Some guys came over this weekend to listen to a variety of tube amps and cables, typical audiophile waste of time listening to the same song over and over while swapping parts. Yuk! So this time I had a surprise in store for them! Nobody, including me had ever heard a modern design high-end class D or analog switching amplifier, thogh we had debated the merits on several occasions. Time for reality to intrude on speculation.
I invited the local NuForce dealer to come over with a pair of brand new (100 hours) Reference 9SE amps and while he was coming, he brought a TacT RCS2.2 room correction preamp. We connected the SB to Tact with digital coax and to the NuForces with anticable single ended interconnects, then to Legacy Focus speakers with Anticable speaker wire. Running the room correction impulses took about 2 minutes and got people talking. Some said my speakers would be damaged by the 1/2 watt gunfire sounds. Some of it was "why can't we just listen to music, this is a waste of time", some said, "This digital shit is a parlor trick, it is not high end audio." Others were asking questions and intrigued by the GUI on the laptop displaying the frequency response of my speakers in my room, which was very ugly, BTW. The Tact dealer, Hometheaterdoc.com, Shane Sangster was knowledgeable and met each question with confidence while he ran the calibration. At the location of the sampling microphone placed in the listening sweet spot, freqs below 300Hz were up and down by 10dB+! It was like an evil roller coaster. Above 2k was not too bad, a couple of suckouts but most of it at +3 to +6dB. We selected a target frequency response curve to simulate (close to flat), and dragged it around on the screen so that all frequencies would be attenuated instead of boosted. We uploaded the filter to a preset in TacT memory via RS232 cable and then I hit the SB play button. Everyone was listening hard to hear just how fake and unmusical it would sound. The sound that appeared in the room was not coming from the speakers, there was an invisible ghost of the orchestra right in the room. The Nuforces revealed every vibration of the singer's throat, and every individual voice in a choir. Hard to reproduce tones like cello, low brass and accordion sound as beautiful and musical as on my Cary tubes but the resolution, dynamics and the power down low is far superior. Add in the room correction of the Tact preamp and it makes everything ultra clear, ultra detailed, but not harsh - you know, the same old blablabla you have read in a magazine 1000times but somehow never able to actually hear it from any system, ever. I have read about it, but never heard it until Sunday. I could hear details in the lows that were very musical, like the low end of the recording venue's ambiance of bass violins that was too muddied up to hear without the room correction. I just never knew it was there on the CD all along. Some people took a while to come around. Some hard core tubers in denial were switching the Tact remote back and forth from Bypass to Preset 9. Over and over the room sounded like shit and then back to nirvana. Standing anywhere in the room, even 15 feet diagonal behind the sweet spot against a wall with granite counter top and a steel refrigerator the improvement was very noticeable when processing was engaged. One by one over the next hour, everyone commented on how good it sounded. The SB digital coax out was more than up to the task of sourcing this incredible stereo system. Unfortuately, we never did listen to SB analog out to tact preamp. Since it sounds great on my regular system, I assume it would still be great after room corection. While I had previous been leary of having to rip guests CDs before they could listen to music, it turns out they were fascinated by the whole music on the network process, and a few watched me rip tracks with EAC to the network drive. Some even walked upstairs to see the noisy NAS and talk networking, etc. Only one guest of all 8 was vaguely familiar with SB, but had never seen or heard one. He loved the sound, and the interface w/remote. My room is very large, a rectangular odd shape open plan, a dozen tall glass windows, lots of bare sheetrock, tall ceiling, wood floors and some carpet. The tact overcame all of those acoustic challenges and made my listening room sound like the actual recording location, you feel like you are really there. With the custom equalization, the whole freq range is now audible, nothing muffled or hidden in a bad node, it makes the processing sound louder compared to the bypass. It is actually just clearer, and the front of the soundstage (soloists) seems to come forward out of the speakers toward you, while the rear falls farther back. The NuForce delivers the detail and dynamics of a real performance and really brought out the best in my sensitive full range speakers. Everything was just better. It is amazing to think that all this music is actually coming off the CD but I had never heard it despite a very good but still low end "high end" stereo system. Now I figure out how to keep this demo gear! I recommend you try to hear a Tact preamp or some other brand of room correction. You will be forever spoiled for plain stereo. Even most of Denon's cheap receivers have Auddessey room correction now, and Kalman Rubinson and even my Tact dealer said the Denon stuff does work very well, and their internal DACs are especially good on the higher priced units like 4806. Rich -- richidoo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ richidoo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3097 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=24366 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
