A few comments about the modded Squeezebox 2 that Wayne brought over today.
As you might have gathered from my short post the sound we obtianed from the modded SB2 was nothing short of outstanding.
My system is currently a modded Denon 2900 universal player, a diy tube linestage that is quite similar in sound to the deHavilland UltraVerve (I have a friend with one and they sound very similar). Amps are currently R.E. Designs LNPA 150's and speakers are Meadowlark Blue Heron 2's. I also have a decent analog front end but that is not relavent to this as it's all about the digital.
I have been experimenting with PC based audio for the past 3-4 months and had built a dedicated audio PC and was using a modded StereoLink USB dac with excellent results but even with extra quiet fans and drives I could still hear the PC running softly between songs. This was masked by the music but I wanted to get rid of all the noise. Given all the good things people had to say about the Squeezebox and given that I already have many of my CD's ripped to the PC and I had an ethernet cable run to the stereo rack, purchasing a SB2 was an easy descision.
Now to the important stuff.
(bet you're glad of that)
First we listend to the system with the stock SB2 connected to the preamp like any other source. It sounded pretty good but was not great by any means. Part of this is the fact that the speakers are still quite new and only have about 150 hours on them. Wayne agreed that the speakers still sounded a bit rough in the upper frequencies.
We then replaced the stock wall wart switching power supply with the regulated linear supply built by Bolder Cable. A very substantial improvement. Much of the edginess and roughness in the upper frequencies went away and the speakers didn't sound like they needed breaking in as bad. We swapped the power supplies back and forth a couple of times and it was quite apparent that the linear supply was much smoother and provided improvements across the board and IMO should be the first item addressed by SB2 owners. This offers a great deal of improvement for not a lot of money and of course requires no intermal mods to the SB2.
We also swapped out the power cord to the linear supply to see how it would react to the change. Note we had the SB2 power supplies plugged into a BPT balanced power supply. Wayne substituted a shielded cable for the Bolder Nitro that we had been listening to and somewhat to my surprise the presentation changed quite noticeably. Mostly it was flatter and less realistic sounding. Instruments lost much of their body and the soundstage lost a fair amount of depth. We put the Nitro back in and left it. It was unquestionably nicer than his other power cord.
It was time to insert the modded SB2. This was a very nice improvement in every respect. Upper frequencies were much smoother and very natural, bass was tighter and more realistic. It was easy to get a sense of body with a floor bass and a piano. A nice wooden resonance that you hear in a live setting. We played quite a variety of tracks, something that is trivially easy with the SB2.
We also played an SACD hybrid of the Gene Harris quartet on the Denon, both the Redbook and SACD layers and in comparison to the modded SB2 the Denon sounded very tipped up in the high end and the bass was a bit on the boomy side. In the past I have been very happy with the sound of the Denon but since putting the Meadowlark BH2's in the system I have been irritated by the high frequencies. The Denon was just fine with my Vandy 3A signatures but was too bright with the BH2's. I figured this was because the tweeters on the Meadowlarks just needed more time. Well, maybe they do but the more we listened the more it became apparent that the ScanSpeak R2904/7000 tweeters were just being brutally honest. If the signal was harsh or edgey, then the tweeters didn't hide it at all. I'm keeping the Denon because I own a quite a few SACD's but for Redbook, the modded SB2 was smoother and more musical in my system.
We were really done fooling around and were just listening and having a nice conversation and Wayne mentioned he wanted to try driving power amps directly sometime to see how well the SB2 would work in that scenario. I said, no time like the present. Neither of us really knew how well it would work as part of the mods bypass the final op amps and drives the output directly from the DAC. Would it have enough current to drive the amps directly? How well would the digital volume work at low levels? While hooking it up I said this would not be an grey area experiment, it would either suck or be stunningly good. Well, it didn't suck...
We were both shocked at how good the combination proved to be. It was not subtle. My first comment to Wayne was who dropped the electrostats in my living room. It turns out that the Meadowlarks are much more transparent than we thought. The sound had the clarity and openess of a good electrostat with the addition of superb bass and realistically sized instruments (some large planars make instruments oversized IMO). It was one of those moments where we both just looked at each other and pretty much said where did this come from. Of course we started playing all the tracks we did earlier and some of them were like listening to a different recording.
Well I'm sure this has gone on too long but I wanted to make it real clear just how nice this piece sounds with the Bolder mods.
Yes Wayne is a friend but those who know me also know I wouldn't say this if I didn't really like it. IMO he is offering a quality product for a reasonable price. Given what I heard today my SB2 will be in the shop for mods very soon.
mike
