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My exp. with Focal Sopra No.2 , Harbeth 40.2, Passlabs XA30.5 and Hypex NC400

Hello. Long time reader here.

I want to share my listening experiences since i bought my Sopra No.2’s last year. I think it may shed some light on people who suffered from brightness on their system. Please excuse my English as it is not my native language.

My other components are Primaluna Dialogue Premium Preamp and Gustard x20pro Dac with Singxer SU-1 via HQ-Player and Roon. Interconnects are DH Labs Silversonic and speaker cable is Kimber 8TC. My room is 45m2 and not treated. I would say my room has some echo and can sound harsh on higher volume levels. (I will deal with this later hopefully.)

I will try to keep it short below:

Sopra No.2’s with NC400’s:
Pros: Extreme clarity with huge sound stage , speed&timing , dynamism , attack , total control on bass , good instrument separation. NC400 allows all this without breaking a sweat.
Cons: Fatiguing after some time , especially with higher volume. Bright and forward on almost half of the music i listen to and neutral on the other half but never warm. (I listen to almost every kind of music though it’s mostly Jazz both with vocals and instrumental only.) Mids and low-mids(esp. on vocals) were not rich and full as i wished.

The fatiguing alone bugged me to change my speakers and my dealer sent me Harbeth 40.2’s to try at home.

Harbeth 40.2’s with NC400’s:
So compared to Sopra No.2’s it was less hi-fi and more of a live music experience with the midrange of Harbeth’s as we know it. Non-fatiguing , just slightly warm ,sweet sound and overall a wonderful match with the speaker and the amp. Believe it or not it was more than just a glimpse of when i listened to 40.2’s with Dan D’Agostino MOMENTUM LIFESTYLE AMPLIFIER. Last weekend we tried the NC400’s with my brothers SLH5’s and i think he is now considering selling his Naim setup which is 6 times more expensive then NC400’s :)

I wanted to keep Harbeth 40.2’s but we could not agree on price with the dealer so i kept my Sopra’s and decided to try a well regarded amp with it. That was Pass Labs XA30.5.

Sopra No.2’s with Pass Labs XA30.5 :
Brightness and fatiguing gone for good. You get the magical warm sound of Pass Labs , suddenly Sopra’s are different speakers now. The amp really has it’s own color as they say. Bass is less controlled and almost too slow compared to NC400’s. I was worried about 30w is not going to be enough for my room but i never miss 200w’s of NC400’s unless i listen to electronic dance music.

I am never selling my NC400’s as they will come handy when i want to listen instrumental tracks or EDM.
For example , Chuck Mangione - Children of Sanchez or Charles Lloyd & The Marvels - La llorona gives you goosebumps when listened through NC400’s while with XA30.5 they won’t impress you as much.
They are really more than their money’s worth but the XA30.5 is still a better match with Sopra No.2’s.

I guess i couldn't keep it short. Oh well..


tonediary
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,854 posts
 
Contuzzi many people don't have the funds to invest in real room treatments. Hence our comments.

As per being a high end snob, guess what we aren't at all or we would not even made that recommendation. 

If your definition of a snob is to recommend the appropriate cabling and accessories then we are. 

Your argument doesn't hold water. Cabling is like tires to a car, go buy a Ferrari and put on some glass ply tires at $200 a tire vs the $1,000.00 Pirelli P0 that Ferrari specs on the car and see if the car performs.

If you lose information from point A to point B you are not going to get it back no matter how good the components and speakers are. 

As per room treatment, trained with Tony Grimani of Lucas Films and did the Russ Herchelman course, you can see the Theater we built for Rev Runs Rennovation. Online look up DIY networks Rev Runs Rennovation.

You can also see pictures of our rooms at the different NY Audio shows with different acoustic panels, Shakti Holographs and other acoustic devices

https://www.facebook.com/audiodoctor1/photos/a.122500301156525.22643.122499304489958/163219852685335...

or here

https://www.facebook.com/audiodoctor1/photos/a.122500301156525.22643.122499304489958/138072913200029...

Dude your ignorance is showing through when you dismiss cables and power conditioners, I sit here in our reference room and I am demoing one $5k power conditioner vs a $14k one and guess what they make a huge difference with the expensive one not right now sounding better than the cheaper one and if I plug directly our amps directly into a dedicated 20 amp circuilt with Furutech outlets the sound is way more flat and lacks a huge amount of the life that running throught the power conditioner adds.

As per cable demos we can give you the names of clients where we have changed one cable and we both heard a large and noticable difference.

AQ cables are hardly our reference standard, as per cables sounding different yes they do. We were a Kubala Sosna dealer and all of their cables imparted a bit of warmth to the sound. Nordost cables all tended to sound super clean and detailed, and the Wireworld tended to be the most balanced.

Again, your ignorance and bias is showing through. 

