XXHighEnd

Back on track!

Lately, family and work have occupied my life, leaving little time to fiddle with the Hi-Fi for many months. However a couple of weeks ago I finally got around to do something I have planned for a year: Trying out new loudspeaker positions in my living room. And, wow, what difference. What improvement!

My previous set-up had the speakers placed quite close to each corner in the front of my listening room, creating a very big and spacious sound field. But with a somewhat “polite” character.

After moving theme 50cm out and away from the corners, the sound has improved dramatically. Now, it is extremely dynamic and transient. It turns out the nearness to the corners created too much early reflections and cancellations in the midrange. Now I have a much higher direct-sound ratio.

The improvement is not subtle. This is the biggest step up in SQ I ever have experienced in my system. Whatever music or quality of recording, now I feel a rush of adrenalin, the way the microdynamics and impulses hits me like a machine gun. Seemingly there are square waves buried in even the worst sounding recordings giving life and sparkle to drums, bass and guitars. 

As an afterthought I realize that the old setup was simply not good enough to appreciate the potential of my NOS1 DAC and the resent XX updates. Still in 0.9z7-5 version, I really look forward to the big leap of current versions.

Also, in hindsight, I can see a reason WHY I didn’t spend much time in front of the main system. It was simply not involving enough. But now, after the changes, I have been glued to the hot spot almost every evening.

The moral of the story: If your listening mileage decreases over time, there is probably a rat hidden in your system somewhere.

Nice Pedal !
And always nice to *need* a relisten to all of your albums. Haha.

Regards,
Peter

http://www.cardas.com/room_setup_main.php

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