Peter, while I appreciate your standpoint basically about having system that is utterly transparent to the source, in this case digital recording, I feel that deep down, this is a losing battle.
Unfortunately, majority of commercial recordings available, are not exactly made with absolutely flat and transparent audio system in mind. The sound was already tweaked, altered, manipulate with multi tracking recording, equalized to death and playback during editing through what I would considered to be inferior equipments and is aimed at mass market consumers with average audio playback system.
Only a small percentage of recordings are truely audiophile, meant to be played with true highend system.
Personally, I much prefer to listen to Kissin, Arrau, Brendel, Perahia etc recordings through mainstream recording company rather than John O'Cornor, Arthur Pizarro and the like through audiophile recording as their music making is so much better.
For me, I would rather have a stereo playback that would let me enjoy the music without the equipment getting in the way rather than trying to hear everything good and bad that sound engineer managed to add. I love Zimmerman's Chopin Ballades recording on DG very much  and would love to kill whoever that recorded the session for ruining the sound of the recording. However, since I only am aware of one version of Zimmerman's recording of this piece, I rather try to enjoy the music rather having all the bad sound screaming at me in full daylight. When I have access to all the great music that I love where listening to a totally transparent system does not make my easr bleed then I shall strive for those system. Till then...... 

Show environment is never ideal, unfortunately. I think any system that is capable of showing 30-40% of what it can do in an ideal environment at a show is already quite a feat.
Recently I went to a major hifi show in Hong Kong and I did not find any room that I like over my own listening room and there were plenty of big toys there, Wilson Alexandria, Rockport Arrakis, Avalon Time etc etc.
I heard Spectral with Magico V3 in a good environment that was spectacular.



I think this is where analog still trumps digital in spades. You get this nice 3D body of the instrument so easily. Now, it is unlikely that analog has more resolution than digital especially high rez or DSD. Heck, I could hear this even on vinyl that was transferred from digital recording more so than CD itself. My theory is that this is a part of analog distortion that somehow just give a more realistic and pleasing presentation. True or false, I would not really know but I'll take it



Heh heh, this is one of those thing. One man's perfect amount of blossom is another man's way too thin and lean.
One man's perfect bloom is another man's bloated and overly warm. Me.... I prefer Kissin on a nice big Steinway rather than myself on a little upright

Hmm... personally, I don't give much value to measurement per se. My Playback Design MPS-5 also did not measure well on JA's report but it sounds great. A great concert hall is a great concert hall because it has its unique attribute of sonic signature, not because it is close to a perfect anechoic chamber. PUt any great orchestra in there, you will still hear its sonic signature.  I would value stereo equipment sound quality as being life like, sounds great or whatever over a perfect measurement any day perosonally.

Yes, I am also very familiar with Magico quite a bit more than at show or showroom. Got Q3 in my living room for almost 2 months now

Hmmm... I have a slightly different take on Soulution. I heard 700 monoblocks and 710 stereo amp a few times with Magico Q5 and Q3 in that order.
First of all, I am not sure why the two are often shown together as I don't like the combination at all. My theory is that damping factor on Soulution is credibly high (> 10,000 per spec sheet). With Magico, I don't think I ever heard a drum that start and stop as quickly in real life. Listening to it for awhile, I felt that the sound was rather unnatural. I heard Quads a few times but not well enough and don't know if it would benefit from high damping factor or not. Magico Q3 sounds more natural to me with Lamm M2.2 (damping factor 82 if I remember correctly). On the other hand Lamm M2.2 could not quite control dual 12 inch Eton woofers in Usher Be-20 quite as well as would most likely benefit more from amp with more damping factor.

Soundwise, this really depends on the person. I find Soulution hyperdetail but in a good way, not very fatiguing but I really like my music a bit more sugar coated. Vocal music on Soulution just did not quite do it for me unlike Lamm M2.2. So I hope you will have a chance to take a good listen to Soulution with Quads yourself before making up your mind. It is definitely an excellent amp but not with a sound that is universally good for everybody.

Hi Peter, thanks for your comment. I think I will keep the unit regardless as for now, it will support DSD streaming as well as 24/352 with Playback MPS-5. Something that Weiss won't support with xxHighend anyhow.
I tried it with J River Music which is pretty nice and does sound better than Weiss INT202 using the same software. I will wait awhile and test it against XXHighend/Weiss INT202 and see what happens. Worse comes to worse, I will use both depending on what I am listening to, heh heh...

Of course I am very afraid that if  new version of Phasure NOS outperform Playback then I am in deep trouble as my preamp input is limited to 3 which are already filled up (2 phono pres and Playback). I don't have extra input for Phasure and keep Playback at the same time for SACD playback

I just got the new Playback Designs USB-X connector for my Playback MPS-5.
After installing driver for it, it shows up under sound video and game controller as AKDesign USB Audio.
Unfortunately XXHigned does not see it
No problem with XXHighend and PD old USB port.
What a bummer, any idea what I could do?
All it says for requirement for USB-X is win7 with ASIO compatible player software.
I guess XXHighend is not exactly an Asio player anyhow!

