Your review of the Verite was the reason I decided to try a wooden headphone from a company I’d never heard of, and the rest is history, so I deeply appreciate the effect you had on my life, despite the fact that we’ve never met, or even conversed.
And I’m now about a third of the way through the 92 page Headfi thread (and sometimes dip into the SBAF sequel) about your search for an alternative to the Yggy. That is a great example of the enormous amount effort that you seem to put into absolutely everything you put your mind to.
It is funny how the impending HE-1 induced non-availability of much of the gear I have now has me intently focused on the listening I am doing prior to selling all (or most) of this stuff … as well as how much more listening I am doing (even though time is scarce at the moment).
Tonight I settled on the Conduit* → Blu-Mk2 → DAVE → WA234 MKII → LCD-4.
That’s being fed from Roon (of course), using the Audeze LCD-4 preset and a -4 dB headroom adjustement (to avoid the Audeze DSP causing digital clipping, which it otherwise does).
The WA234 MKII is currently running Takatsuki 274B rectifiers, latest-production WE300Bs (now fully burned in), and some NOS RCA 13EM7 signal tubes.
And it is … bloody magnificent!
Almost makes me want to just add the HE-1 to the collection. I’ll have the space** to do so under our new plan. That would be silly; if perhaps not the silliest thing I’ve ever done. But damn it is good …
*The “Conduit” is my self-designed and built Roon end-point; a no-holds-barred, cost-no-object, custom-built tour-de-force. Maybe I’ll post more about it in the future.
**The change in how we’re doing our world-tour, means I’ll have several times the space I do now, for half the year, for the foreseeable future. Which is one reason why I recently auditioned the Wilson Chronosonic XVX demo, driven by D’Agostino “Relentless” Monoblocks (at nearly 600lbs a piece). After all, my current speaker rig would sound like a fart-in-a-colander in the space it would have to fill. Need to hear the WAMM Master Chronosonic before deciding.
Mine today on the Empyrean is Olafur Arnalds, the album Re:Member. Super good. Sort of raw recordings, lot of ambient noises and piano squeaks and creaks coming through.
Ah, Book of Love 30th; in my opinion, one of the better remasters of late 80s/early 90s recordings .
Keep enjoying the music (and booze) more than the kit. As a retired military vet, who often moved across the country (and two European moves) I always enjoyed the music most when I was packing up and couldn’t (i.e., shouldn’t) buy any new gear, and just enjoyed what I had. I was often just replaying my faves, playing through underused kit to see if I should sell it, rather than pack it up.
If you get either one of those Wilson Audio systems, that knocking you’ll hear on the door will be me, coming to live in your listening room. Or at least coming to listen to a track or two I haven’t listened to Wilson gear in many years, but a MAXX Series 2 with VTL tube amps was probably the best sound I’ve heard. Didn’t like the WATT/Puppy much, but that MAXX system blew me away. I can’t imagine how good the Chronosonic and the WAMM sound.
And I’d love to hear the details of the Conduit project.
Hello Ian, the Wilson XVX and WAMM are certainly “non plus ultra” speakers but if you´re so inclined give this video a listen with headphones :
They are the Bayz Audio Counterpoint 2.0 and I think they cost half the price of the XVX, Peter Breuniger was extremely impressed and enthusiastic about them at the end of the video and he´s a man who´s listened to hundreds of systems along the years. If you´re looking to also go all out on amplification I would consider the CH Precision L10 / M10, but you probably already have
Appreciate the suggestion, but I am not really interested in radial transducers (nor dipoles, or other omni-directional designs for that matter).
They cause far too many issues due to all the reflections (one example, would be instantly undoing their own phase-correctness), with only one real benefit (and since I don’t move around when actively listening, it’s not a benefit to me).
Physics is pesky that way.
And the only practical fixes involve a combination of very heavy room treatments (to the point the room usually winds up looking more like a studio) and DSP. I don’t mind the latter. But for the former, I’m only willing to do to the extent they can be done invisibly - such as by being concealed by the art and other fixtures I want in the room.
This week’s annoyances (so far as, shit, it’s only Wednesday …):
People selling NOS tubes that are clearly old-stock, but definitely not NEW … as in they measure as well-used.
