hi all, yesterday i popped round to merlin's to have a litsen to his kit and watch a bit of rugby. when i got there the game had kicked off and england scored as i walked through the door (which i took as a good sign) unfortunately the springboks ralleyed and started pushing back, the tension got too much so merlin and i went to listen to his main system whilst robbo finished watching the game. merlins main system consists of moon cd player and pre / power amps, merlin speakers, a tact rcs (used here as a crossover only) a crown digital amp and the infamous custom JBL subs. probalby the thing that defines the sound of this system the most is the room it sits in. unfortunately if there is a worse room out there i've not seen it, at 7x7x15 it's small and ideally suited to produce a massive bass suckout at about 80hz which can make tings in there sound lean. also i feel the tractor wallpaper that merlin has in there is not ideal either :D probably the first thing that strikes you is 'where's the bass', the jbl subs are truely massive and there are 2 of them driven by 1/2 a kilowatt of class d amp. but the bass they produce is incredibly subtle it's not a/v style trouser flapping bass. however when the music demands it boy can you feel it, also you can feel it in the next room and in the living room (probably better than in the listening room) and the neighbors can feel it upstairs in fact the neighbors can feel it down the street! this is bass that needs distance to mature, like good wine needs age. unfortunately merlins room doesn;t allow this unless you are right up against the back wall and then you only get an inkling - which is enough at sane volumes. i suspect (as does merlin) that in a bigger room they would utterly kick arse. also if you start to crank the volume you begin to feel the bass more and more but then the police arrive and confiscate your kit :eek: i brought some safri duo (the drumming stuff merlin) and some extreme gabba just to see if i could flummox the subs. the safri duo is best discribed as latin drumming with a techno backbeat, and for this the jbls were doing a grand job. unfortunately when it came to the gabba they just couldn;t cope. well that's what i thought until merlin explained that the tact system was only acting as a crossover and wasn't time aligning the JBL's. as the tact takes some time to do it's processing thing this was adding to the gap and the high bpm gabba was exacerbating this. given a larger room or activation of the Tacts full on rcs system this problem would go away but this wasn;t possible on the day. the next thing you notice is the sheer detail comming through the system. there was just so much of it. little ambient clues and nuances that you just didn;t hear before were now just hanging there. from the listening position about 2/3rds the way down the room the image was amazing too. just hanging there, the cliche of closing your eyes and not being able to tell where the speakers are holds true for this system, unfortunately to get the bass kick i like i had to move to the back wall and this killed the image somewhat however again this is down to the room and limited placement options/ bass suckout etc. life and timing for me were also very impressive although not as fast as my naim kit but certainly the next best thing (and with the advantages described above not really that big a deal depending on where your preferences lay). overall this is an incredibly impressive system even more so given that the room is like tying a runners legs together and expecting them to win a marathon. this probably sounds like damning with faint praise but it's not meant to sound that way. the biggest thing for me was trying to get my head arround the size of the JBL's and the aparent lack of bass (in fact it's the lack of bass distortion that i was missing). this was remedied by turning off the tact (and hence disconnecting the sub's) or using the tact to generate some 40hz test tones, suddenly you realise what the JBL's are adding to the party and boy do you miss it when it isn;t there. it's just that the traditional sub 'boom 'n' tizz' isn;t there, this is so transparent and well integrated it fools you into thinking that nothings going on when the door in the hallway is being rattled of it's hinges - i sh*t you not! merlin also has an a/v 5.1 music system in his living room consisting of pro-ac 5.1 sub / sat speakers, a rotel a/v amp a dennon play anything player and a beautiful plasma screen. first up was a dvd-a (teehee) of aimee mann (is that right merlin i wasn;t taking notes) which sounded impressive indeed even after the main system, there was nowhere as much detail as the main system but it was definately listenable to. next was a dvd-a (chuckle) multi channel mix of fleetwood mac's rumours which sounded arse and highlighted what is wrong with multichannel mixes if done badly. the 2.1 mixdown sounded very nice though. the door's la woman dvda sounded ok initially with 5.1 for riders on the storm's storm ambience but again the music sounded wrong when it kicked in, the 2.1 mix was worse with the 'storm' bit but musically much better.sacd was up next with i think the police, here it seemed like all life had been drained from the music ,except for one track oddly enough, there also seemed to be a very high pitched twittering to me like a badly tuned radio station but less noticeable. pink floyd's dsotm sacd was next in 5.1 glory and here i could see the point of 5.1. it immersed you in the music and gave you a much better insight into the drug addled world of roger waters (actually IS this a good thing?) and probably the closest to an auditory hallucination you can get. it still didn;t 'rock out' though. overall i think i prefer the presentation of dvd-a (fnarr) as it seems to have more punch and slam without losing detail and finesse. i must say that i was incredibly impressed by the rotel / dennon / proac combination and as the day turned more to conversation the system allowed you to talk over it but still enjoy the music. i also listened to merlins stax headphone amp which although not really my cup of tea really was transparent and incredibly lyrical. the saddest thing about the day was the his abandoned teac p30 just sitting on the floor all lonely. so... a really fun day listening to an incredible main system (even if the room it's in is not letting it breathe as it would like too) and a surprisingly musical a/v system. thanks merlin, for inviting me over, you'll have to visit me sometime soon, it was nice to see robbo too, and england won! cheers julian
