Fun Day Out

Brumjam

Last Saturday was a busy hi-fi related day for me. I travelled down to St. Albans to drop off the Shindo and Border Patrol preamps that I borrowed from TomTom Audio. Then I drove across to Beaconsfield to visit Tony from Coherent Systems. In addition to being an all round top host, expert on all things to do with digital replay and hi-fi dealer; Tony also designs amps, DAC’s, power supplies etc for several different manufacturers.

After a coffee and chat Tony spent 15mins setting up my loudspeakers using a couple of test cd’s full of useful instructions like ‘this voice should be coming from the left speaker’ etc. It has to be said that my room at home is far from optimal in terms of loudspeaker placement, so it was nice to hear my speakers with plenty of space around them.

My pimped SB Touch, Weiss, Adam Audio system was left to warm up for 15mins. Then came what can only be described as an eye opening 90mins spent gradually replacing my own cables with ones designed and built by Coherent Systems. Cable disbelievers please log off now….

….right, well as someone who sits in the ‘deeply skeptical’ camp when it comes to the quality of cables I was surprised to hear obvious improvements with each cable that was changed. First my digital coax cable was replaced, then the power cable to the Weiss, then the XLR speaker cables. Each change was clearly audible and a minor improvement. No night and day differences in isolation, but cumulatively my system was sounding much better without having replaced a single piece of kit.

Tony then suggested that I should hear a different DAC to see if I could spot the difference. So in went a Bel Canto DAC3.5VB. Here is a link if you aren’t familiar with this DAC:

http://www.belcantodesign.com/Belcanto_DAC3_5_Digital_Audio_Converter.html

We started using just the DAC with stock power cable. Then Tony added the cheaper of two PSU upgrades available from Bel Canto. With no fancy PSU I would say the Bel Canto sounded good but perhaps not quite as good as the Weiss. With the basic PSU (called LNS1) in tow the Bel Canto to my ears sounded quite a bit better than the Weiss. The last change was to add Bel Canto’s Virtual Battery Supply (VBS1) PSU. This was another step forward. In fact at this point I was grinning like a Cheshire cat at the sounds flowing from my speakers.

After listening to the Bel Canto and VBS1 for a few tracks we then switched back to the Weiss. It was clear within the first few moments of the first track that the Weiss doesn’t image as well as the Bel Canto. It also doesn’t possess the textural qualities – particularly with bass. As always I struggle to come up with the necessary words to describe the differences, but it was enough for me to put the Weiss up for sale.

So we are now about 2-3 hours in and I’ve still not heard a preamp (my original reason for going). Tony rigged up a Pure Sound L300 valve pre and defeated the Bel Canto’s volume control. This was interesting, especially given my experiences with preamps from Shindo and Border Patrol. The only way I can describe the Pure Sound L300 is to say that it had massive grip and control over the music. My speakers really kicked in a way they never did with either the Border Patrol or Shindo. It didn’t seem to be adding anything tonally, just a huge driving force, almost like the signal was being magnified. Is it worth £5k in my system? Had I not heard the Bel Canto it would have been high on my list of purchases, however now I know how good my speakers can sound with the Bel Canto I’m going to leave buying a pre for a while.

Right that’s enough rambling for now. I’ll update this thread later in the week with details of a different system that I heard later in the day – still based around the Bel Canto DAC, but with some rather magnificent Vivid Audio B1 speakers in tow.

Justin

James, your posts always prove an interesting read!!! Can't wait to hear part 2.....

Justin

uglymusic

Thanks for that James.

I can but dream... :-)

PAC

Interesting day out James and I still envy you the audition of that Shindo!  Cables do make a difference IMHO.  I've convinced a number of people that big differences can be heard even between balanced interconnects despite their healthy scepticism by simply lending them a pair constructed from the best Cardas XLR plugs and Furutech cable in my stock, and all of them reported totally unexpected gains in focus and detail. I believe this has as much to do with the quality and design of the connectors as with the cable, probably more so in fact.  It's all too easy to get carried away with some claims for various cable constructions and overlook the contribution of the connector.  How many people use low capacitance properly shielded connectors?  How many have even considered this?  If you haven't, you may be surprised just what the quality of contact, plating, shielding and capacitance can do for your sound.  Not a great surprise for me when every single person who tried the Cardas/Furutech combo ordered a pair (several in some cases), one chap even selling his insanely expensive balanced leads afterwards in disgust which justifies what a relatively modest but high quality lead can do.  There's a lot of mumbo jumbo spoken about signal propagation speeds and the impacts of various cable configurations, but the truth is that until you're at the very limits of system resolution and detail, the effects between various constructions are actually less audibly pronounced compared with the effects of the connection quality and the connector itself.

Brumjam

Interesting Paul. I'll PM you when I get back home tonight if that's ok. It was clear to me from this extensive demo that power cables, speaker cables and even the digital spdif cable made an audible difference. I thought I was using fairly good cables already......apparently not.

PAC

Please do James.  There's more to good cable design than how much was paid for the cable.  Truth is that a majority of cables (possibly 90%) are made to order in China these days, many manufacturers sharing similar, if not the same cable, and some even rebrand instrument cables as hifi cables (not that instrument cables per se shouldn't be used as some are eminently suitable), whilst a very small minority, like Cardas, specialise in producing the ultimate "theoretically correct" cable configurations from the highest possible quality materials.  As for me, I concentrate on quality and that pays off with decent connections.  I use a small handful of tried and tested cable stock.  The only cable I make myself these days is OFC or silver Litz for some limited line/level applications.  As you found out, there is a difference, and I hope to convert, or at least to educate as many who will listen regarding fact versus fiction when it comes to interconnects as its a minefield out there!

Docfoster

James,
A bit late to this one...
Pleasing to read that you had 'one of those days', that can shed new light on things and either affirm current directions or reveal new ones.
Nicely worded too.
Cheers,
Ben

Brumjam

Cheers Ben. It certainly opened my eyes in terms of what level of music reproduction is possible with hifi, even if most of it is financially out of reach.

My Weiss is out with a potential buyer so Ive been given a Bel Canto DAC1.5 to tide me over. It's running in variable output mode direct to my speakers. Considering this is the baby of the range it sounds rather good. I imagine that like its big brother it would sound better with a separate PSU - it comes with a switching PSU as standard.

coops

How do you connect the Bel Canto to your computer?
Keith.

Brumjam

It's only connected to my SB Touch at the
moment Keith. I've not tried the USB.