Quick write up on a visit I had over the weekend to see Dazz and his SE200 with a Grad1/shunt PSU. Took with me my Grad1/TPX2 and NCC300s. As usual with these things it turned out not how I expected. First up, thx to Dazz for his hospitality, it was a good evening.
We listened firstly to his setup (test1), then swapped out the amps for the NCC300s(test2), then back to the SE200s and swapped out the pre's and their PSUs (test3). These are all my impressions coming from a NCC300 point of view...
Test1: His system has SWING! First thing that struck me, it really swings. The music feels really musical and has a lovely timing about it. Very easy to listen to, you could listen for hours with no fatigue. It seemed to have less detail/clarity compared to my system which I put down to his source being a straight forward laptop. He has subsequently changed it up for an Aurelic mini and found a nice improvement, but more on that in a mo....
Test2: These are all in comparison comments, not absolutes! NCC300 had less swing, a bit more detail, Dazz said it sounded more "hifi". At higher volumes less easy to listen to for long periods, but not a huge difference in "quality", more about "character". I would say it had 2 difference points out of 5 ie a made up number to give an idea of how different they were. Not hugely (to my ears)
Test3: This one surprised us both. We used my Grad1/TPX2 combo instead of Dazz's Grad1/shunt PSU. Quite a large difference, say 3.5 out of 5. Mine was highly detailed/clearer, again having a harsher edge at high volumes, Dazz's much softer but with that swing. It turns out we could have swapped the PSUs round to see if it was a Grad1 thing or a PSU thing but we didnt do that test.
Dazz may well have different take on the differences - these are how they sounded to me
Some music we listened to