XXHighEnd

Merry Christmas to all!! :coocoo: 

:NY01:

Juan

Merry Christmas to all ! May you be with the ones you love and have fun ! :)  :holiday:

Alain

From here we wish everybody a most nice time. :wub:

Christmas Music is playing here with the largest step ever in a a year's of time. Really so. More bells audible than ever.

Peter & Co

Hey, Merry Christmas everyone! Hope to catch up with some of you in the New Year.

Cheers, Mani.

Merry christmas to all!
 :yes: :yes:

Merry Christmas to one and all !!

OK, why not put this in here :

I can't be 100% conclusive (yet, about implied "all albums" I will be talking about), but ...

I don't know what all happened but it must be something the most strange. So about Christmas music we're playing here each year. It has become "unreal". How ?

Well, if I now listen to the Nat King Cole's etc. from just beyond the Mono era, it is like the guy(s and gals) resurrected and made all new last year. Or this year. :yes:

Album after album we were saying over here "huh ?!?".
So while I yesterday was talking about "more bells" only, it is not only about that, but also e.g. how all instruments receive their nature from today. Oh boy, impossible to explain. But if you only listen to those old voices already and how they tend to sound through horns or whatever it is I am used to for the whole of my life ... all totally normal now ! And so Nat King Cole (etc. etc.) is not him anymore. He has a new and clean voise. A young guy.
I just can't comprehend this ...

It looks a bit similar to how I earlier on described (did I ?) how now far more drumming resembles reality while at first this was my own drumming recording only. How it works and what it takes ? don't ask me. So my recording already was "100%" but others were not at all. Today they are far more close if not equal for some. What I am talking about in this post must be in some same leage.

We may recall the "Bill Evans" larger topic and how back at that few years ago the old recordings started to work superbly. Well, up to the extent of them lacking resolution but of which I regarded back then that this was helpful to take out the "digital". Well, I did not listen to those recordings/albums again, but the Christmas stuff is from the same era and nothing lacks. Really totally nothing. Last year this was not so at all. I now hear basses like only the best recordings could show them (didn't even know before that those basses were playing at all), I hear horns shatter like they ought to, I hear choirs in a church like I possibly never heard choirs in a church unless for real and I hear orchestras for orchestras instead of background violins. Ever heard each single word sang in a choir ? all right, that too got better and better when the playback chain improved, but this morning that really happened. It is that I can't understand Latin and such, but otherwise ...

I am floored. But puzzled as well.
Peter

PS: Small disclaimer :
I am fairly sure that this totally real thing (say the last 15%) suddenly started day before yesterday. Or at least then it occurred to me explicitly for the first time with regular music. It will be quite daft, but I did not change anything really day before yesterday. Sadly though, what I played the couple of days in advance of that could not get my real attention because of being busy with whatever and in the 2 weeks in advance of that I was testing other things (which failed). All I know is that last Friday I quit that but left in one change, and already Friday itself my attention was not there.
Now I am not even sure whether it is the general improvement (say since Blaxius), my ears, or no washing machines or something else coincidental. One thing I know : what I have today (plus yesterday and the day before) is quite not normal. How can an old recording, always sounding very old, suddenly sound like a today's recording (the downsides of that left out) ? So I am very afraid I created some ground loop for the better (now travelling the correct path) and if I switch one thing off and on, all of the goodie will be gone.

The development gift that keeps giving. Thank you Peter & Co! Merry Christmas to all and New Years blessings too.

Brian

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

 :good:

Merry Christmas to all

Merry Christmas to all my fellow audiophooles here at XX  ;)

So I was wondering if any of you have experienced anything similar to what I noticed yesterday.

I was playing Christmas music at louder than normal volumes yesterday. My system is in my basement, so I left my stairway door open so everyone could hear it decently upstairs.

