Tekton Double Impacts

I ordered a Don Sachs preamp today....

@james_514 I once tried a Pass Labs X250.5 with a pair of Thiel 2.4s and was warned by Pass that the combo probably would be a bit strident due to both components having a bit of upper-frequency glare.  That was true...  the XA series fixed that problem.   

@porscheracer  I believe, based on the rave owner feedback, that you are in for a treat and I hope it does what you are looking for a preamp to do in your system. What's the turnaround time for his product?

teajay

1,077 posts

09-23-2017 10:40am

1) To have the DI's only 18 inches off the front wall would almost certainly negate them being able to produce a deep sound-stage or what you called depth in the sound-stage layering. I ran this experiment many times and to get the sound-staging/layering you were missing takes at least three feet off the front wall.

 

The best way to get away from the front wall is to have zero front wall. I have a 13x12x8 room, but I recently found this neat workaround. The only rub is that you have to have the right room, and not many have.

I flipped my room to a 35 degree angle, which lead to each speaker being placed in front of two alcoves. The speakers ports, therefore, fire into emptiness...or, if one wants to be technical, the closest solid object to the rears of each speaker is 8 to 6 ft away.

Once you get away from hard right angles in the room (a sufficient enough cant), then the reflection points from each speaker do not misaligned from left to right and right to left in a room, bouncing off the walls at unnatural angles.

See a quick and dirty diagram of my room (It's not to scale).

https://imgur.com/LHaCBkh 

The result? It was actually scary. Even without any room treatment - as I've gutted the room in preparation for a dedicated setup - with the sound bouncing around like crazy, and with those crappy  Dynaudio 340s, with no front wall behind the speakers, the bass and mid-bass (lower mids) immediately snapped into place, as natural as can be.

So, obviously I wasn't hearing much depth and layering, due to the bare room with hard walls. The impact of this setup was nevertheless experienced. I take it that having reduced the front wall considerably, in addition to the side walls - because there are no room walls that are square with the sides of the speakers - having some treatment in the room should add that width and depth to a point where the front wall is less detrimental to the sound. 

Which dovetails into...

brotw

32 posts

09-24-2017 10:47am

Mac,

So true about having a room all to yourself. I can already imagine my wife's response to the room treatments.

Once the DI's arrive and treatments are placed, I'll check in with the results.

 Room treatment, you don't say? GIK?

I've been speaking with GIK and we have a rough plan for my room. However, since I don't have speakers (except for the $15k Audio Physic Speakers sitting in my garage with busted bass drivers), I really can't move forward with GIK. So, I'm very interested in your experience with room treatment.

I should be getting my DIs relatively soon.

Until then, I went ahead and purchased a DB/SPL meter, because I want to see where my hot spots in the room are. Of course you need speakers for that, too. But I'm getting there. The point is, I don't want to just blindly guess with mirrors and lasers to treat all the spots in the room that are giving me trouble.

james_w514

106 posts

09-25-2017 12:11pm

@jcarcopo

I was using the Benchmark DAC3 HGC direct to a Pass Labs X250.5 with the Double Impacts and the pairing was a bit too harsh. It had gobs of detail and great bass but it was unlistenable at times. Maybe it would be more manageable with a different amp.

Could it be that Benchmark simply makes bright DACs that masquerades as hi-def? That has certainly been my experience with Benchmark DACs, going back several generations, including the DAC3 HGC. They sound much like the Mytek offerings. At first it's like, "Wow, listen to all of the clarity!" Next, you find out that the DAC is just "EQed" that way, for lack of a better term.

It was certainly disappointing that my lower priced backup DAC (PS Audio Stellar) was a better match with my current gear.