Well that was fun! Shame you all couldn't stay into the evening. An interesting day with quite a variety of music. As well as the usual suspects (see sig) we had a Naim CDX, a Naim Nait 2, some Indigo standmount speakers and a few cables.
The CDX is a nice CD player. A bit calmer than the Arcam, slightly less mid-forward and a tad smoother - more refined. It should sound better of course at nearly three times the price and it didn't disappoint. I felt it suited some types of music better than others though. It had good separation of instruments and all the separate parts could be easily followed. It didn't always put them together into a convincing hole though. The other thing it didn't do was it didn't create a credible soundstage. It didn't recreate the acoustic of the recording venue so everything sounded a bit as though it had all been recorded in the same room - Stevie Ray Vaughan was playing in my local pub, not a smokey nightclub. It wouldn't be the one I'd choose because I like the soundstage and the believable acoustic that the Arcam produces. I did like the smoothness (or rather lack of harshness) and the intelligibility. It's given me some clues as to what to listen for if I do ever go for a more expensive player.
We tried the solid silver speaker cable to see what effect it had. Chris will tell us who's it was. I could hear no immediate differences (this on piano and cello where I would expect changes to be evident). Maybe on extended listening a difference would be detected when reverting to the Van Damme but it would I think be very subtle.
The little Nait 2 (was that 15 Watts per channel?) did a creditable job of getting some sound out of the Dyns, fed by the CDX. It sounded OK. Nothing too nasty except that from cold it couldn't follow a tune
It warmed to the task though and was soon producing some reasonable sounds. No soundstage of course. And a fair bit of detail and definition missing but a good performance for its price.
The Indigo standmounts had a slight disadvantage as one tweeter was found to be dented on arrival (not from the journey). Still they managed to produce a reasonable sound. A little bit thin. They were light in the bass. Quite quick and reasonably open though. Apparently they sold for £400 which sounds a little bit ambitious to me.
As for my system, it didn't like the opera that Robert chose. The voice was too forward and loud in comparison to the orchestra. I assume it doesn't normally sound like that. It wasn't possible to get enough power out of the orchestra without the voice shreaking painfully. Strange as the system was fine with the cellos and piano and it was quite impressive with The Great Gate Of Kiev from Pictures At An Exhibition - wonderful tympanies - like thunder
- first time I've played that on the Dyns.
It's very hard to balance a system to suit all kinds of music, especially given the widely varying balance of CDs. I think I have a good compromise for the kinds of music I listen to. The sub does become obtrusive on some modern stuff though where it's obvious that the engineer has added a lot of very low bass boost. On other stuff that's properly recorded/produced, it makes the instruments sound more whole and the acoustic more believable (and as for those timpanies
).
And I have a shopping list for two CDs
And I never got to play any Dire Straits or Led Zep
Must do another one soon