Peter, I am looking forward to hear the new Phasure when Praphan has it installed in his system.
I am curious about support for DSD. Is that means that perhaps in the future XXHighend may also
support DSD streaming? Also does Phasure support DSD natively or does it convert DSD to PCM first?

I should be getting the new USB module for my PD MPS-5 which will support 24/354 and DSD2 streaming
in the next month or so. It would be interesting to compare to Phasure. However, I am running out
of input on my LAMM pre with 2 phono pre and one DAC already .

PS is the power cord attachment still in the same location as the original Phasure?

Hmmm... I must be the only person who prefer z5.0 over z5.2.
I have been rather busy and did not have a chance to do anything with XXHighend since I installed z5.0.
I have been changing components in my system and got in new pair of speakers recently so I did not want to
make too many changes but decided to try z5.2 today.
With same setting, striaight contiguous, SFS 500, max clock resolution, adaptive mode, Q1 = 1 (are people still using this mode
or have you all changed... sorry, been away for a while ).
I found z5.2 too dry, dull,  much less air and bloom around voice and instrument. Z5.0 seems to strike the right balance between clarity
and bloom.

It was October-November, I think so it would have been 09z.3 or 09.z4. I Have not heard the latest Amarra. I also heard that new version of PureMusic is also much better than older one but have no inclination to try yet. Since then, I tried Qsonix music server (the one that Wadia helped designing) and XXhighend/PC is still better. Tempted to try the new Weiss media server but still a bit afraid of the cost
I think xxHighend must be the best 79 euros I ever spent on my stereo

I almost went Mac route a couple of years ago before I discovered XXHighend. I compared my dealer's Macbook/iTune/Amarra to my PC/MediaMonkey and it was obvious that Mac sounded better. So I started converting all my flac file to Aiff. Luckily during that time I discovered XXHighend and the improvement was significant enough that I did not switch to Mac. Then at the end of last year, I had another round of PC/XXHighend vs Macbook/iTune/Amarra both through Weiss INT202 and I preferred XXHighend also, perhaps not by a wide margin but I have to say that using iTune/Amarra with iPad as a control is very very tempting
 

I disagree a bit with Peter here regarding no remastering that is better than original. I don't have good example of rock/pop/classic rock genre since I don't listen to much of these but a number of albums I have that was released as CDs in the mid 1980's from analogue master presumably with first or early generation AD converter. The original London cast of Les Miserables CD was signficantly worse than the more recent remaster (done in 2002?). I happened to scratch my original disk that I bought in 1986 so I ordered the new remastered one last year and to my surprise, it was a lot better since I still have the original CDs on my hard drive, I could still compare the two version easily. Decca Solti's Ring Cycle was another good example. the original release was ok but it was remastered again in late 1990 or early 2000's I think and then Esoteric remastered it again and released as SACD. Even the CD layer of Esoteric SACD sounds much cleaner than the original CD release.

I agree that some new remaster recordings are pretty bad  and I am not sure why they did not just transcribed the original mastertape without tinkering. However, some remasters are definitely a major improvement over the original one.

My favorite album by him right now is Hotels and Dreamers. Color to the Moon is also excellent. Mostly folk ballades, I would think. His voice now is bigger, darker than it was in his albums 30 years ago. The arrangement is a touch bass heavy. Sound quality is as good as anything that came out in the last 5-10 years and better than most, I would say.

I also like the way he sings now better than his older album. I did not know him before I heard his Stockfish recording as well. After that, I checked through ebay and he had quite a number of LPs in the 70's and I ordered a few of those but the sound was quite terrible so I would just stick with his Stockfish stuffs.

His Stockfish recording are all new but I think most of the songs are from his old albums with some reinterpretation and arrangements (for the better, in my opinion).

A bit off topic but on Stockfish label, David Roth's folk, gospel, classic standards are also very nice!

Hmm.... not really classic Rock but lately I have been listening to a lot of Allan Taylor, I supposed more folk rather than Rock.
Thanks to Stockfish record who rerecords him with lot of his music from 1970's over the past few years. The sound quality
is excellent and is much better than his original recordings from the 70's. There is at least one SACD and 5-6 CD albums and
a collection on single LP.

Personally, I think a stereo system can only sounds as good as its weakest link in the system. No $100,000 front end, speakers or amplifiers will  compensate for a cheap $1 cable in the system nor overcome a poorly recorded CD or LP completely. Nor a great system will overcome poor placement in a horrible room and a great room is not going to make a boombox sounds like a million dollar system. I am a afraid there is  no one magic bullet to make a system great.