Listening session with Reefus

infiniti driver · « **on:** 19 Feb 2004, 09:08 pm »

Yesterday, reefus made the drive to listen to the SP Timepiece 2.0's We used as equipment the following:

Amplifier: Mil-spec DC300A Crown @155/W Chan
Room: 13X15X8, open to dining area/kitchen, basic no treatments, typical living area in 3br home.
Preamplifiers: None, Edge Signature 1 Active/Passive AC/DC, Bottlehead Foreplay With C4S mod
Cables: Conquest Hi Def, Single ended
Sources: CE775 Sony SACD/CD player, Computer workstation running 16/44.1khz ripped from CD's and some 24/192K program
Speaker cable: 8TC Kimber @12 feet each
Music: Assorted live recordings, Some productions I mixed/Mastered Some Telarcs, some audiophile CD's, Kraftwerk..and (I will let reefus describe the CD's he brought) Some low frequency testing, etc. (17hZ actually happened at substantial output)

Listening level: from 80dB average to around 100dB average.
Listening distance approx 3 meters

I've described numerious times about how accurate these speakers are and I will pass this post on to reefus to complete his listening experience from here.

Problems:

The edge preamp has something happening we cannot put a finger on so we listened in passive mode. Active mode was met by DC push on Left channel of around 10 volts at idle and DC pull of the same on the right channel. We could not figure out "why" this was happening and one thing about the DC300A, it is flat to DC so their are NO capacitors in the output path. I have not mentioned this before but to those who want the shock of your life, the DC300A is the most musical amplifier I have had the pleasure to use.(for solid state, valve useage, go to www.kraudio.com) I have had it 29 years and only used it for testing purposes in the lab until after reviewing another amplifier, I decided to "hook it up" for kicks and grins. Needless to say, the older Crown DC 300A's is a reference which many amplifiers cannot approach in being effortless, fatique free, awesome musicality and being rock solid and inaudibly quiet. I can put it up against the best of the best and it always walks away as being that good. Surprise!

See for yourself with this PDF. Specs alone can tell the tale.

http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/amps/dc300asm.pdf

Most of the listening was done with the bottlehead preamp. Having not used it in 3 years, it did its thing as usual and can be compared to preamps in the thousands of dollars. It does well and adds very little coloration if any. We listened strait wire as well but lost a shade of low level resolution so we connected the foreplay back up!

Next problem.
Some of the CD's reefus brought (which were commercial pressings) had clipped waveforms. This was very annoying in the least. Something that sounds like amplifier clipping or speaker distress was traced back to flat-top waves on the actual CD. Using the wave editor, I was able to "repair them" and then playing these CD's back with repaired wave structure was met with great impact and no fuzzyness that was caused by the clipped waveforms. Another caution: Playing CD's that are clipped can damage loudspeakers without clipping the amplifier. Loudspeakers are not designed to play square waves at high power. If something sounds "not right" it is time to trace the problem. If their is DC offset on the CD, the crown will show it to you in spades. Remember, the crown of this vintage is a lab reference, highly accurate, displays the input signal and tracks it without flaw. Garbage in, garbage out. Why "highly paid politically connected" mastering engineers allow this to happen is beyond words and it is very frustrating to have something like this happen. You would think that the simple task of using a wave editor to look at the peak display would be paramount in the mastering process. Unfortunantly, some real "know it alls" are still at work, butchering the crap out of great performances. It takes a very high state of resolution to hear these problems and great electronics. Speakers of this quality have no shame in exposing the weaknesses of mastering engineers!

Reefus left feeling satisfyed that he heard possibly the finest set of loudspeakers he has ever heard. The Kraftwerk was "scary good".

Time for him to write his impressions!

We had a great time and I was happy to provide a place for him to hear them!

reefrus · « **Reply #1 on:** 19 Feb 2004, 10:20 pm »

Two more thumbs up for TP2.0!