What I noticed was the sound coming out of th doorway was just crazy realistic! I could sit at the top of the stairs a really believe that there were live performers in my basement. Wow, it really sounds good from that perspective. Usually I'm sitting in my listening room sweet spot, and although of course the imaging and small details are better there, everything was just integrated so nicely from my stairwell.

I know Peter often mentions that he rarely sits in the sweet spot. Maybe he is on to something as to how we evaluate are system's performance.


Definitely gave me some food for thought.

Todd

The NOS1a has been a tremendous bright spot in what has otherwise been a most challenging and difficult year. The unexpected loss of my sister earlier this year has left me in the position of being my mother's primary caretaker as her own health continues to fail. Because of this I have been greatly remiss in not contacting Peter to thank him and Ciska for the wonderful music, of course, and also for going out of their way to expedite getting my NOS1a built and shipped to me. They did this most generously and without knowledge of my family situation. Then again, we all know that that is the kindness and thoughtfulness that Peter and Ciska have always shown to people in this community who are far and away much, much more than just customers to them.

I want to also take this opportunity to wish a special Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you, with a special shout out to Mani(who's NOS "evangelism" started me on this path), Jud(who was the first to hear my NOS1a, even before I was - they talk about sending "coals to Newcastle," well, how about sending gifts to Bethlehem!), and, of course, my dear friend Alain who will hopefully have an NOS1a in his home very soon.

Esau

We are still in the atmosphere of Christmas (2nd Christmas Day here), but this definitely puts us in the real spirit of it.
So thank you for these beautiful words, Esau. Heartwarming.

Peter

Two days ago it started to dawn on me ...
I still can't be 100% sure, but this was the change :

A Christmas Tree.
:yes:
A Christmas Tree full with shiny balls.
Shiny balls which all reflect sound.
Balls which may resemble Frank Tchang's little resonator bells (http://www.francktchang.com/acousticresonators.html).
:yes:
may.

Yea, well, this is the only thing I can come up with. So it is not that I notice reflections from the Christmas Tree or anything, but this has been the only change in my room I can come up with. And since those special Tchang bells seem to work out for the better, why wouldn't our Tree with 100++ balls in it do the same. Or maybe a few special shaped balls do the trick. Or the 250 little (glass) lights act similarly.
I'd say that any Christmas Tree Ball will "resonate" anyway. Not similar to the "half balls" of Mr Tchjeng (a half ball will deform more easily) but maybe even more special because the Christmas Balls being very very thin (maybe 0.3mm) and therefore are able to deform at higher frequency impact in a more stiff way. Think like the dampening being finite and the more the ball deforms from one (impact) place, the more "back force" there will be to get it back in normal shape.

Yes, BSing a little, but something *has* to be there to make the sound so extraordinary, suddenly. All so super crystal clear. All so without any distortion anywhere.
And what I seem to notice is that sound is way louder than I am used to. I easily play 6dB more soft since day-1 of this.

At stages it is shocking how a voice pops up. The Heartbeat Hotel from Allan Taylor is a good example of that. I didn't count the seconds, but say at the start of it, 20 seconds of sweet quitar soft playing which made me think to put up the volume, and then suddenly his voice blasts through the room without touching the volume yet. This seems to happen with all voices. All very very forward and with realism which makes you think "aha, so THAT is how the guy sounds". But really, I have encountered quite many situations that I could suddenly hear what the race (breed) of the person is. 100 time more emotion and micro changes in the voices.

And so ...
So when the Christmas Tree is stowed away (no, thrown away because it is not plastic) I will keep some balls in the room and make something out of them to put on the ceiling or whatever. Anyway when the Christmas Tree is out I should notice a change for the worse. And if so, how to get the sound back to today's, without putting up the Christmas Tree again.

Peter

Esau,

A special thanks to you, and wishing you wonderful music to "decompress" to.

So Peter, you'll no longer be able to claim you obtain the best sound without your special "room treatment!"  I can see it now: We'll have advocates for Douglas fir vs. Fraser fir vs. Norwegian spruce vs....