DeVore O/96, Audio Note, Auditorium 23... analog and digital

I've been watching Rafe's system evolve for a couple years now. It's been a quick ride actually.
The point I'd make concerning the room is; with equipment of this quality, it seems a shame not to get maximum sonic benefit. At least a nice absorption panel behind the listening position. Not a lot of money for what should be a marked improvement and can be decorative as well.

 

I think if you have good enough equipment, it should sound great regardless. Obviously, you want to try and eliminate ambient noises, but that't all you really should have to do. Of course, tuning a room may actually be tuning some part of your system that you are finding unpleasent.

 

I have been in the room. The photos do it a disservice. It is far better position in real life. It is not a dedicated audio room. The way it is set up works better then the photos would lead you to believe.

 

I think those O/96s would wrestle any reasonable space into blissful submission ...

 

do the O/93's work better closer to room boundaries?

 

What system does get the maximum sonic benefit? You are suggesting a minimum improvement which would still leave him not getting the "maximum sonic benefit". Can the room or system be improved? Maybe. However for many of us, especially those of us in small homes, every space has to serve multiple functions. Reaching "maximum sonic benefit" from an audio system may very well be way down the list as a priority for that space. That's just how I see it.

 

I always felt like the odd man out for having "bad rooms". I told this to my dealer and he just laughed. "Good rooms are make believe, everybody in the real world has their speakers way too close to walls, bad acoustics, etc." he told me. I felt kinda better.

 

Not to mention the fact that it's just more fun to have music in a place where you can always listen to it. Padded rooms with one chair may be great, but I'll take a compromised and convenient system that lets me share music with my family and friends over a perfect system that's hidden in some obsessively prepared hole every time.

 

This

Waited 5 years to finish my basement and it's far acoustically superior to the room I've been using. I use it the least out of my 3 systems and my tivoli in the bedroom. Hard lesson to learn. Room/life first, acoustics second

 

OH yeah. You gotta write up a review on these. I've been interested in hearing them. What's their character?

 

When my listening position was right up against the back wall, I did get a pretty enormous improvement by adding some acoustic treatment behind my head.

At the time I didn't want any visible acoustic treatments, so I hid them. I built a frame with plywood and 2x2's that I stained. Then I put the acoustic foam inside with glue and covered it with this cool tapestry using some decorative nails. It turned out really well.

Your room has a sorta Southwestern / Aztec-y vibe with the cool rugs, so you could definitely do something similar for under $75 to see if you get any improvement. Love the look of your room as-is though. Those DeVore's sure make a room look good.

 

Brian you will find some of my thoughts on a thread in the shindo forum on audio shark.

 

I had the great fortune to hear Raferx's system last night, and have decided to post a few impressions... with some hesitation as I'm sure I will be viewed as some newby who is posting his first comments here... which is true. That said, I'm not a newby as far as audio goes, so I believe my observations are valid. If you choose to disagree with my comments, feel free.

The O96's are fantastic speakers, as I'm sure most of you know. Their finish is beautiful, their bass is mind boggling, and their ability to accurately portray instrumental timbres is amazing. As a (somewhat lapsed) violinist, string instruments are my ultimate test for any speaker, and the O96's ability to accurately portray strings is exemplary. No issues with other instruments, either. I found their presentation to be slightly forward compared to my Audio Nirvana Super 12's which place the listener farther back in the concert hall. Paired with a top SET amp as these are, they absolutely sing and are able to convey a huge dynamic range with ease.

The AN CD player is still breaking in, but it will obviously be a top player given more hours. That said, I have some reservations about AN players. First and foremost, it has no SACD capability, and for myself, this alone would be a deal breaker. As a classical music lover, I have come to love the vast majority of SACD's that are consistently being added to the classical catalogue. I've become a HUGE Marantz fan (my current player is an SA8004 highly modified by Chris Johnson at Parts Connexion), and for the same amount of money as the AN 2.1, can have their highly reviewed SA14S1 which by all accounts will compete with the best CD / SACD players currently available, while offering 24/192 and DSD decoding. Raferx has heard this argument from me before, so he isn't new to it. For anyone who owns a huge Redbook collection, this is obviously a top choice player. However, those of us who have such a beast (of burden?) are slowly becoming extinct with more and more SACD's becoming available, plus HD downloads becoming commonplace. And I really have no interest in getting into the digital vs analogue argument here - I sold my analogue rig about twenty years ago, and have never really regretted it.

As far as the sound between Raferx's analogue rig and CD player went, I preferred vinyl in all cases. It was a more natural and engaging sound with that analogue "warmth" by the bucketful. I found the AN player's sound thinner and less rounded out most of the time, and we did listen to a few identical recordings, although the mastering may have been different - Grundman vs Ricker on Madeleine Peyroux's "Careless Love", for example. Considering who mastered these recordings, I really don't think this was the issue here. Perhaps as the player breaks in more, it will "fill out" more.

