Mike Hanson
Trying to understand...
I had two friends visiting over the weekend, and one of them is a stupid audiophile like me. We compared a bunch of different gear, just to satisfy our curiosity.
We started with some Bluetooth speakers that I had on hand.
My audiophile friend wanted to hear it, so we used a Squeezebox Touch as streamer, and fed it into the Sprout's digital RCA input, driving my Royd RR3 speakers. We were actually quite pleased with the general demeanor. If someone said this was all I could have, I wouldn't be suffering much. Overall performance was balanced, and volume was completely acceptable. It didn't have an extreme amount of detail and grip, but it didn't fall on its face either.
This brought us to the serious comparisons:
Next was the Avondale NCC300, which was almost as much better than the QUDOS Voyager as the Voyager was compared to the Sprout. The sense of palpable bass was lovely, the details were more evident, and the rhythm was energizing. Toe tapping ensued!
Then we moved on to the Neurochrome Modulus-686. This is a completely different beast, with its own set of pros and cons. First off, it's exceedingly clean, with astonishingly deep and well controlled bass, smooth natural highs, and a sense that it had unlimited power. Those were the pros. The main con, however, was in the rhythm department. Compared to the Avondale amp, percussion seemed rather anemic. The sense of fun energy was notably lessened. More on this later, though.
Note that neither of the amps was better than the other in all ways. We both wished we could find something that was a composite of the best features of each.
Next came the DACs. Of all the DACs, the Benchmark was the most tonally accurate, with instruments and voices sounding like they really should. However, it's quite clinical in its presentation. If you want a true representation of the sound, you'll love this DAC, but if you want it to be "beautiful and fun", then you may not be satisfied. (I happily used this DAC for many years, and have only recently gone to the dark side.)
After that was my friend's Chord Qutest, using the iFi iPower supply. This DAC sounded "nicer", even though we couldn't hear as much detail. Some might say it was more analog, in the same way as vinyl can be preferred over CD, because it sounds nice and warm but less resolving. My friend preferred this over the Benchmark, but I didn't want to give up the extra detail and nuance.
Then we went on to the Denafrips Pontus II. This was a step in the same direction as the Qutest, except that it went further. Everything sounded much more fun enjoyable, and it managed to keep most of the detail. There were still things that the Benchmark did better (especially well articulated bass), but overall both of us preferred the Denafrips. (My friend kept commenting how he wanted a DAC with the best qualities of each.)
I'll inject an aside here, as synergy plays a big part. My office had Benchmark DAC2 (doing both DAC+pre), Avondale NCC300, and Ergo IX speakers. When I tried the Denafrips, it was overwhelming. I eventually realized it's because the Denafrips is "fun and energetic", the NCC300 is "rhythmically bouncy", and the Ergo IX is "forward and engaging". It's just too much of a muchness!
The next step was to compare my DIY linear supply on the Chord Qutest versus the iFi iPower SMPS. The iPower is supposedly a pretty good SMPS, and the Qutest has additional filtering on board. Therefore, I doubted it would make much of a difference, if any. To our surprise, my LPS actually elevated the Qutest to make it almost exactly as good as the Pontus II. We even did quick A/B comparisons at this point, and had a hard time discerning anything different.
Then we tried the 5V/1A supply of the Allo Shanti (a commercial 5V power supply). It was a very slight bit better, but nothing to write home about. For reference, my DIY supply is worth half what the Shanti is.
Finally, we replaced the Royd RR3 with the Celestion SL6. These were audiophile darlings back in the early 1980s. I was planning to buy a pair back then, but couldn't afford the CAD$600 price tag at 16yo. They popped up on Canuck Audio Mart in the spring, and my curiosity got the better of me. They sounded better than I had remembered the first time I auditioned them, but the RR3 is definitely a superior speaker. The SL6 is a bit bright, probably due to its metal dome tweeter. The bass is fairly deep and nicely controlled, though, and the overall balance is acceptable. It's definitely a good value.
So there you have it. Lots of fun, and lots learned!
We started with some Bluetooth speakers that I had on hand.
- After seeing a few reviews a number of years ago, I bought a Commuter from Kove Audio (top left). It did a pretty good job of sounding "acceptable", for those situations where wanted a bit of music while travelling. My son misplaced it for a while, so I tried to buy another, but this unit is discontinued. (My son eventually found it after I replaced it.)
- It's replacement was the Kove Commuter 2, which does a neat trick of breaking into two for stereo playback. The stereo presentation is pleasant, but the original Kove has a better sense of presence.
- I was in Cape Town S.A. last month, and encountered a Bang & Olufsen store near the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. I listened to a bunch of their stuff, and was particularly impressed at the sound value offered by their Beosound A1 2nd gen. Some (but not all) of their more expensive units sounded better, but this one hit a good price point. It was head and shoulders above both Kove units. I'll be keeping this one close at hand for myself, and my sons can use the others.
My audiophile friend wanted to hear it, so we used a Squeezebox Touch as streamer, and fed it into the Sprout's digital RCA input, driving my Royd RR3 speakers. We were actually quite pleased with the general demeanor. If someone said this was all I could have, I wouldn't be suffering much. Overall performance was balanced, and volume was completely acceptable. It didn't have an extreme amount of detail and grip, but it didn't fall on its face either.
