Last night I began again tweaking this system. I had to accept earlier that the Nuforce 9SEV2 Cary Preamp & LS6 combo was nothing short of great in our room. Now I spent x 2 on speakers and a Pass that was good but not great.
Audio is funny though. I've been in many rooms where the equipment was amazing and the sound not. I attribute that to the differences in the way we hear sounds physically and emotionally. I try to mimic as much as possible the sound of live and work from there. I'm very finicky and rather obsessive about what I hear and generally concede that what I have will have its issues. Where am I going?
Lots of opinions about power cables. They make a difference to anyone who isn't tone deaf and I believe are part of tuning a system, just like the interconnects.
Ah the interconnects. I stuck with balanced as a few members mentioned to stay that route. Make second set of DIYers were broke (fragile as hell) but always sounded amazing so I again repaired the broken ground and went back to single ended. Jumpers in place (the 12awg wire variety) we sat down to listen. What I was greeted with was the best sounds I've ever heard drifting through our room and maybe through any room. What was on cue was REM Automatic For The People, first cut. Company showed up and I pushed her to the sweet spot "listen to this". She was spellbound as was I. I replayed the same cut again for my wife unit. But company conversation took over and I had to wait.
Next up was Annie Lennox "Medusa" a very familiar disk I've been referencing for many years. It was absolutely stunning. Every cut was a marvel of balance, ambiance, detail, holographic imagery. I felt like I was hallucinating. How the hell can an interconnect make such an astounding difference? And seemingly the wrong interconnect for this amp.
I went to bed last night and told my wife, "OK maybe now it was worth the money". She agreed ;-)