Getting a bunch of inquiries about eBay sellers offering “NOS” WE300B tubes that are actually just the current new production run from “WE”, but listed at double the asking price from WE themselves. Do I look like a tube broker?!
Finding that an increasing number of tracks (40 this week alone), that I added to Roon playlists from streaming services (cough, TIDAL, cough), are no longer available. I usually buy the stuff I really like anyway, but the amount of availability-churn recently has been ridiculous. Yes, it just means changing the playlist to point to a local file or a different service, but it’s still annoying.
We moved 3 years ago. Due to a number of factors we weren’t as ready as we should have been. Averaged 2 hours or less of sleep a night for 5 days getting the house ready to close. Fucking nightmare. I’m convinced I’m suffering some mild PTSD secondary to the experience. I can empathize with the inexorable flood of boxes.
Qobuz does seem to have a more tenacious grip on content licenses than either TIDAL or Spotify. Though the streaming services are, fortunately, more about discovery/exploration and not-at-home convenience for me.
It’s really more Spotify agreeing to expose/share what Roon needs (talk to Enno). But I agree with the general point. Spotify’s library, with true, lossless, Redbook content, and ditching their shitty interface (newly extra-shitified)*, accessible via Roon would get me to re-subscribe … otherwise there are some rolling donuts that need their attention.
I wouldn’t mind so much, but for insurance purposes we have to keep all the high-value stuff available for inspection/verification/additional packing. So that just has to hang around until last-day.
This “new” plan is a lot more fucking fiddly than the original one!
*Yes, yes, I know … 99% of the world gets all sticky over Spotify’s UX. Count me out. It’s still shitty. Just shitty in different ways to TIDAL, Qobuz, Amazon and so on …). A turd is still a turd, regardless of hue or texture.
I feel for and with you. We moved abroad and back twice and having the apartment full of boxes was a nightmare. It’s incredible how much stuff there is in all those tiny cupboards. So, no worries, they will go away . . . eventually!
I hope you don’t mind me asking - do the tracks disappear entirely or are they just “greyed out”? The former would be a massive nuisance insofar as not even knowing, perhaps, what music had gone missing.
I sympathize with all re. the boxes. After a few international moves during childhood, “it’s in that box” became the standard answer to questions like “have you seen my…?” (and, eventually, to just about anything or everything else).
In Roon, which is pretty much the only way I use TIDAL or Qobuz anymore, they don’t show as different until you try and play one, in which case Roon will show “This track is not available on [Service]” and then skip to the next one.
In the TIDAL app, it’s just greyed out.
I don’t know how Qobuz handles it, as it’s not happened there … yet.
I am now some 2,700 miles from Seattle … in Miami, FL … just off Biscayne Bay.
I will definitely miss the Seattle folks (though you’re very welcome to come visit, we have plenty of space for guests), and those in the general PNW vicinity (i.e. those immediately North of the border).
Been in the new place for two weeks. Our stuff showed up a week ago. Since then it has been a non-stop parade of boxes, and asking “Why in the hell did I bring this?”, “Which fucking box is that in?” and the perennial favorite, “What does this bleedin’ switch do?!”
Only one audio-casualty in the move … so far at least. A lone 13EM7 tube. Actually, it survived the move … but it didn’t survive being re-inserted into the amplifier. Fortunately I have boxes of the little fuckers.
…
The Sennheiser situation has me rethinking my HE-1 plans. While those gestate/settle, I’ve setup my main rig in a much simpler form. Just the Chord stack and Woo amplifier. I’ve also put my prior (all Linn/Michel) speaker rig in my office/den/cave … as a much different system will be replacing it in a dedicated listening room. This may, due to the amazing isolation I’m getting in my office, actually mean I don’t need headphones at all at home anymore.
We’ll see about that.
Pictures once I get the last few boxes unpacked and out of here.
Now to go put up the “No alligator/crocodile” signs …
I haven’t listened to Wilson gear in many years, but a MAXX Series 2 with VTL tube amps was probably the best sound I’ve heard. Didn’t like the WATT/Puppy much, but that MAXX system blew me away. I can’t imagine how good the Chronosonic and the WAMM sound.
