Further adventures with D-Sonic m2 600m monos. Sorry about the long gap since I last posted about my efforts to fit these in as replacements for a well-loved pair of Atma-Sphere 100w otl's that had recently passed away after more than 20 glorious years of service. They had been purchased back when I had more money than time, but retirement has reversed that balance and I needed to find a new pair of monos that could fill their shoes in the system that had grown up around the OTLs. The remaining system reflects my priorities in balancing vinyl vs CD/SACD; MSRP for the vinyl side including cables, tweaks, stands is approximately $25k while the silver discs are handled nicely by an OPPO 95 with about $1k of accessories. Speakers are a near-mint pair of Sell B-Type 5-sided columns that are capable of playing magnificent bass into the very low 20's and do everything else quite nicely as well.
When last I posted, I had finally gotten the new amps burned in for several hundred hours when someone on this board suggested that they may need more than 1000. Not wanting to shortchange any readers out there, I chose not to post until they had been fully broken in, but I started critical listening sessions after about 300. There, the adventure really began. By the 300 hour mark, the amps sounded good enough to make me sit up and take notice that they were no joke despite their comically tiny size. They were entirely uncolored but the thing that really clamored for attention was how much more detailed they presented harmonics and how visceral the soundstage had become. It is this incredible ability to portray even the subtlest whispers of detail over the rest of the music playing (or mixed) that defines one of many areas where these amps excell. But, as any 'phile who has achieved this kind of transpanency knows, accurate, high-resolution reproduction is a 2-edged sword that reveals other problems previously masked. Thus began my series of adventures with these amps.
Installing these amps caused me to take a good hard look at all aspects of my system from set-up to VTA/SRA setup, and I had to rethink much of what i had previously believed about audio. They are so transparent that I could easily hear differences in VTA height, allowed by the JMW micrometer's smooth on-the-fly adjustments. I eventually began to measure the thickness of records before cleaning & playing, and I set the VTA mathematically for each. Later, while screwing around with some leftover brass footers and some isoblocks and oak shelves, I jury-rigged a pair of isolation platforms that really made the amps sing. The improvement was so stunning that I spent the next 4 months installing legitimate maple isolation platforms under every single component and power supply box. The amps now stand on 3 large brass footers to a 2" by 15" round maple platform that sits on 4 Mapleshade iso-blocks which sit on an 18" x .75" granite table mounted on a delightful faux French Provincial 12" fluted column that is now spiked through the carpet to the floor. There are 10 platforms in all, the prize being a 21"x27"x4" monster for the VPI SSM. These amps really respond well to vibration control and good cables. This fact was only briefly mentioned in passing in the 6Mooons review where his were set up on what turned out to be a $1k set of footers on Lord knows what kind of platforms. I ended up using a pair of PS Audio power cords that retailed for $1800 each, and a bi-wire set of silver ribbon speaker cables that cost well over the cost of the cables. Additional gains were had by experimenting with physically isolating different components and power supplies as far away from the amps as practical, and by severely reforming my cable-dressing practices.
In all, I have implemented more than 50 changes to my system set-up and usage procedures as I continue to try to maximize the joy and bliss that music coming from this rig brings. I would not have gone down this path had the D-Sonic amps so honestly pointed the way. I cannot hope to cover all in just one posting, but I am willing to focus on different aspects in further postings if anyone is still interested.
Apologies again for the long delay between postings. Please do not reply telling me that all the changes I made sounds like 50 excuses, I already know that. The real reason I have stayed away is that I would rather listen to the system than think about equipment. I can break out laughing or crying or get up and dance to some of my favorite records now. Sometimes I can't believe that my system sounds this good. For all the number freaks out there, the only scale I can think of that makes any sense to me is that my system sounds at least 2 or 3 times as good as I had ever imagined it could in my wildest dreams.
