Tbg:
Thanks! You are my new (audio) hero!
I'll try turning the SRs around after a few days of listening to them. I just came out of the listening room, and chose Rick James' Greatest Hits. The CD looks as thin as a size 0 model on a runway, but the sonics are rather decent in terms of the body (density) of voice, as well as placement. Also, the background is less hazy, meaning less distortion in the sound, so you can hear hard consonants as well as - and much more important in what used to be called "soul" music, the actual soulfulness of the singers both lead and background. The HiFi Tuning fuses seem to denude voices of their natural passion, making them sound more precise, the way an opera singer would sing it (and I LOVE opera), but not the way a Black singer in the 60s or 70s would sing it: raw, without worrying about the "notes" themselves. Black music is very raw: I sang in the church and, while we paid attention to the notes, it was about "giving it up to God." You can't do that and sound all prim and proper: you gotta "let it GO!" And that's the difference between the HiFi and the Synergistic. Disclosure here: I have have a negative bias against Synergistic. Nothing they've done to me, or any impoliteness on the phone. It's just that they've seemed the Johnny-come-lately, riding on the coattails of others. When they introduced their Galileo line, I was downright disgusted: 14K for an interconnect. And naturally, Nordost could now say, See, we weren't the first to introduce an absurdly-priced interconnect - but now we can do it without looking greedy. So, by assocation, Synergistic entered my world of Sachs, Goldman et al. And this at a time when the economy of the world was in its death thralls. I give you this background, because, let me tell you, if this fuse wasn't "working the show," I woulda been on this site sending them straight to hell...
Five minutes later...
Hell no, MAN. DA-YUM! This is more like Heaven. Black music has all its passion and fire.Aretha opens her mouth and out comes the voice of GOD HIMSELF. So far, the Synergistics are in the lead - and not by a length. But wait! THERE'S MORE!
I got ahold of Darren of AMR and ordered 3 fuses: two for the Hurricanes and one for the PS Audio Power Plant (which currently has a HiFi Supreme fuse in it, so now I'm wondering if THAT'S why the bass still sounds good - but not powerful (the Hales, discontinuous as they are around 250 Hz, have air around the bass instruments and go down to 37Hz before they start having resonances and a bit of blur. Otherwise, they're great (Ken Stevens of Convergent agrees). And they have POWER. So, a huge drum strike, and my 13' x 30' x 9' room shakes. I'm used to that, but more so with the First Sound preamp, which has booty to spare in the bass frequencies, whether Mk I or Mk II (and presumably, MK III).
Back to the AMRs: They'll arrive in 3 days, since I'm in CT, and Darren's company is in Georgia. Even by the post office, that's 3 days tops.
I'm happy and bummed. Bummed?!?! Why would I be bummed? Well, I looked at when I first bought the HiFi fuses. My first batch was December 2011. That means that the problem with the bass (which also affects image solidity) was not a product of the Arcam FMJ 23 (which I used on every type of isolation known to man: Goldmnd Cones, Bright Star, Townsend and thats just the beginning) and I just thought it didn't have the usual 3-D presentation I know it should have. I mean, I heard it in Tom McFawl's room (the Meow-Meow cat commercial jingle writer), which is 33 x 47 and when I came out of the state of shock I was in, I thought, "So, THIS is what this CD player sounds like!" It was alive in a way you wouldn't have believed unless you heard it. The musicians on the recording were sawing away at their instruments as thought someone had said, LITERALLY, you BETTER deliver or you're going home in a body bad. The dynamic kick was astounding. But even in my basement (23 x 40), it wasn't that alive, although it had a realism that surpassed anything I'd had up until then - and I'd had some REAL expensive stuff when I lived in San Francisco. Like the Versa Dynamics 2.3 turntable, for starters.
Anyway, the SRs restore that "life" to the sound, and it's not only on loud music. On some of the ballads on Rick James CD, you can hear him all but begging for this woman to forgive him. The anguish is clear, the softness of the anguish (the pleading please-please-PLEASE-don't-go-ness) is heartbreaking. In other words, the soul is in the music, and above all other parameter that move me to tears, the soul of the music take precedence. But in order for that to happen, the timing must be right (all the hesitations in the singer's voice so they sound frightened, angry, bitter, uncertain, powerful, etc) and the accompanying mood must be right. If the bass slams, great. The treble tinkles? Fly me to Heaven. But if the soul is gone, it's just sound, and this is something not metioned that much in forums. People want "warmth," "better bass," etc. But that's not about music, that's about sound. I'd have to say, unless it's German Lieder, which could never be called "warm," one wants the feeling of the culture producing the music, whatever that culture is (Indian, Chinese, Indonesian). The music should NOT sound American-ized just so we can relate.
I could be wrong, but so far the SRs are doing it. Next up? The African Drummers and then Japanese Gagaku-type music, which stresses breath instead of mathematic intervals.
Whichever fuse does all 3 the best wins the Race! And I'm using only 3 fuses: one for each Hurricane and one for the PS Audio Power Plant. Even Steven, I say.
Let the Fuse Wars Begin!!!
