What is wrong with Cary as transport?

[lan]

Well it gets prohibitively expensive if you get or try the "best" of anything. You only want to investigate what makes the most difference. It's probably better to spread the tweaking (and resources) in various area as opposed to going all out in one. Tweaking/modding a kind of an art this way.... trying to acheive a balance.

Yeah PS Audio's marketting department is a bit wonky. When it comes to this sensory stuff, I only believe my own ears and experiences. I'm not one to draw quick conclusions nor make definite "laws". I sometimes retest things to validate. The human body is funny. Your experience depends on your health, the weather, etc. Since we're dealing with systems, it's sometimes hard to isolate one cause of something. It takes a systematic approach to troubleshoot, to find bottlenecks, etc. In computers it's much easier since you can run benchmarks. In this audio perception business, you have to be very trained and in tune. Most people do not know their capabilities.

I find Patrick kind of very tweaky. He is about extremes. He likes to tinker. I think he needs to take things up a few notches. Taking the computer and cd player "apart" is a nice learning experience to learn more about it's performance / bottlenecks.

I personally wouldn't bother that much tweaking the computer. It's best to go with dedicated external audio device like Transporter.

 

[Patrick82]

I did some long-term testing and hear huge differences when changing between transports. Detail is about the same with computer and Cary. But Cary also sounds very heavy, smooth, warm and musical. I don't like it.

I'm afraid if I start modding the computer it will sound closer to Cary. I like the thin sound better. Transients on computer sound edgy and hairy while on Cary they sound smooth and round.
When I do the CleanSweep for amp and DAC the difference is bigger if I use computer as transport because the detail sounds more subtle. After only 15 minutes the transients start blending together!

 

[Patrick82]

OH...MY...GOD!

The reason why Cary sounded too heavy was because the Valhalla cable between wall and power conditioner was too fat. It was using 2 conductors (16 AWG) per signal instead of 1 conductor which I use in my whole system. I modded it to 1 conductor and now Cary sounds perfect. I hear no problems! I don't know how it can sound any better.

Computer sounds too thin now though, I hear problems with it now, but it doesn't bother me, because it still sounds good, even 128 mp3 sounds good, I listen to whole albums no problem. But with Cary OMG, the highs are crazy!

All that background noise I was complaining about was removed with my ERS Paper tweak. Crazy bass and crazy highs.

Cary is worthy now! I think I'm in love now, I have never been in love before. I got this bad feeling in stomach when I tried to sell it. I'm not selling my love, not ever!