Recent content by camverton

Just to be clear I didn’t use a LPS with my Qutest as I was happy with the supplied one and, to my ears, the Qutest didn’t sound grainy or synthetic. Quite the contrary in fact unlike my Benchmark, Hegel, Topping etc which all have what I would describe as a slightly artificial unnatural...

It’s fascinating how we all hear things differently as I find Chord DACs natural sounding whereas most others a bit synthetic. It just goes to illustrate how necessary it is to try these things in our own systems, room and choice of music. I wonder if the equipment we partner the DAC with also...

I‘ve found the Qutest an excellent DAC and very close in sound to the TT2 although that does have pre and headphone sockets, but to my ears little if any difference in sound quality. I’ve found it fairly agnostic of source in that it does a pretty good job of handling what it is fed, assuming...

Stick around, there are plenty of good people on this forum, many with much experience of both the technical side and many with with much, considered, subjective experience and, dare I say it, plenty who are interested in both approaches and taking a balanced view. As for being called a shill? I...

Best to ignore the troll(s), which of course isn’t the same as ignoring people with a different view! On another thread I gave as a clear an appraisal as I could of what some equipment did and was accused of shilling the maker. It’s a shame as there are many really good posters here, covering a...

Their latest stats are way better put together than their slightly rickety predecessors, the 63. Whether they last any longer remains to be seen as in the end it comes down to those fragile panels.

I’ve invariably liked Quad’s visual design, particularly in the 33/303 with that off beat olive colour and orange highlight. Even when they went grey in the 67 series the orangey brown volume display was a delight, as was the remote which was rather rudely referred to as mothercare. One of the...

Quite so. Why on earth would anyone test a product in a way in which it isn’t designed to be used? It sometimes seems that some folk get so wrapped up in their theories of what is correct that they lose sight of the wider picture. Interestingly the old Quad 57 does work OK as a single mono...

I had a similar experience with a certain dealer! Through practical experience of some of the items he stocked I learn’t that what he sold was most definitely not to my taste. He was useful like that, if not in any other way.

Magnepans are a make/design I’ve always mean’t to try but never quite got around to it. I did have an Apogee hybrid once and that was very impressive, at least above iirc 800Hz. I heard them at a show and it was one of those rare experiences where the loudspeakers disappeared and it seemed that...

It’s not just the stereo effect that can be hard to predict with omnis but their potential for creating a 3D “holographic” sort of image of an instrument being played. Dipoles by comparison are relatively 2D but IME still more convincing than any box speaker I’ve heard. This illusion, for that...

XLR for me when available if for no other reason that my cat isn’t able to pull them out when indulging in one of her mad half hours. Sound wise I never really noticed any difference except with an amp where the RCA inputs roll of the treble a bit compared with the XLR.

Who said I disliked measurements? Having said that they won't tell me much, other than frequency range, about how an omni or dipole will sound in my room as the sound I hear, particularly with these types of speaker, is the product of speaker and room and rooms vary greatly. FYI I use REW as an...

Absolutely, speakers and the way they react with the room are key, particularly the types of speaker I most enjoy listening to.. Sadly, MBL, German Physics and Quad stats are not made in an active version so I have to choose a suitable amp. Curiously, my MBL amp works particularly with the...

Very interesting, thanks. Re your first paragraph I don’t thank my hifi either! Mainly because I’ve forgotten all about it - damn it, I sometimes forget to turn it off. Good hifi for me is that which doesn’t get in the way of the music but at the same time gives the visceral thrill that live...