Thanks! You are my new (audio) hero!
I'll try turning the SRs around after a few days of listening to them. I just came out of the listening room, and chose Rick James' Greatest Hits. The CD looks as thin as a size 0 model on a runway, but the sonics are rather decent in terms of the body (density) of voice, as well as placement. Also, the background is less hazy, meaning less distortion in the sound, so you can hear hard consonants as well as - and much more important in what used to be called "soul" music, the actual soulfulness of the singers both lead and background. The HiFi Tuning fuses seem to denude voices of their natural passion, making them sound more precise, the way an opera singer would sing it (and I LOVE opera), but not the way a Black singer in the 60s or 70s would sing it: raw, without worrying about the "notes" themselves. Black music is very raw: I sang in the church and, while we paid attention to the notes, it was about "giving it up to God." You can't do that and sound all prim and proper: you gotta "let it GO!" And that's the difference between the HiFi and the Synergistic. Disclosure here: I have have a negative bias against Synergistic. Nothing they've done to me, or any impoliteness on the phone. It's just that they've seemed the Johnny-come-lately, riding on the coattails of others. When they introduced their Galileo line, I was downright disgusted: 14K for an interconnect. And naturally, Nordost could now say, See, we weren't the first to introduce an absurdly-priced interconnect - but now we can do it without looking greedy. So, by assocation, Synergistic entered my world of Sachs, Goldman et al. And this at a time when the economy of the world was in its death thralls. I give you this background, because, let me tell you, if this fuse wasn't "working the show," I woulda been on this site sending them straight to hell...
Five minutes later...
Hell no, MAN. DA-YUM! This is more like Heaven. Black music has all its passion and fire.Aretha opens her mouth and out comes the voice of GOD HIMSELF. So far, the Synergistics are in the lead - and not by a length. But wait! THERE'S MORE!
I got ahold of Darren of AMR and ordered 3 fuses: two for the Hurricanes and one for the PS Audio Power Plant (which currently has a HiFi Supreme fuse in it, so now I'm wondering if THAT'S why the bass still sounds good - but not powerful (the Hales, discontinuous as they are around 250 Hz, have air around the bass instruments and go down to 37Hz before they start having resonances and a bit of blur. Otherwise, they're great (Ken Stevens of Convergent agrees). And they have POWER. So, a huge drum strike, and my 13' x 30' x 9' room shakes. I'm used to that, but more so with the First Sound preamp, which has booty to spare in the bass frequencies, whether Mk I or Mk II (and presumably, MK III).
Back to the AMRs: They'll arrive in 3 days, since I'm in CT, and Darren's company is in Georgia. Even by the post office, that's 3 days tops.
I'm happy and bummed. Bummed?!?! Why would I be bummed? Well, I looked at when I first bought the HiFi fuses. My first batch was December 2011. That means that the problem with the bass (which also affects image solidity) was not a product of the Arcam FMJ 23 (which I used on every type of isolation known to man: Goldmnd Cones, Bright Star, Townsend and thats just the beginning) and I just thought it didn't have the usual 3-D presentation I know it should have. I mean, I heard it in Tom McFawl's room (the Meow-Meow cat commercial jingle writer), which is 33 x 47 and when I came out of the state of shock I was in, I thought, "So, THIS is what this CD player sounds like!" It was alive in a way you wouldn't have believed unless you heard it. The musicians on the recording were sawing away at their instruments as thought someone had said, LITERALLY, you BETTER deliver or you're going home in a body bad. The dynamic kick was astounding. But even in my basement (23 x 40), it wasn't that alive, although it had a realism that surpassed anything I'd had up until then - and I'd had some REAL expensive stuff when I lived in San Francisco. Like the Versa Dynamics 2.3 turntable, for starters.
Anyway, the SRs restore that "life" to the sound, and it's not only on loud music. On some of the ballads on Rick James CD, you can hear him all but begging for this woman to forgive him. The anguish is clear, the softness of the anguish (the pleading please-please-PLEASE-don't-go-ness) is heartbreaking. In other words, the soul is in the music, and above all other parameter that move me to tears, the soul of the music take precedence. But in order for that to happen, the timing must be right (all the hesitations in the singer's voice so they sound frightened, angry, bitter, uncertain, powerful, etc) and the accompanying mood must be right. If the bass slams, great. The treble tinkles? Fly me to Heaven. But if the soul is gone, it's just sound, and this is something not metioned that much in forums. People want "warmth," "better bass," etc. But that's not about music, that's about sound. I'd have to say, unless it's German Lieder, which could never be called "warm," one wants the feeling of the culture producing the music, whatever that culture is (Indian, Chinese, Indonesian). The music should NOT sound American-ized just so we can relate.
I could be wrong, but so far the SRs are doing it. Next up? The African Drummers and then Japanese Gagaku-type music, which stresses breath instead of mathematic intervals.
Whichever fuse does all 3 the best wins the Race! And I'm using only 3 fuses: one for each Hurricane and one for the PS Audio Power Plant. Even Steven, I say.
Let the Fuse Wars Begin!!!