This brought us to the serious comparisons:
- The test track was Steely Dan's "Black Cow" from their album Aja. My friend and I have different musical tastes, but we're both intimately familiar with this track, so it's a good choice for the task at hand.
- The source for all the tests was the aforementioned Squeezebox Touch, with the Enhanced Digital Output applet installed. Most of the time we used the optical TOSLINK output for convenience, although we did compare it to the coax RCA output to see if we could hear a difference. (We couldn't.)
- The pre-amp was my recently acquired Benchmark HPA4 Headphone / Line Amplifier, which is phenomenally neutral and very adjustable. We tweaked the individual source volumes, so we could match the output to do toggled A/B tests. (Most of our tests, however, were longer listens of the full track.)
- I have many configurations of (mostly Avondale) amplifiers, which I've compared earlier. This time we decided to test my top three amps:
- Avondale NCC220/QUDOS Voyager monos (bottom right). We included this, just so my friend could hear the difference between that and the NCC300. This was fed with RCA inputs.
- Avondale NCC300 monos (bottom left). My friend has a dual-mono NCC300 that I built for him. His has a simple single supply for each channel, whereas mine has a dual supply using Avondale's NCM1. This amp was fed with RCA inputs.
- Neurochrome Modulus-686 dual-mono with Power-686 modules (centre). This was fed with balanced inputs.
- We tested three DACs:
- Benchmark DAC2 HGC (used in HT mode as a pure DAC without pre-amp volume adjustments).
- Chord Qutest, which my friend brought along with his iFi iPower SMPS wall wart. We also tested a prototype of a linear supply that I'm building for him.
- Denafrips Pontus II, which I had originally acquired for my friend, but then decided to keep myself.
- For speakers:
- Pretty much all tests used the Royd RR3.
- At the end we swapped in the old Celestion SL6.
Next was the Avondale NCC300, which was almost as much better than the QUDOS Voyager as the Voyager was compared to the Sprout. The sense of palpable bass was lovely, the details were more evident, and the rhythm was energizing. Toe tapping ensued!
Then we moved on to the Neurochrome Modulus-686. This is a completely different beast, with its own set of pros and cons. First off, it's exceedingly clean, with astonishingly deep and well controlled bass, smooth natural highs, and a sense that it had unlimited power. Those were the pros. The main con, however, was in the rhythm department. Compared to the Avondale amp, percussion seemed rather anemic. The sense of fun energy was notably lessened. More on this later, though.
Note that neither of the amps was better than the other in all ways. We both wished we could find something that was a composite of the best features of each.
Next came the DACs. Of all the DACs, the Benchmark was the most tonally accurate, with instruments and voices sounding like they really should. However, it's quite clinical in its presentation. If you want a true representation of the sound, you'll love this DAC, but if you want it to be "beautiful and fun", then you may not be satisfied. (I happily used this DAC for many years, and have only recently gone to the dark side.)
After that was my friend's Chord Qutest, using the iFi iPower supply. This DAC sounded "nicer", even though we couldn't hear as much detail. Some might say it was more analog, in the same way as vinyl can be preferred over CD, because it sounds nice and warm but less resolving. My friend preferred this over the Benchmark, but I didn't want to give up the extra detail and nuance.
Then we went on to the Denafrips Pontus II. This was a step in the same direction as the Qutest, except that it went further. Everything sounded much more fun enjoyable, and it managed to keep most of the detail. There were still things that the Benchmark did better (especially well articulated bass), but overall both of us preferred the Denafrips. (My friend kept commenting how he wanted a DAC with the best qualities of each.)
I'll inject an aside here, as synergy plays a big part. My office had Benchmark DAC2 (doing both DAC+pre), Avondale NCC300, and Ergo IX speakers. When I tried the Denafrips, it was overwhelming. I eventually realized it's because the Denafrips is "fun and energetic", the NCC300 is "rhythmically bouncy", and the Ergo IX is "forward and engaging". It's just too much of a muchness!
- I switched the NCC300 to the Modulus-686, eliminating one of those over-exuberant components, and the result was quite enjoyable.
- Similarly, the Denafrips with the Modulus-686 and Royd RR3 seemed too polite, leaving us wanting more fun. We switched from Modulus-686 to NCC300, and everything was enjoyable again.
The next step was to compare my DIY linear supply on the Chord Qutest versus the iFi iPower SMPS. The iPower is supposedly a pretty good SMPS, and the Qutest has additional filtering on board. Therefore, I doubted it would make much of a difference, if any. To our surprise, my LPS actually elevated the Qutest to make it almost exactly as good as the Pontus II. We even did quick A/B comparisons at this point, and had a hard time discerning anything different.
Then we tried the 5V/1A supply of the Allo Shanti (a commercial 5V power supply). It was a very slight bit better, but nothing to write home about. For reference, my DIY supply is worth half what the Shanti is.
Finally, we replaced the Royd RR3 with the Celestion SL6. These were audiophile darlings back in the early 1980s. I was planning to buy a pair back then, but couldn't afford the CAD$600 price tag at 16yo. They popped up on Canuck Audio Mart in the spring, and my curiosity got the better of me. They sounded better than I had remembered the first time I auditioned them, but the RR3 is definitely a superior speaker. The SL6 is a bit bright, probably due to its metal dome tweeter. The bass is fairly deep and nicely controlled, though, and the overall balance is acceptable. It's definitely a good value.
So there you have it. Lots of fun, and lots learned!
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