...lead me to wonder what Rob’s impressions were of his listening sessions with Romaz and Jay(of audiobacon.net).
I'm not Rob but I will provide my own account of my time with both Rob and Jay. Life is extremely busy for me right now but having received numerous PMs asking me about my time with these gentlemen, I felt it best to take this time to provide a response. As I previously posted, Rob brought along some of his prototypes and so I will not be discussing those.
First of all, it was my pleasure and privilege to have hosted both Rob and Jay at my home for nearly 5 days last week. It was the first time for either gentleman to visit me at my home in northern California and the three of us got along splendidly. I am grateful for the stimulating conversation about anything and everything. Having enjoyed on repeated occasions genuine English tea made for me by Rob himself, I now get it why you English enjoy your tea. Rob must have consumed at least a dozen cups per day! By the end of his stay, Rob felt that he could fit in well living in the U.S. as he found himself already speaking like an American. Like, way cool, Rob!
Our listening sessions were often more mundane than they were enjoyable as they involved the back and forth A/Bing of the same tracks over and over again. To set our ears to a proper reference, we attended a performance by our local symphony on Friday night. Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Beethoven I was well acquainted with but I was introduced that night to a very enjoyable piece from a contemporary composer I had never heard of before named Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer that happened to be one of Rob's favorites. While at home, having browsed through Rob's music collection on his 5TB drive, I can attest to the impressive vastness of his collection. Few engineers that I know are also genuine music lovers and Rob is definitely one of them. To break the monotony of our listening sessions, on Sunday we took off to Lake Tahoe where we enjoyed the 5 feet of fresh powder that had fallen the previous 2 days. With a small group, we spent a couple of hours on a snowmobile where we enjoyed beautiful views of the lake. Rob told me it was his first time on a snowmobile although you wouldn't have thought it. One thing I now know, Rob likes to go fast, much faster than Jay.
As for our impressions, I will begin with this. Having had friends over on numerous occasions for both blinded and unblinded listening sessions over the years, it came as no surprise that Rob, Jay and I have different ears, different sensitivities, different priorities and different preferences. While we each claim "live music" as our reference, we each differed in our interpretation of what live music should sound like. This should come as no surprise. At an orchestral performance, Rob told me he prefers to sit in the front row or even on the stage amongst the performers. While I enjoy being close to the performers, I prefer a slightly more "mid-hall" perspective as I like to glean the acoustics of a good venue. As this was Jay's first time attending a classical concert, it was not clear to me if he had a preference. I believe that most of the live concerts he attends are heavily amplified. Regardless, if I have accurately pegged these gentlemen, during our listening sessions, Rob's predominant focus was on depth and the avoidance of anything that was bright which he equated to RF noise. Jay had a proclivity toward timbre and tone while I was very sensitive to air and space and the layering of detail.
As we compared USB cables, during one of our blind listening sessions, Jim Weil, creator of the RF mains conditioner we were using in my system came by and he participated briefly. We compared Rob's cheap USB cable that incorporated 2 built-in ferrites against Jay's personal reference -- the Danacable TruStream USB, my personal reference -- the Clarity Cables Natural USB, and a new cable Jay had received for review, the TotalDac USB Gigafilter. Because the price of cables is offensive to some on this thread, I will not list what these cables cost. To my ears, the differences amongst these cables were not subtle. The TotalDac had the most laid back presentation. It had a nice smooth romantic tone but at the expense of detail. This would help offset a bright or harsh system nicely but in my setup, I ranked it 3rd out of the 4 cables. The Danacables TruStream had slightly less warmth then the TotalDac, was a bit more incisive and portrayed better detail resolution. It had more air than the TotalDac and I ranked this cable 2nd best. It was no surprise that I found my Clarity Cables Natural USB to be my favorite USB cable and it is a cable I believe I could consistently pick out in a blind test. Having compared this USB cable against several dozen USB cables over the past couple of years, I have found that it speaks to me better than any USB cable I have yet heard. It presents the most air and space while also layering detail better than any cable I have compared it to and yet, despite it's detail resolution, I find no harshness at all with this cable. To my ears, it was also the most neutral sounding of all the cables. Despite Jay preferring the Danacable in his system, in my system, he also found the Clarity Cables Natural USB to sound the best. Jim Weil agreed with this sentiment as well. It was the collective opinion of these three (Jay, Jim, and myself) that Rob's cheap USB cable came in last place. Speaking only for myself, Rob's cheap USB cable sounded dull and flat and the least engaging of the lot. Rob's opinion was different from the group. He felt his cheap USB cable sounded best and "dull" is how things can sound in the absence of RF noise. He described my Clarity Cables Natural USB cable as an "RF noise generator" and he thought it sounded the worst of the lot.
