complex than Humpty Dumpty tbh as i'll be making new mains cables as i go along. I have 30M of Mark Grant DSP 2.5 screened mains cable, 17 Kaiser IEC connectors & about 30 brand new mains plugs as well as heatshrink & lord knows what else to do the job.

The end result should be worth it though as all front end kit will be powered off of a PS Audio P600 mains regenerator & all kit after this will be running via screened mains leads including the nifty figure of 8 connector jobbies

The P600 will feed a pair of Belkin PF40 conditioners, this sounds odd i know but there is method in my madness even if the manual states not to do it!

P600.jpg

The American version of the P600 has a pair of amplifiers in bridge mode to directly power the 110 or 120V equipment resulting in very low output impedance. However on this side of the pond our P600s weigh in at 110lbs each due to the dirty great big transformer slapped on the amplifiers output to raise this to 220 - 240V, this will raise the impedance a damn sight more than any small filter in a conditioner & it'll cause phase shifts & lower the performance There is no feedback from the transformer secondary that i know of, therefore the output will be subject to transformer regulation as well..

The idea of installing 2 PF40s is simply to isolate power supplies from each other so they cause less interference to each other. I have all sorts of kit & some makes use of SMPS such as my BD & DVD player, not sure about the dCS stuff but it wouldn't surprise me either. Nothing draws any more than 30W so in certain respects mains impedance is out of the window unless it's stupidly high (which it won't be). I already know the benefits of the PF40 & am quite happy to have the benefits even if mains impedance is raised a tad

The PF40 runs happily on balanced mains even if it says silly things like no earth & incorrectly wired, i have already installed one with an American type 3 pin mains plug just to make sure before going ahead with all this


See you all on the other side I might be a tad busy from Sunday morning onwards, but i'll be about

[Techno Commander]

Good luck and have fun.

[Reid Malenfant]

Cheers Andy, i might need it If i forget anything it might mean stripping a whole side down again Hours of work, maybe a day, this is why i don't often change things

It's not like i can get to the back of stuff once it's in there

Have a good weekend fella! ATB

[MartinT]

Good luck with that, Mark. It's usually fun once you get it back together again. I find that intuition and learning means that you gain improvements along the way.

[Reid Malenfant]

Cheers Martin, i'll probably need it

Whilst everything is out i'll get some pics taken so if anyone fancies making their own rack similar to this (but probably a different colour ) they'll have some ideas on how to go about it

Nothing like a possible bit of inspiration..

[John]

Not cheap no, but definately worth what i payed imo & that's only a couple of hours in listening to it all. It's scarily good John

As for a record deck i have one sitting underneath the dCS kit There is no comparison to this though imo, i'd need to spend more on a record deck that these to get anywhere near this sound quality No, my £3,350 went in the right place

Not sure if would Mark the 1210 maxed out would cost the same and the Salvation a £2300 with arm
Still Lovelly bit of Kit

[Reid Malenfant]

Ah, ok John, so allowing for a good cartridge about the same sort of price then I only have a few hundred records though & probably 2000+ CDs so as Marco says at the end of the day i think i'd get better SPPV going the digital route

Nice thought though, i do like the look of the Terminator but i just can't justify it with so few records The biggest upgrade the Aiwa will see is a low hours Denon DL103 & new phono amp in the not too distant future, i may even go mad & make an external PSU for it Only when everything else is done & dusted though..

Enjoy your weekend chap ATB!