New to NOH

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GordonJ

New to NOH
« on: 16 Jul 2004, 09:05 am »
My NOH arrived this week, and I couldn't be more pleased with it.

After a bit of experimenting with the power amps, I've got the clearest , cleanest, most well-balanced sound I can imagine (for now anyway - the danger is of this upgrade leading to a desire for... new speakers, different power amps...but not yet.).  Anyway, there's way more detail there and new things to hear in almost every CD I play.  Bass is more solid and the leading edges of the notes sound real, the treble is sweet (acoustic guitars really ring true) and voices in particular are just great.  (Tanya Donelly's Beautysleep was a revelation.)  Big complex mixes (dance, rock) are no longer even slightly muddled and you can pick out everything that's happenning.  Fantastic - really pleased.

Rest of the system is Teac T1/Cord Dac64, Cyrus APA7.5 monos, Spendor S8/REL Q50.  I had been biamping with a Cyrus SmartPower on HF but I think the NOH was showing some of its (not major) limitations, and the sound hangs together better without it.  So I've even ended up with a simpler system.  Very pleased indeed.

Do people generally use balanced or phono connections?  I think I probably marginally prefer the sound with balanced, though I can't really say what it is at this stage, but it means the system has a LOT of gain (can't go much past a third without it starting to hurt!).  I guess I'll let everything settle in and experiment over the next few weeks.

Gordon