I'd like to thank Bill(aka Infinity Driver) for making this auditions possible.For me,it was worth the drive for 400Miles round trips.After almost 10hrs of nearly live music SPL(most around <100db>).From 1PM in the afternoon to 3AM the next morning.Of course,deduct the time for fine dinners at seafood restaurant and couple of bars. We simply can't get enough from those speakers.Every discs we put in was so enjoyable through the 2.0,and they are louder than I normally listen to(90-95db),but I simply don't feel the pressure from the sound instead I really enjoy them.It just "effortless" like live music.
I can only address one thing,that is,use a big powerful amp if you can,bigger the better.Then,you're in for real treat.There is no need for me to add another gram of salt to describe how good these speaker capable of.You can find out all the infors from their website.They are more people with greater credibility reviewing the TP2.0.Especially Bill,more than 30yrs in the recording and mastering industries.He is not only knowledgable but also have a pair of "sharp ears",I wish there are more engineers like Bill out there mastering the tapes.Then,we as consumer especially among audiophiles will indeed for a real treat.I wish I have more brain power to absorb all the info that Bill has,it just too much to digest.Bill gave me one of his mastering CD,it simply blow away most of so called audiophile disc after I put in my system.
Too bad,there are not many TP2.0 out there for people to listen.I'm considering get a pair after I move back to Colorado (in 2 1/2 weeks)so I can demo them in the Rockies.
Now,I wonder how Continuum AD sounds like compare with the 2.0.
It's kind of hectic here in the house because of moving.I'll be back in from time to time to fill up the gap when I have a chance.For people near Gulf shore area,or come nearby for vacation,you should give Bill a call and find out yourself.They may not be for you,but they are my kind of speakers."Best performance in a small package".
Happy Listening!
Steve

Horsehead · « **Reply #2 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 02:08 am »

Thanks Steve and Bill- sounded like an awesome listening session. My pair of Continuums should be here next week and Bob's mesaages are driving me insane as well as reading your two posts. I'm hoping Bob will chime in here as well and maybe can expound on some of changes he made in the Continuum and possibly future Timepieces.

Bill- are your Timepieces set up with SP Tech stands as well or your own?
Steve- any comments on how the Timepieces sound compared to the RM40 and Soundlabs?

infiniti driver · « **Reply #3 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 02:48 am »

Hi Horsehead!

I opted to not get the very nice stands that Bob offers. I had a set of concrete roman style collums that I used for many months but one got destroyed in a move so actually, (believe it or not) I have them raised up at about 28 inches (bottom of enclosure to floor) on some platforms. The Roman collums are standard hobby lobby issue and can be filled with sand to make a pretty robust stand but they come unfinished and quite frankly, one needs to put serious labor in them before they are sutible as speaker stands. I would highly advise simply buying the SP stands if you don't want to go through the hassle. The Roman collums are very fragile as well until they are sand filled. Last nights audition, the height was a shade high but not too much so. You can vary from 22 to 38 inches without any problems as the TP 2.0's are not that critical of height. I would not go below 18 inches in any case because the floor is not the place for the TP 2.0's!

I had conversation with Bob on the woofers situation and he assures me the differences in construction are not even worthy of mention as it is basically the same driver with a 1 CM frame mount change. He said the voicing is virtually, measurably and audibly identical in every way. Definitly not a cause of concern. Trust Bob on this one. He is not going to deviate in any way from the voicing of the reference loudspeaker.

I will turn this over to reefus about his comparisons of other products. One thing I noticed at all times, Steve kept a huge smile on his face the entire time and really was excited about what he heard. The very cool thing about meetings like this is sharing music! He had one CD that has an African band that seriously stirs the emotion and excitement. Very well recorded and produced with dynamics to die for!

infiniti driver · « **Reply #4 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 03:28 am »

Here is the offending wave clip that had to be repaired.

Original from CD on the left, repair on the right.

To do this, you have to redraw the wave based on what is observed in a simalar attack that goes unclipped and normalize the entire track down to get headroom. It is an art to do this but it should have been done in mastering.

The duration of the clip is in Microseconds but it is long enough to be an annoyance.

Left original, right is repaired.

nathanm · « **Reply #5 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 04:21 am »

Wow, you actually got that to work?! Cool. I have tried the same thing - redrawing clipped samples with the pencil tool in a wave editor, but it usually sounds wrong. Do you cut and paste from an unclipped peak or do you 'make something up' by hand?

infiniti driver · « **Reply #6 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 05:13 am »

Nathan, it works well with serious experience. What I do is find the exact sonic signature somewhere else that is unclipped, I always draw in the 1 to 2 ratio or better, usually as much as an amazing 8 to one..which is 16 times finer rez than 1 to 2. I trace the other wave in paint pad and then I lay it into the offending area first by adding silence then doing amplitude matching. of course if you get it wrong, you have 999 undo/redos to use!