As we compared BNC cables, we weren't as far apart on our opinions as we were with USB cables. We all felt the naked (no ferrites) 2m cheap BNC cable sounded better than the shorter (0.5m) naked cheap BNC cable. We also felt that the 2m BNC cable sounded better with ferrites than without. It was with the 0.5m Habst cable where we disagreed. Both Jay and I preferred the Habst as we felt it provided more air, better timbre, and better detail resolution. Rob did not like this cable because he felt it sounded bright and once again labeled it an "RF noise generator." What is interesting is I do not find this cable to sound bright at all and so this is one of those instances where we disagree on what we consider to sound bright. I do find this cable to have considerably greater "presence" than the cheap BNC cable which is very much to my liking. "Bright" invariably leads to fatigue for me and yet fatigue has never been an issue for me with the Habst cable.
As an aside, without getting into details for confidentiality reasons, with one of Rob's prototypes, ferrites were not a benefit at all (in fact, ferrites made it sound worse) and while this was a surprising finding, we were unanimous on this opinion. In fact, there were several instances when were were surprised by what we heard. As Rob so wisely put it, "assume nothing." There are audiophiles on this thread that assume too much and have already made up their minds about how something will sound based on preconceived notions. You have to listen.
As we compared the Innuos Zenith SE against Rob's laptop running on batteries, both Jay and I preferred the Zenith SE to his laptop by a fairly wide margin. Jay felt it had more accurate tone and timbre while I felt the Zenith SE had better detail resolution, layering of detail, air and tonal weight. Rob felt his laptop portrayed greater depth and both Jay and I agreed although personally, I struggled at first to hear this depth because all I could hear was the missing detail. Once again, Rob labeled the Zenith SE an "RF noise generator."
To make things even more interesting, because Rob's personal Blu2 has an optical input, we were able to compare his laptop which has an optical output against my modified Oppo 205 which also has an optical output. Since both of these units output optical via Toslink, neither should be passing any RF to Rob's Blu2 but once again, in this comparison, Rob believed his Windows laptop running on batteries sounded better. Because my Oppo unit was being fed by the Zenith SE, it was Rob's opinion that the noise being generated by the Zenith SE was spilling into the mains line and polluting both Blu2 and DAVE. It was his opinion that the best server would have to be a server that ran on batteries, an opinion he has held for a long time now. If this is true, then clearly DAVE is not that immune to noise and music sources, cables and line conditioners can make a difference and this has been an opinion I have held for a long time. This doesn't take away from the high-level defenses implemented into the DAVE. It just means that DAVE isn't completely impervious.
While it might seem that Rob was often at odds with Jay and myself on what we heard and what we preferred, there were also many times when we agreed on what we heard. As much as I love the tonal qualities of Pass Labs' amplifiers, I now look at this amp as a temporary placeholder for what is to come from Rob and Chord and I will leave it at that. Also, without any equivocation, I can say that DAVE is a large gap more transparent and resolving than Hugo2 and the three of us are in agreement with this. While I have a preference for BluHugo2 over DAVE by itself, BluDAVE is just in a different league and this gap was no more apparent then when we had BluDAVE directly driving my Omega Alnicos. It was Jay's opinion that this combo sounded better than BluDAVE driving my Martin Logans via my Pass Labs and I would have to agree. While I have grown to really appreciate what the Martin Logan Renaissance 15As can do with large orchestral music, I still find more personal engagement with my BluDAVE directly driving speakers. I believe Rob was taken by the Omega Alnicos enough to want to purchase a pair for himself.
So what is my take away from all of this? First, there is no one in this industry that I respect more than Rob. It is his ears that created what I consider to be the finest DAC setup (Blu2 + DAVE) my ears have ever heard and so when Rob speaks, it would be foolish not to listen. At the same time, it is my ears and my sensitivities that I have to live with and so should I now subject myself to a sound that is not my preference? Over the years, Rob has alluded to some audiophiles preferring the sound of distortion (even if it is even-order harmonic distortion) and generally, he has reserved this statement for those who like R2R DACs. What is interesting is that I used to own a very good R2R DAC, the TotalDac d1-monobloc, and when I first heard the DAVE, my initial impressions were that DAVE was "brighter" than my TotalDac although I attributed this brightness to DAVE's superior detail resolution coming forward. It is this more illuminated detail resolution that caused me to switch to the DAVE and yet it is now this same quality that I'm hearing with cables and sources that I'm being told represents RF noise. Confusing? Yes, however, ultimately, I will always revert back to my tried and true mantra: "If it sounds better, it is better." How does it make sense to do it any other way? Perhaps, over time, my definition of "better" will change and I will learn to hear things as Rob hears them.
Another lesson that this exercise has reinforced for me is that don't assume that just because Rob likes something or that I like something or Jay likes something, that you'll like it, too. I'm sure many will read this post and wonder who's right and who's wrong? Listen for yourself and make up your own mind.
Finally, I'll close with this. With the past few PMs that Malc and I have exchanged, he has repeatedly asked me when I was going to retire from posting on forums as I indicated late last year that my retirement was imminent. I'm beginning to get the feeling that Malc believes I should retire now and I think he's right. I think the time has come and so this post will signal the beginning of the end for me here on this thread and on Head-Fi. Life has simply become too busy. I assume this post will generate questions and I will stick around to answer a few of those and bid my farewell. It's been my pleasure interacting with many of you. I feel I have made some genuine friends.
All the best,
Roy