We have invested thousands and thousands of dollars in showroom cables, way over $22k in fact, do you think we would have spent that kind of money if there were not difference manifested in our demo systems?

Contuzzi you sound like many of the angry audiophiles that deny the facts that many, many people who are Doctors, Lawyers, CEO's of company smart, educated, people would not pay money for cables or power condtioners if they weren't demonstrably better and made their systems sound better. 

Yes certain companies do make ridiculous claims, others do not.

Our experience is based on empirical testing we listen.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ


prof
3,482 posts
 
audiotroy,

I don’t think you are trying to hoodwink anyone and that you, like many into high end audio, are quite convinced about your experiences with cables and other such things.

"If you lose information from point A to point B you are not going to get it back no matter how good the components and speakers are. "

You aren’t losing any (audible) information if you simply choose a well constructed cable for the task at hand, and it’s trivially easy to choose a 6 foot (or much longer) cable that won’t loose audio information. If you swallow cable manufacturer marketing, you will think you are...but the electrical properties of wire have been known for a looong time.

I sit here in our reference room and I am demoing one $5k power conditioner vs a $14k one and guess what they make a huge difference

Can you tell the difference when you don’t know which you are listening to, in a carefully controlled manner to make sure bias isn’t the factor?


Our experience is based on empirical testing we listen.

Homeopaths, astrologers and faith healers will tell you the very same thing. They test empirically: they do their thing, if someone reports a difference...viola! It works just as they think!

That’s what you get when you aren’t controlling for variables, especially the variable of human imagination and bias. Any belief system can flourish under those conditions, and the experience will be as convincing and vivid for everything you find at the local psychics fair as in the local high end audio salon.

No one is immune from it. Not even audiophiles, believe it or not!

I don’t rule out the high end cables can possibly make a difference in sound; it’s just that the methods audiophiles use to determine this are extremely unreliable. And whenever I’ve used a more reliable method; blind testing, the results do not favor the claims of cable makers. (Though there have been some intriguing results here and there in blind tests...there still isn’t enough reliable data to make the case that super expensive high end cables make an audible difference over sane-priced competently constructed cable - e.g. Belden, Canare, etc.  And even IF high end cables could make some difference, they are still without doubt the biggest, ballsiest cash grab in high end audio)



audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,854 posts
 
Contuzzi we made those suggestions as some people don't have the money to invest in real high end acoustical solutions.

If you check our NY audio shows photos over the years you will see plenty of examples of the room treatment products we use and endorse.

https://www.facebook.com/audiodoctor1/photos/pcb.1632190780187462/1632198526853354/?type=3&theat...

As per acoustical training, bet you we got a lot more than you, trained with Toni Grimini and Russ Herschelman at Cedia. 

We build real movie theaters and design and fabricate our own room treatments. as mentioned earlier not everyone has the funds to do acoustics correctly.

Prof the power of suggestion works both way, the reality is we have spent about $40k and more on cabling for our rooms, do you honestly think we would spend the money if we couldn't hear the difference.

We did one demo were we changed one ethernet cable from a generic to a high end $200 one and the differences to both the client and ourselves was staggeringly obvious.

Most people don't want to spend the money us included, if we couldn't hear the difference nobody would purchase these products. 

Mass hypnosis it isn't  Over 30 years we have done numerous cable shoot outs and tests. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

nugat
38 posts
 
It would be nice if somebody could point to a scientific double blind test of cables.
prof
3,482 posts
 
the reality is we have spent about $40k and more on cabling for our rooms, do you honestly think we would spend the money
if we couldn’t hear the difference.

Yes.

Of course it’s possible for people to spend large amounts of money on imaginary benefits. How is it not obvious that the amount of money someone spends on something has nothing to do with the verity of the claims? All around the world, every day thousands, millions of people throw money at things driven by false beliefs.

Audiophiles are not excepted from this - in fact high end audio is rife with this kind of thing.

Most people don’t want to spend the money us included

Yes and that is why it matters all the more that the claims should be tested far more carefully! We all would rather not spend $6000 on a cable if a $40 cable will be just as accurate (or more) or audibly indistinguishable. But this can’t be determined with justified confidence using the usual audiophile methods of “put it in the system and do I think I hear a difference?”

That method ignores everything we know about human bias. And the strength of your conviction adds precisely nothing to the justification of your conclusions because...well....that’s how bias works. It can produce life-transforming experiences in people, even when there is nothing at work but the persons own imagination or altering perception.

And it’s also why it’s somewhat dispiriting to think many people will be led to spend thousands of dollars on cables, perhaps unnecessarily, because their high end dealers pronounce confidently on their worth based on poor testing methods.

Again, it’s not my claim that no high end cable can’t or doesn’t sound different or better than an average cable. I’m merely pointing out that most such beliefs have been derived from very poor methods.

But saying this in the typical high end audio forum is like being an atheist crashing a church revival. It’s never received well and it’s hard to bridge the two worlds.




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