For me last night, Raferx's system excelled at chamber music and small jazz ensembles, large orchestral works not so much. While it did a great job of defining individual instruments during complex orchestral passages, the depth of the soundstage was a little too shallow for my tastes. I have a feeling that this may again be due to more break-in time being required for the player.

 

The O/96's have ridiculous depth so might be the player but could also be the room (not enuf to really let them breath).

By the way, welcome. Stay out of the Music Forum or you'll go broke.

 

I found the 1.1 to sound thin as did many people in the room listening at Soundhounds - BUT it was also the one player that people agreed sounded the most interesting and engaging and the one people would actually want to buy - but it doesn't "save" bad treble recordings. And it was thin when the recordings were thin - I think the other players got bogged down in a sameness (homogenized) of reproduction. The better AN DACs add some weight which dispels some of the issues of the entry players. Sometimes people get use to darker leaning systems and when you hear something lighter it will come off (in comparison) as bright when it may not actually BE bright.

Peter Qvortrup pretty much despises SACD music reproduction so to the fans of it you will have a long long wait for an SACD machine from Audio Note. Hell I just want Peter to put a headphone output on the preamps and integrateds to make them more versatile so I don't have to buy a dedicated headphone amp - M6 as preamp and M6 quality headphone amp would be jaw dropping no? Must be a way to add a jack and some wires without making it cost crazy amounts. Late night listening in apartments Peter - people still want to listen to their music and sometimes have to go to headphones. PS - make some AN headphones - I know it will look dumb with little Russian Birch rectangle boxes on our ears but PLEASE for the love of might add some headphone options.

I wished Rafe had the DAC 3.1X and a CD/Two II transport - this is the point for me where AN's digital completely lines up the stars and is probably the sweet spot in terms of getting real high end performance without any real weaknesses (unless you hear the better models - don't do that and you're safe).

 

Yes, please, headphone output on a AN preamp or even better for me a dedicated headphone amp.

 

That is great news. Your mastering style mixed with the AN magic.

 

There are already advanced plans for AN headphone amps, selectable on order output options to cater for different headphone impedances.

 

Nice - I didn't know they were doing any of this - awesome stuff - anything else they're working on? I still say mini- AN E headphones. Call it the AN/ hEad. It would seem to be a decent sized market and other companies like B&W and Denon have put out some headphones - I'll grant you much bigger companies. Then again maybe headphones are about as good as they're going to get??

Fred Crowder mentioned they were working on an ADC and something about microphones.

 

It would be nice having enough $$$ that one is stuck waiting for the next AN new product because there is no where up the line to go. A bunch of us hang out at a dealer that sells AN gear (where I bought my Kageki). One of the gang, who owns a DAC 4, was there to audition a DAC 5. Another regular showed up, and after finding out what was going on, he went home to bring in his DAC 3 for comparison purposes. We got to hear a three-way shoot out between the units (blind, the person doing the switching knew which was playing but not anyone else). It was quite easy to tell the difference between the 3 and 4, with the difference between the 4 and 5 being much more subtle. The other amazing thing about the audition was that one could hear differences between the DACs even when the source was a Sonos server delivering low-rez music from the likes of Beats and other music services. Also, the speakers and the amps used in the comparison were quite modest, which shows that any improvement will be audible on most decent systems. I believe all three DACs, despite a WIDE range in price, have the same basic digital circuitry--the difference being in the quality of the analogue part of the DAC. The end result was a three-way trade, the owner of the 4 trading it in and buying the 5, the owner of the 3 buying the 4 and the dealer taking back the 3 to sell to someone else. We did not call the two local owners of DAC 5 signatures for the utlimate showdown.

Even at this level, there is "competition"--different sounding DACs that are not necessarily better or worse--the comparative merits of which is a matter of taste. In a differnt system, I heard a comparison between the DAC 5 and another tube DAC that, like the AN gear, puts heavy emphasis on the analogue stage. I preferred the DAC 5s top end (more open sounding), but the other DAC seemed to deliver a more vibrant and realistic midrange. I have not tried either in my own system--I am lucky that I have no "room" for a big stand-alone DAC.

 

The new Ladder Dac architecture will cause a skew in how people react to AN dacs. I heard the prototype in Peter's home system 2 weeks ago and the sound is unlike any digital source I've encountered in the past. I took lots of photos of the new factory and new products like monoblock single 211 Ongaku amplifiers, M6 Signature pre's, right down to the new bipolar capacitors and silver resistors. Certainly some new toys coming.

 

No argument there.

 

Thanks Art, a very kind endorsement that I appreciate.
Because of my time in this apartment I can hear 'through' my room limitations, yes, it could use some acoustic panels in a few key spots.
Would they help? Yes. Would they be a big difference? No.
I'm seriously considering moving sooner, rather than later (to a concrete building), but in the meantime I may look at switching things up in the living room.
Stay tuned