I heard an interesting two-channel system today (non Klipsch) - kinda long

[greg928gts]

I'm kinda bored tonight, Xmas eve, sitting around listening to music, typing on the computer . . . .

Royal called me last night all excited because once again his water heater had water running out of places it should never be running out of. Man, why does this always happen around a holiday? Five years ago I built Royal a super-insulated home with radiant floor heating and a high-efficiency gas-fired water heater. It's a beautiful home, and everything was fine until December of 2007 when he called me with a no-heat problem.

So I went up to see what was going on and found that the heat exchanger (this is an unusual type of water heater) was leaking from one of the weld points into the burning chamber and had blown out the igniter. So Royal kept his gas-fired fireplace going, which easily heats the whole 2000 sq ft. house, even in very cold weather, and took showers at the office for two weeks while we waited for another heater to show up. The company was good about it, they put a rush on it (these are made to order) and covered it under the six year warranty. Knowing that the company does not cover labor to switch out the heater, and feeling bad that I had spent so much time changing the heater over, Royal graciously offered me a pair of Dynaco Mark III amplifiers on my way out the door! Cool! He said something about one of them not working, but that he always liked these amps and hoped I could get them going again.

Yeah! Well well, off they went to Craig, and a few months later they were part of the magic mystical backwards facing La Scala experiment that worked out so well. But that's another story.

Royal has been an audiophile for a few decades and every time I go up there I get to hear his system, which is fun, not too many audiophiles around these parts.

We were both quite upset last night when an even more catastrophic failure occured on the one year old replacement heater! Poor guy, I feel so bad for him. There's just no reason why he should have had two failures like this. I've been back and forth through his system, tested his water for aggressiveness, checked the gas pressure, set the CO, etc... I can't find any reason why his system is any different than the thirty or so others that we've installed. Only one other failure in about 10 years of using these particular units.

So I head up there again this morning to verify that the unit is in fact leaking water through the heat exchanger and this time squirting out all over the mechanical room (it's got a floor drain so no big deal, but still). Call the company rep, he can't believe it, but says the company will replace it, no problem. Some companies will not replace a unit that has been replaced under warranty before, so I was relieved to hear that they were going to stand behind this.

So after I get the water situation under control and I'm done, Royal asks me if I'd like to hear his system. Lot's of little changes since the last time you were here, he says. So I walk in the living room and I see that he's got all kinds of new isolation gadgets everywhere. I see a new Bright Star audio rack, huge solid maple slabs under his speakers, foam thingies to hold up speaker wires and to hold power cords and patch cords from touching one another, isolation points or feet everywhere, including the big brass feet under his amplifier and even under his DAC. There were rubber bands wrapped around the brass feet and; you know the rubber tube isolaters you can buy? He's got a few of those tucked into the rubber bands that are wrapped around the brass feet that are sitting on a Isolator pad that is sitting on points on one of the shelves of the audio rack.

Wow. So Royal's a bit strange, which I always knew, but I think he's fooling himself with some of this. He claims the foam blocks holding up the speaker wire made more of a difference than upgrading components.

His system consists of a cheap (his word) Oppo player that he's using as a transport, a DAC (don't know what brand, small silver box with one blue light on the front, he says $180 on ebay and it's a pretty good DAC), then a real nice piece - his new integrated amp, a Leben 600 http://www.sonicflare.com/archives/review-leben-cs600-integrated-amp.php , then his speakers, which are Lowther single drivers in a small ported home-made cabinet (on spikes, on the maple stands, on points, on another type of isolation pad, on points, on the tile/concrete floor, with weighted boxes on top of points on top of the speakers).

So I sit down and he puts on an old jazz piece that really starts out sounding horrible. No bass, the drums sound like their in the back of a gymnasium with the microphone 50 feet away, and shrill horns, and I'm thinking about what I'm going to say when the song ends. But mid way through, the music takes an abrubt turn and the horns do solos back and forth, and I realized how nice they sounded all by themselves. At the end of the song he said that piece plays to the weaknesses of his system, lack of bass. The next piece he put on was a newer recording, I don't know the artist, but there was piano, bass, drums, and female vocal. This recording played to the strengths of the system. The imaging and soundstage were just terrific, the background was black and quiet, and if not for the little bit of reverb on her vocal, you'd swear she was right in the room with you. The last two songs he put on were from The Mavericks; kinda C+W, but not really, with male vocal. Again, the vocals were just as clear and realistic as I've ever heard.

The system is so quiet and so refined, it's really a pleasure to listen to. Other than on the first old jazz piece, which I don't think was recorded very well, there was nothing about the system that struck me as being bad in any way. There was a lack of bass and highs, but I can see how people can get used to that very easily. It's sort of like what I'm doing with SET and Khorns, where there's just not enough bass, but at the same time, those are the amps and the setup that I prefer to listen to. I think we can train our ears to get used to a lot of different setups.

As I was listening, I thought the vocals were coming from about 2' off the floor. Royal found that interesting, because to him, they sounded like 5' off the floor. The drivers were 3'6" off the floor. Again, maybe we train our ears and tailor our expectations to that. Khorns are much taller than his speakers, and when I'm sitting in my room the sound comes towards me from a much higher place. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

Even when it's not my cup of tea, as in this case, I always like to hear different systems, especially when someone has taken the time to detail the system and really get it set up. All part of the hobby.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Greg

[Marvel]

Greg,

Sometimes it is just magic. My LaScalas, and you are really familiar with La Scalas, sound just right with the Moondogs, my SET 2A3 amps. When the planets sem to be aligned, something is just right. There is no explaining it, the way it sounds. And it seems, at that moment in time, that all is right in the world. There's no real explaining it.

Amen

[fini]

What a good responsive thoughtful builder you are! I hope you get to stay home today...[] Merry Cristmas!