A short break chez Themis
Tasha and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Dimitri's place near Montpellier last week. The weather was fantastic as was the company, hospitality, Dimitri's cooking, the wine as well as a few restaurants we ate in - or rather outside of.
Tasha also enjoyed herself because we managed to restrain ourselves from talking about hi-fi from morning till bedtime
Dimitri is clearly a music-lover first-and-foremost and this is made clear by the number of headphone setups he has, an iPod with a big enough memory to store plenty of uncompressed files for use hooked up to the car system as well as for use with headphones and of course the main system. Out and about we were never without music and I was introduced to a number of different artists I really liked and my own music collection is being enriched as a result. Francis Cabrel is an aging French pop/rockstar but his music still stirs the passions and is well recorded.
Regarding his system (Logitech Squeezebox/Beresford DAC into the Croft Micro pre/power and a very WAF-friendly pair of Sonus Faber floor standers) communicates the music in a fashion that keeps you listening and doesn't take your ears off. It's more laid-back than I'm used to but works great over extended periods. The speakers are also well time-aligned so should respond to improvements upstream in the future.
The equipment itself works well together in itself. The pre/power amp combo punches well above its weight and would compete with most at the £4000 mark. Any improvements (and there is always room for improvement, it's part and parcel to the hi-fi hobby for those who can be honest about it) would come through upgrading ancilliaries, notably isolation and incoming mains supply. His system passed the speaker grilles on/off test - they sound better off.
Dimitri and I agreed that given human nature and the desire to continually seek improvement, anyone who says they are truly satisfied with their system has either lost interest in the hobby or has somehow committed suicide....
"I'm more interested in the music, blah, blah, blah!"
Whatever!
Improving your hi-fi gives you more music, especially if improved coherence is always your aim...
Mark Grant G1000HDs are already in use and Dimitri's system was able to show up clearly the improvement that is derived from swapping them for new ones with Neutrik Pro-fi connectors. With these, as expected, there was better leading edge definition which in turn improved perception of timing but not at the expense of note body and decay.
However, the improvement seemed to occur mainly in the upper mids and highs in his system. I suspect the reason is that lower down the frequency range there is a relatively bigger bottleneck than the interconnects. The bass, whilst not boomy or offensive in any way is a touch on the soft side and very slightly fruity and I think this could be remedied by improving isolation/incoming mains. I say this because in my own system the improvement in definition derived from the change of plugs on the ends og the G1000HDs is right across the board but then my mains and isolation are fairly well sorted.
We had already tried the Black Ravioli pads under both the Beresford DAC and the amps in turn and there were subtle but appreciable improvements in coherence. Suffice to say I did not take them home with me. To get the full effect he'll need a few more but having spoken to Mr. C about this on his behalf, a deal can be struck on some s/h ones.
I'll post some pics later when I've run a few errands.
Meet and greet (and then al-fresco lunch at Carnon)
Dimitri's hi-fi/home cinema system:
Crof pre/power on Black Ravioli:
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Originally Posted by Steve Toy
