SiBurning
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 18, 2005
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Quote:
We had one. Noone bothered to use it. Except for lunch, a DIYer, and a couple of renegades.
Speaking of renegades, thanks whoever brought the benchmark dac 1 to renegade Salon C. This was the one thing I planned on listening to. I'm looking for a source, and been meaning to listen to this. Now I understand what all the love-hate is about. Despite its flaws (I don't quite get the comments about it being harsh, but I do understand why some say it sucks the life out of the music), it's the first time I heard a recorded string quartet that sounded like 5 distinct people playing, as opposed to the tones melding together. And for the wiseguys, the fifth person isn't some fourth order harmonic generated by cross talk from cheap coupling capacitors muddying the sound when they should've been black gates: it's the accompanying harpsichordist.
Dimitris also had a very nice source: Cary CDP-1. This is much more musical and natural sounding, without much loss of detail. It was set up with an elecstrostatic system. Listening to Keep on Growing by Derek and the Dominos, the music made a lot more sense on this system. I could understand how the different distorted sounds of guitars worked together in a way that gave the impression it had to be distorted precisely that way. It gave me a small chill to listen to music I've heard hundreds of times before, but never understood so clearly. It's the same kind of separation of the instruments that came out of the benchmark, although the Cary seems willing to omit the last nuances in favor of the buzz and excitement. The Benchmark seems to be all out no compromise on detail to the point where I felt I could look over and read the faces and hear the internal mental muttering of the musicians as they played. In its own way, the Benchmark was as intimate an experience as I've ever had with the musicians without actually being there. While the Cary makes the music sound coherent, the benchmark is like listening through a magnifying glass. Forest vs. Trees.
Near the end of the meet I checked in with bozebuttons to see what amazing stuff he brought. With bozebuttons in his "it's a proven fact, it's the transport, stupid" mode, I decided to test his theory out scientifically by changing one variable on his system, with its dedicate transport, a $2000 set of interconnects, and a huge tube amp that cost more than my car, all plugged into my trusty Etymotics. So I popped in a $55 Zhaolu Dac-in-the-box. As Artie Johnson of Laugh-In would say, "very interesting, but stupid".
| Originally Posted by nikongod /img/forum/go_quote.gif request for future meets: QUIET room!!! |
We had one. Noone bothered to use it. Except for lunch, a DIYer, and a couple of renegades.
Speaking of renegades, thanks whoever brought the benchmark dac 1 to renegade Salon C. This was the one thing I planned on listening to. I'm looking for a source, and been meaning to listen to this. Now I understand what all the love-hate is about. Despite its flaws (I don't quite get the comments about it being harsh, but I do understand why some say it sucks the life out of the music), it's the first time I heard a recorded string quartet that sounded like 5 distinct people playing, as opposed to the tones melding together. And for the wiseguys, the fifth person isn't some fourth order harmonic generated by cross talk from cheap coupling capacitors muddying the sound when they should've been black gates: it's the accompanying harpsichordist.
Dimitris also had a very nice source: Cary CDP-1. This is much more musical and natural sounding, without much loss of detail. It was set up with an elecstrostatic system. Listening to Keep on Growing by Derek and the Dominos, the music made a lot more sense on this system. I could understand how the different distorted sounds of guitars worked together in a way that gave the impression it had to be distorted precisely that way. It gave me a small chill to listen to music I've heard hundreds of times before, but never understood so clearly. It's the same kind of separation of the instruments that came out of the benchmark, although the Cary seems willing to omit the last nuances in favor of the buzz and excitement. The Benchmark seems to be all out no compromise on detail to the point where I felt I could look over and read the faces and hear the internal mental muttering of the musicians as they played. In its own way, the Benchmark was as intimate an experience as I've ever had with the musicians without actually being there. While the Cary makes the music sound coherent, the benchmark is like listening through a magnifying glass. Forest vs. Trees.
Near the end of the meet I checked in with bozebuttons to see what amazing stuff he brought. With bozebuttons in his "it's a proven fact, it's the transport, stupid" mode, I decided to test his theory out scientifically by changing one variable on his system, with its dedicate transport, a $2000 set of interconnects, and a huge tube amp that cost more than my car, all plugged into my trusty Etymotics. So I popped in a $55 Zhaolu Dac-in-the-box. As Artie Johnson of Laugh-In would say, "very interesting, but stupid".
