Well,
After a foot surgery, a week in a big ass boot and not able to take it off, stand on it or sleep without it I'm about to go crazy. Might as well write a review of the LDR1........ Hopefully the pain medication doesn't get in the way.
My system consists of a 2011 stock mac mini with 8Gb of ram and (2) Oyen Digital 1TB hard drives as back up. I’m running this into an M2Tech Evo Stack and then into my Metrum Octave Dac. My pre amp is a Joule Electra LA150MK11 SE and amps are (2) TBI Millennia MG3 Mk II and a Butler 2250 which is a high powered hybrid amp.
To start out I replaced the Joule pre amp with the LDR1, I would not call this a fair fight as the Joule is currently $7200.00 new. I really like tubes somewhere in my system and the Joule is currently the only thing I’m using in the chain. First of all I have to say I really like the remote on the LDR1, it does everything you need it to and more, the balance relock and the fade on the mute button is a nice touch. Having a system without a remote is a non starter for me so that's a good enough reason to buy a LDR1 on its own in my mind. As soon as I started listening using the LDR1 and TBI amps I noticed an immediate loss of depth and width of sound stage, I also noticed less decay around the notes and less fullness to the sound and sound stage. Now, I have heard this before and it didn't come as a surprise. The TBI amps are not a good match with my speakers which are about 86db efficient and need a lot of power to get them going. I purchased these amps to go with my Super V speakers which I haven't built yet, but that is a different story. Without the gain of the Joule the amps have an even harder time so this is what I expected with a passive pre. The question then was, does the LDR1 take anything away or add anything to the sound? Well, the great thing about the TBI amps is they have a volume control and I could test that, so I did.
I removed the LDR1 from my system hooking the amps direct to my source and speakers and played the same 4 songs I had just listened to. I could not hear any difference at all, the detail was the same, the sound stage was the same and I just couldn't tell that I had removed the LDR1. What this made me realize is that the TBI amps, at least with my current speakers don't do much for my sound stage and also just how good my Joule is at producing one. It also made me realize just how transparent the LDR1 is.
I then put the LDR1 back into my system and replaced my TBI amps with my Butler 2250. This is a much better match with my speakers and I wanted to see if that did anything to the sound stage. Well, the sound was much larger and fuller and I immediately recognized the sound of my Butler amp. Once again I could hear absolutely nothing added or taken away by the LDR1 and this really got me thinking. This is the perfect product to build a system around. You can get the sound you’re looking for from your other components and simply use the LDR1 as a controller of source and volume. This probably seems obvious to someone who has thought about this but I’ve been going about it the exact opposite and hadn’t thought about the possibilities. I’ve been using very revealing components and getting my tube goodness from the preamp.
I guess the point is the LDR1 isn't going to make your system sound the way you want it to, unless the way you want it to sound is like it already did before you added the LDR1. The take away for me is the LDR1 just doesn't have a signature, or its signature is invisible, so it just lets everything else do what everything else is supposed to do.
Thank You Morten for making this possible, it was fun for me and informative.
Greg