Visit to Julian's yesterday

My thanks to Julian for letting me pop in yesterday for a quick listen to his system and see his Squeezebox in action.

I wasn't quite sure about the logic used by the Squeezebox, but the menu system appears to be absolutely mug proof and is very clear and easy to use.
With my present situation, a squeezebox is not exactly viable as my PC is in the same room and rather too noisy for use at the same time as critical listening, but the principle of the idea is brilliant.

As for the listening, well things have certainly changed since the last time I visited Julian. The only thing remaining of his Naim/B&W setup was his 250 power amp. The CD5/hicap/82 being replaced by an Audio Synthesis Decade Dac/pre-amp and the B&Ws being replaced by a pair of home built 3 way transmission line speakers.
I'm not sure which of the two has created the biggest change, as both have had a dramatic impact on his system.

The key differences being:
- Absolutely effortless volume, almost certainly a result of the increase efficiency of the speakers
- Massive depth to the bass, with real "kick" to it. The only system I've heard that is in the same region was WM's older Belcanto/Meadowlark combination. Again, another speaker benefit
- Smoother presentation, with depth, better tonal colouration and separation, which I'm guessing is mainly a result of the CD/pre amp change to the AS Decade.

On softer music, I have to say that the above left me thinking simply "wow".

However, IMO there were a couple of drawbacks. The mid-bass was very prominant, leaving some of the other instruments a little drowned. That's probably something to do with the room interaction. More serious for myself was the timing issue on the bass.
My own system uses sealed box speakers (Kabers), and virtually everything I've heard with ports/transmission lines struggles with timing. Julians home brew speakers were actually much better than many I've heard, but still didn't have quite the coherance that I crave. Being fair, most people are happy with ported speakers, and probably wouldn't care, but for some reason, that's a real show stopper for me. On softer music, the timing really wasn't so obvious, but on rock music (which I certainly do listen to, wasn't too good).

The background for my visit was that I'm considering moving from my Naim CDP, which whilst very boppy, full of life and energy is being just a little too abbrasive in it's present surroundings. So the visit did re-affirm the idea that a move to an external DAC might well address some of the preference for moving to a more analogue style presentation, which the AS is, and according to several the NOS Dacs achieve.

Looks like I might well being talking to Derek in the near future...

 

So was he still using the blue and pink digital IC's ?

 

Mr_s,
i wouldn;t argue with any of that but i would say that the introduction of the squeezebox 2 has improved things a bit - i doubt it would match the speed of a sealed box system though but to my ears it's certainly tighter than it was yesterday.

added: i'm just listening to the van halen we listened to yesterday and it's soooo much better it's silly.

zanash,
i've actually gone back to using my original shark wire / bulet plug i/c's i'm going to be giving the pink and blue another go soon though.
cheers


julian