I do hand draw them but using the other clean wave as a reference guide. The key is to watch your zero crossings and maximum sample values. Actually, reefus saw me do some of them without any guide at all...because I have actually learned what a sound, even in microseconds, is supposed to look like. That is what 12 years working with a wave editor can do for you. Remember Sound forge 1.0? I have several exotic plug-ins that I wrote to help me along the way with statistical anaylsis and yes, it not only works, it works perfect, every time, doing hundreds of clips in one song can take over an hour....but that is what I get paid to do is fix other peoples f*ck-ups.

Some of my plug-ins use 64 bit processing but to do that, requires 64 bit windows and is a pain in the butt to keep totally in line. Running the platform in UNIX offers more peace and stability but using a modded doze program in UNIX, that me laddie gets very tricky.

See http://www.codebase.com/products/64-bit/?src=overture

Yep...wild stuff Man

nathanm · « **Reply #7 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 06:19 am »

I use Sound Forge XP 4.0 - it came with my sound card basically. I wish I could zoom in further than 1:1 cause the other day I was messing around with a recording of my friend singing and in the track there's super low level noises of just us moving around in the room and although the center line is dead flat you can still clearly hear something but there's not ANY pixels on the screen! Weird.

Sorry to get off topic, I'll cut it off here.

infiniti driver · « **Reply #8 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 06:22 am »

Nathan, here is better shot of the drawing of the wave change.

infiniti driver · « **Reply #9 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 06:44 am »

Nathan, get SF 6.0 and dont fool with 7.0

4.0XP is extreamly limited. You can't do 32 bit or anything above 96K. 6.0 can go to each bit resolution and down to -160dB you must have a 24 bit sound card at least. The audigy SB card actually can do well for all but professional mastering. I run a apogee but I wrote the archetechure to drive it and I actually use the audigy interface for digital optical I/O. Running dual mobos has serious advantages as you can cascade platforms if need be. 0.001dB incremental resolution, well you get used to having it that fine. The EQ selections of 4.0XP do not allow for non phase shifting changes either. Even with a waves bundle, it is too old to get serious with I am afraid. Now I also use Sonic solutions as well. You will be hard pressed to get editing potential of professional level until you drop about 3K in hardware, 10K in software and another 2 to 5K in programming time.

Unfortunantly, these days, guys with a basic SC are charging 100 to master an album and do crap type work and even do some of it for releases. It certainly makes our art go in the toilet when labels cut corners in the final stage.

nathanm · « **Reply #10 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 07:16 am »

I don't really use it for anything serious, just for experimenting and playing with different things for fun.

infiniti driver · « **Reply #11 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 07:21 am »

Hey Brother....great sound IS serious! We dont get a second chance to show the goods..it is always in your face...either it does, or it does not.

(I actually try to make sure my screw-ups are private! It don't usually happen that way though...always go the extra distance when you can.)

Fun with the wave editor is the only way to learn but sometimes, the tools need to be advanced to the level of the guy in the chair...it is time to get some better tools Nathan!

reefrus · « **Reply #12 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 03:57 pm »

Horsehead,

I'm not trying to compare with my longterm reference SoundLab A-1 or RM40/TRT/FS.They are all excellent in their own right.What I feel is the 2.0s give me more "Real" when the music is playing.It simply more balance.And the best part,they are in a lot "smaller package" to deal with.For years,I've been living with giant speakers,sometimes it's nightmare to move around.

I'd like to use Infinity Deriver's common: There are no perfect loudspeakers,only ones with the best balance of imperfections usually work the best.

If TP2.0s are good enough for him at the recording studio,it's good enough for me in music playback system.

Happy Listening!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nathanm · « **Reply #13 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 04:22 pm »

Infiniti driver: I hear what you're saying and I would agree with you except that you're a professional mastering engineer and I'm just a guy who makes funny little pitch shifted sawtooth waves for grins sometimes. I mean, you're talking hardcore balls to the wall stuff and I'm more like occasional hobbyist guy as far as wave editors are concerned!

infiniti driver · « **Reply #14 on:** 20 Feb 2004, 05:12 pm »

Thats right Steve, the proper balance of compromises. Take what compromises that are there and work to keep them from showing themselves in the music. Amazing how a product that measures technically as well as it does also give 10X the vibe of your normal 3K price point, without all the noise or drawing attention to itself. You actually forget you are listening to loudspeakers, it is about musical emotion and hearing everything, at all levels, all the time.