Swing it out ! (Part-1) (Swing)

by PeterSt. , Netherlands, Sunday, September 17, 2006, 16:20 (6430 days ago)

Hi all,

With a silent tribute to GC ... (oh for two reasons ).

The past few weeks I was so lucky to have Bert's Swings to be "stored" in my house.

And as I understand Bert still has to finish this first production pair for a large deal of the veneer part ... which gives me another week before he again has his own storage space.

Well, I come from a system with Infinity Renaissance 90's which really didn't need any improvement.
That's what I thought.

What, I think, most of us don't realize is that most of our time we are working on systems that have the least disturbing things in them as possible. Well, let's say I'm good at that, and for the so maniest time I thought I was there. This by itself must be wrong of course ...

At the time I met Bert he was showing off with the Oris horns (in Swing enclosure), which I found disturbing in some areas just as well. All was great of course, but it wasn't my thing (or swing).
Talking about this with Bert was great, and I think he has a very good drive in wanting to apply what you want (if what you want is, say, decent ).

In the mean time I developed the first version of my XXHighEnd software player, just for the sole reason of the Foobars and the like "disturbed" me too, in certain areas. This was a wrong thing to do ...
While in two huge sessions Bert and I judged several software players at my house, it became clear that the player clearly unveiling the most detail, also sounded the worst. By far.
So all 'n all this made Bert decide to move his warehouse contents to my living room; His pair of Swings with the Orphean.

We needed some 4 stages to get out of "something's wrong" situations, beginning with my own amps then Bert's own (valve) amps, adjusting filters, correcting impedance problems, and in the end ending up with my own (solid state) amps again, Bert en passent partially making a new filter to match the impedance better with my own amps, and now ... well, now I have quite another perception of music from the living room !

Now my habit of eliminating disturbing things (like rough highs etc.) changed into a far more natural habit of trying to hear which instruments don't sound like they should. I can tell you, this is quite another experience ! Wow.
:biglol: I am now really in the stage of listening to reality ! :biglol:

There are some warnings too ...
I think it is good to know that lately I work from a kind of stupid basis : procucing the waves from the CD (so yes, I'm into digital only for now) as 1:1 as possible from the speaker. This means I don't listen with trying to hear the best emotion, depth of stage or all thee other secrets with the audio experience ... I just try to copy the waves ...
Once that's properly done you are "stuck" with the finest experience of all. Just my theory (working out so far !).

This will probably mean that you need a good non oversampling DAC, that your boxed CD player won't do, and that you can't even use Foobar etc. The only thing I want to say with it is that when you don't have the experience from a speaker like this you're not lost. I know exactly what is to be done to get things right. And once Bert has his Swings back and is able to listen himself again, he will be able to copy my settings and eventually he will amend things in the "ultimate jukebox guide".

To be on some safe side, there's one other thing to tell;
By kind of coincidence, just because I have them, currently I am using my solid state oversized amps (4x110W RMS into 8 Ohms);
It is still to be worked out properly, but it looks like the huge oversizing does good to the enormeously sensitive speakers. It's very clear to me that any bass string (etc.) hits the belly per wave (say 50Hz), even so much that it becomes unary. The highs are more profound just as well, and in the end this will be about better control, I think.
For now I have the conclusion that possibly it is not "legit" to use a valve amp in any proper setup (like Single Ended), just because of a tad too few control (or whatever it is that's lacking then).
I say this because my 15 year old ss amp just shows all the reality there is, and if there was one aera to go wrong with ss it would be cymbals and the like. But it's not. And strangely it needs the Orphean to show it off.
There's just more to it.

(note that the 7Watt 300B SE valve amp of Bert really is sufficient to fill my 12x8x3m room LOUDLY).

Continued in Part-2.

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