What is this........midrange bloom??

What you have experienced and lost might take some time to achieve again if you have made so many changes.

Four years ago I had NBS Statement cabling (ICs, PCs, Spkr Cable) throughout my system of Bat/Aesthetix/CAT electronics and SoundLab speakers. The midrange textures and bloom was outstanding. But once I started to try other cabling, I became aware of the grain, mediocre resolution in the upper octaves and limited dynamics of the NBS cables. For a brief period of time I gave up some of that bloom but it was worth it to hear a wealth of detail on the top that the NBS was clearly truncating. The Purist Dominus was a step in the right direction but even this cable had limited top-end extension that I had experienced from the Kubala/Sosna cables. Ultimately I found what I was after with cables from Stealth, Dream State and Jade Audio. Not only do I now have every bit of the midrange magic that I had before with the NBS but the much greater resolution now allows for more silence between the notes and thus longer decays and ambiance and detail behind the speakers.

Even with all the benefits in cable changes since the NBS cables, I feel that everything here revolves around the preamp, mainly the line stage. So very few line stages can pull off the incredible degree of bloom/decays/ambiance. And no amount of cabling is going to bring this back. A tube preamp with a tube regulated/rectified power supply seems to be the required element.

An interesting side note was that power cables started to make a dramatic effect in the system, most notably, dynamic contrasts, when the NBS cables had been removed from the system.

Before you spend lots of time and money with cable trials, I suggest that you find a way to try a tube line stage with a tube PS in your system.

John

which nbs cables, supposedly created the bloom you experienced ? that is, if i wanted to find them and buy them, dwhat would i look for ?

it sounds like what you describe as bloom = attenuation in the upper mid/lower treble and bump in the upper bass or lower mids.

I would have bet a cheesecake that Mrtennis would enter this thread and point to bloom as a tonality affect. Some things never change.

In my experience, bloom has nothing to do with tonality. Bloom has much to do with the amount of time the fundamental note will last. The piano is THE test here. The texture of the note, i.e., its signature made up from a grouping of strings, can be discerned.

Does the piano note fundamental immediately terminate without any follow on harmonic decay? If so, there is no bloom. This is the classic failure of digital in its early years. And unfortunately, far too many line stages destroy this capability as well. No peaks or valleys in the tonality curve are going to make or break this characterization.

The other half of the picture is the harmonic overtones, the harmonic decays, i.e., the follow-on, of that strong fundamental note. This tends to be more about the system's low-level resolving capability to hear the sound diminish for a long time in a silent background. Without the bloom, you never get to this point. But a strong bloom does not guarantee the long follow-on.

Cables can indeed destroy such system capabilities, but unless you have electronics that can pull this off, cabling is not going to matter.

Wow sounds like virginity...lol. All is not lost I have my other preamp that I used when I had the "bloom" but the NBS old Masters are gone to the cable guy in the sky....Walter...lol. OK...in goes the old preamp..for *****&grins.

My own definition of bloom. since I have seen another, is similar to having a forward soundstage but particularly with transients. The sound comes out at you. "Aggressive" is a synonym but also implies bass transients. It's fun but annoying after a while.