Tekton Double Impacts

@travbrow I appreciate your comment very much.  If you choose to go down the placebophile yellow brick road you will convince yourself of anything to justify the excessive shrinking of your bank account.  Like @fetguy said this isn't rocket 🚀 science. Digital audio transmitted via USB is pretty simple to grasp and just simply works or it doesn't.  Many highend USB cables measure poorly and don't even carry a basic digital signal to their destination as adeptly as their mass produced brethren. 

I hope I'm fortunate enough on my next visit to NO that I get the pleasure of meeting David and hearing his system.

Tom, let me know when! It will be great to have you over and to compare notes on our different systems with the one common and brilliant component.

David, Congratulations on your excellent system. You've put the work and time in to achieve this level of success.

Charles, THANK You! You have been a leading influence in the journey. I am very grateful!!!

I've made a temporary cable decision for the Lyric integrated amp (though I'm thinking of changing it). I've taken a break from the Lyric cable synergy experimenting. Currently, I am working on the best pairing, within budget constraints, for the Pass separates and SE.

I will revisit the Lyric once I order and receive a new quad of power tubes.

The Mastersound demo should come together in my own system and room this month, thanks to the Distributor's efforts.

Once it's sorted out, I will report back.

@david_ten, it was certainly my pleasure to share the experience of the past few months.

Unfortunately, the day prior to my post yesterday I had written an even more lengthy and detailed write up, replete with all those audio superlatives, and the characteristics of each of the components I listed. However, upon hitting, "post your response", I received an error message and my effort on the matter was lost. So my post from yesterday was somewhat abbreviated. 

I will tell you, as someone who currently has Pass gear and the XP-20 specifically, that I was underwhelmed from the moment I introduced it to the XA 60.8's. Yes it was detailed and un-coloring, but the imaging was poor, the soundstage seemed compressed...it just did not sound,"musical" to my ears and taste. The moment I was able to to an A-B comparison using Aric's loaned preamp, I knew I was on to something special. The sound was much bigger, expressive, rich yet detailed, there was more space between the instruments..."that sounds live", was my wife's quote. And you know that is what we all strive for.

Aric expects to finish up work on, The Motherlode, as we have appropriately named it, and after I have given it ample time to break in and integrate with my Pass amps and DI's(soon to be the SE's), I will report back. I will share with you some of the features:

• Dual brushed aluminum chasis design separating the power supply and the control stage
  
• A huge toroidal transfer with several large Clarity TC filtering caps in the power supply
• the preamp will have a built in MM stage with two 6SL7 tubes and Jupiter output caps
• the line stage will have its own set of 6SL7 tunes and use two massive Dueland Cast PIO output caps
• TKD pots for both the volume and gain

Again, I am pretty excited to hear for myself, but Aric states that his initial listening was nothing short of mind blowing.

Thanks!

Brian

Iaaduionut, 
From the description of Aric's "Cost no object " preamplifier I do believe that it will provide truly superb sound quality.  Choosing the Duelund CAST PIO as coupling capacitors is an excellent decision,  truly top tier quality. Big power transformer and overbuilt power supply,  another excellent decision. How much line stage section gain will it have? I look forward to your listening impressions. 
Charles