Lack in harmonic richness

I certainly agree that audiophiles define alot of their terms differently, especially "bloom." "Neutrality" and "pace" also immediately come to mind. Viridian, you are certainly correct when stating that when electronic instruments (and sometimes even acoustic ones) are amplified, they are shorn of harmonics. Also, the volume in many clubs (or symphonic pops concerts, for that matter) is very often turned up far too high, much as it is in most movie theaters nowadays. Once the volume goes past a certain point, it simply becomes noise, and the intelligibility of the music is lost. I think a big part of why most popular music recordings sound so bad today is that far too many "sound engineers" have lost the art. They have become accustomed to this grossly overamplified sound, especially the younger ones, and many of them have never really heard what live, unamplified music can sound like in a good venue, and wouldn't believe that such a thing could even be possible. Unfortunatley, this contributes to the acceptance of MP3 sound among the youth, who also don't know any better. OK, I'm getting way off topic again, sorry.

Chris, all I want to share is that you and I have the same digital front end and my system has beautiful/natural timbres and harmonics so I know its not your front end. My hunch either your preamp or amps and I have never heard either pieces, so its just hunch.

All good feedback! As a contrarian, and tube guy, I will take a different path. What 12ax7 tubes do you use in your DAC? Perhaps tube rolling to a very harmonically rich tube like the RCA 5751 would provide you with the ambiance that you seek?

Good luck..it is a great set up, so I have to believe a few minor tweaks like cables or tubes would provide the fine tuning.

Disclaimer: I sell tubes on Audiogon - take my comments for what they may be worth.

Marty,

Quad 57 - it seems there is a counter example to every example - this Waterfall plot is about as good as they get - ever.

The idea of inserting any kind of EQ will only destroy more of the harmonic information. Such a device resolves issues with tonal coherency ..... it has NOTHING to do with retrieving the dimensionality aspects, decays and bloom in the music.

I tried this game with the Rives device. Oh yes, it resolved bass peaks but it clipped dynamics and removed details in the music that I had worked so hard to bring through. Two well-respected A'gon members both told me not to do this but the curiosity got the best of me. It might be fine in some cases, but if you are after the 3D and bloom like VERY FEW systems out there can pull off, any kind of EQ is NOT going to work. And it will cost you serious money in an additional IC and PC with such a device before you can appreciate the value of the EQ in bringing on tonal coherency. But ultimately, you need to resolve this with room treatments, speaker placements and not get caught up in the "synergy" game where you add one tonally imbalanced cable to match that of another with opposite flaws.

Chris, if you have much bass energy from the A1s, pull them out into the room another meter or so. This reduced bass peaks significantly for me. I keep the A1s near the side walls and this works mighty fine. Speaker rotation does not make much difference as the image is very good all across the listening position.

Once you get the bass more in control (coherent with the mids/trebles), do me a favor and borrow a tube line stage from a dealer. This will be a major mind-opening experience. Try any of the mid-top-tier Aesthetix, VAC, BAT, Lamm, CJ and you will hear it. Once you find one that really impresses you, you can roll tubes (as Paul wrote above) to bring on yet another level of performance over the typical stock EH and Sovtek tubes.

One other thing: Time and time again as I have played with ICs in the system, the MOST critical cable link is from line stage to amp when it comes to getting that harmonic information through. I don't care what people say about putting the "best" IC at the front of the chain. Put everything you have in an IC in that link and let me know what you hear. The Purist Dominus, Stealth Indra, Jade Hybrid are all ICs that will make a MAJOR difference here with your quest for harmonic detail.

Chris, you have some top-notch products here. Don't mess things up with band-aid solutions.

John