Too fast? (BD-Design)
Hello all,
It is already almost two weeks ago that I finally had my appointment with Bert to listen to BD-15 bass units as a possible replacement for my Eton 581/11-HEX. This last unit works very well compared to almost any commercial speaker I have heard, even in extreme price categories. Nevertheless I could not get a really fast bass attack as heard from acoustic instruments in life concerts.
In Bert's studio I had the opportunity to listen to the Swing. We started using my Theta CD player and DAC because my second reason to go to Bert was to compare them with the Twindac and a laptop. It did not take me long to conclude that the BD-15 has much more speed, definition and clarity than my units.
After almost one hour Bert switched to the Twindac and again the naturalness of the music gained, now to a level that I have never heard before from equipment. A second conclusion I could easily make is that the difference in the mid and high frequencies is even much larger than in the low end (AER MD3 versus Fostex FE208S). About five years ago I heard another AER at Bert's place (I don't remember which one) which sounded really nice, but to me had the disadvantage that the sound stage came really close to the listener. This effect is almost gone with this new unit.
So after some more listening I surprised Bert by saying that I wanted to take BD-15's with me immediately, but it could be arranged. Now I am making new, extended fronts to re-use my old, very solid cabinets. I want to polish the solid wood of it until it starts to shine and then I will treat it with oil. This can be very beautiful (if I am not too fast).
On the way back I was thinking of a schedule on how to replace parts of my system during the next years in order to get to the level of what I had just heard. At home I put the Thetas back in their place and found out that I had music only from one channel. It turned out that my self-made cable (made too fast?) had made a short circuit and damaged one of the transformers. So now I am in discussion with Bert about purchasing a Twindac. As far as I am concerned this caNot go fast enough.
At the moment I play music using a cheap CD-recorder, so I know what I am missing. I hope that you all are enjoying your music.
Yours,
Eddie