Oh yeah, it was a good afternoon. DAM (consisting of me, Jason [Pez] Mike [mgalusha], Brad [brad b], and Wayne) got together at a local audiophile's (Jerry [Turk]). Jerry has a very nice system:
Black
RM40's w/the FST tweeter and the TRT crossovers. I'd never seen the 40s in full wrap, glossy black before and they looked GREAT. Very imposing, but also very cool looking.
The rest of Jerry's system consisted of:
Parasound JC-1 Monoblock amps
Sony SA777ES SACD player
Musical Fidelity A3^24 DACand 2 preamps that we tried out in turn:
Musical Fidelity A308^CR preamp
AVA FetValve Transcendance 7 preampPlus, a VERY nice looking turntable that we never did get around to listening to
Cabling was
Synergistic for speaker wire, but I forget what was used for interconnects.
I also brought over some toys to play with -
Mensa Dio w/Bolder power supply, in-line Bybee'd digital filter, 2 runs of bybee'd nitro's, Nitro Speaker wire, Bybee'd Nitro jumpers, and my
AVA FetValve 550ex. Wayne also brought some in-line speaker bybee's.
First up was listening to some Pat Methaney via the
A3^24 DAC, A308 Preamp, and
JC-1's with the
Synergistic cables. It sounded pretty dang good. Maybe a bit heavy and loose on the bottom end, and not quite as transparent as I know the 40's can be, but a very smooth, pleasing sound. Then I slipped in some
Siemens tubes in to Jerry's
AVA T7 preamp. Jerry had had bad impressions listening to it with the stock
Electroharmonix tubes (too clinical sounding), and the
Amperex tubes (too fat bass). He'd never heard the Siemen's tubes in the circuit. We replaced the
A3^24 w/the
T7, and and the
JC-1s with the
550ex. Microdynamics increased, bass tightened a lot, and a veils wer lifted. My opinion is that the
T7 is clearly a much better preamp in Jerry's system, but we'll get back to a more direct 550ex and JC-1 comparison in a moment.
We switched music to a CD of Piano and Violin, called "The Devil's Dance", some fiendishly difficult pieces. We listened to track 4, Dance Macabre composed by that master of musical tone poems - Saint Saens. This whole disk is a GREAT test of micro dynamics, macro dynamics, transient attack, air, decay, pace, and grain (or lack thereof) in your equipment.
We listen first with the
550ex, then with the
JC-1's in the system. The midrange I thought was almost identical on both amps, but the JC-1 still had a bigger, fatter bass, but also (incredibly) a smoother top end. I actually thought the top end was "overly" smooth, because the violin's midrange has a sound of the bow "biting" in to the strings, and the JC-1's got that down perfectly, but the upper frequencies should have had that same character of bow biting in to string, but it didn't, it was buttery smooth, a bit of a disconnect in the sound, IMO.
In goes the dual runs of
Bybee'd Nitro's (between the DAC and pre, and between the pre and amp). Holy dynamics, batman! The sound now just leaped out of the speakers, attack, decay, air, pace, bass, all took a big jump up in quality. I think the
JC-1's are very sensitive to interconnects, and it was immediately and blatantly obvious that they liked the
Bybee'd Nitro's much better. Also, the
JC-1's were now producing the high end properly, with the "bite" of the bow clearly audible in the high notes as well as the mid range notes, giving the whole sound a coherency that was missing with the prior interconnects. At this point, I felt the
JC-1's and the
550ex sounded way more alike than different, but w/the
550ex still having better microdynamics, but the
JC-1's still smoother sounding. Or, put another way, the
JC-1's were more mellifluous and the
550ex more percussive. Oh yes, the
JC-1's did have better Macrodynamics. Both amps do the "quiet" parts very well, but the
JC-1s were able to go a bit louder on the loud parts. Not a huge difference, but there it was (I really liked the
JC-1's headroom for demanding, loud passages).
In goes the
Nitro speaker wire w/the
JC-1's. It was a similar improvement to putting in the
Bybee'd Nitro IC's, but to a smaller degree. Definitely an improvement, but not as "hit you over the head" obvious as the Nitro IC's. Then we put in the
speaker level bybee filters. Some of the attack of notes was not as sharp, but in it's place was a slight "rounding" of the notes that as quite nice. Treble and midrange had a "blacker" background.
Next up was the
Mensa, and the main improvement was focus. Everything tightened up, imaging, bass (which was starting to sound EXTREMELY impressive w/the
JC-1's - no hint of bloat or fat now!). When listening with the Mensa and digital inline filter (the inline filter increased soundstage depth and lowered noise floor considerably), we had the Pat Methaney on again. Whereas before, you could hear his fingers moving over the fretboard every 3rd note or so, with the Mensa and bybee digital filter, you could hear his fingers moving around continuously. The extra resolution and focus really let these small details come out.
That's pretty much the extent of the playing around we did w/various equipment. I did want to comment on the sound of Jerry's
RM40's vs. mine (I have the auricap crossover and the original dual spiral ribbon tweeters). The main area I heard a difference was the upper mids, which were more clearly and cleanly rendered on Jerry's 40's than mine are capable of. I have the FST tweeter, I just need the dressplates from Brian so I can install them. When I have the FST tweeter in place, it'll be interesting to see how much of the better upper mids are the result of the FST vs. the TRT crossover. And, the FST tweeter is just a sweeter sounding tweeter than the dual spiral tweeters.
Also, I find that Jerry's 40's produced upper bass better than my 40's, but mine do the really deep bass better. I'm pretty certain that these differences are a result of different rooms having different effects on the bass. I had always thought that the 40's (based on mine) were just naturally weak at upper bass, but I now know that is not the case. When I recently added the digital bybee filter to my Mensa recently, my bass (particularly upper bass) improved a LOT, but the upper bass in Jerry's system had a physical, percussive quality that hit harder than mine does (actually it reminded me a lot of the presentation of the Shelah Audio Excelarrays, which is very good indeed).
Funny story - Jerry's air conditioning had gone out right before everyone showed up, and the repair tech showed up toward the end of the listening session. At one point he asked the price of the
RM40's, and when told their $6k price, just raised his eyebrows, slightly shook his head, and muttered something about his 12"
JBL's sounding fine. That was while we were listening to my "Devil's Dance" classical CD. A few minutes later Jason put on Radiohead, and the tech noted that that was the cleanest reproduction of the track he'd ever heard (must have been a Radiohead fan). That particular track had a lot of intentional distortion recorded in to it. It was pristinely rendered distortion!
It was pretty funny. . .
That's about all I can remember right now, hopefully some of the others will post their impressions as well.
