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How a Sunray lit a dark Friday night in Hong Kong
Whenever I'm in HK for business I make it a point to catch up with PT for dinner. Besides talk on the how the economy is doing and his advice on the market, we usually end up at his place so I can torture myself with the latest exotic gadgetry! The torture actually happens when I get home to Singapore and listen to my sound system!
Having ordered the Contriva Diacera, I of course insisted on listening to the Sunray....and now thinking back over the last couple of hours, I am glad I did. They were the most magical hours ...ever.
When I first came face to face with them, a few thoughts came to mind. They were actually larger than they looked in the photos, but looked like a modern art piece. I would buy them and place them in my living room just to look at them! Of course I also thought that my wife would probably think they looked like something from a Star Wars set. She still calls my Wavac 805s 'Soda Bottles', because the tube look like soda bottles...
Anyway here's what I felt... (I really don't know how to use the exotic highfi jargon to describe the sound
We start listening. I came prepared with a couple of my cds, that I always use to audition. The first track was Mils Lofgren's 'Keith don't Go'... it was a little underwhelming. Maybe I wasn't used to the sound. Where was the bass? Where was the colour? Where was the passion? On my Zanden->Vekian->Wavac PR-T1->Wavac 805->Horning setup, the sound was glorious! The highs tingled and the bass punchy. A $100+k Euros for this??
Next came Boz Scaggs Live 'Lowdown' recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Franciscco, a venue I've probably been to maybe 20 times, and one I knew very well. WOW! I was getting used to it. Yes, it was ALL there. I could hear everything. And we played it loud, yet I did not feel it was loud. Interesting. What was this Sunray sound that I was beginning to like?
A few more other tracks made me start really enjoying the experience. The sound wasn't in your face. It wasn't trying to showoff. It wasn't overly passionate. Neither was it cold.
I really started getting entranced when we played Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Bibo no Aozora'. Its a hautingly beautiful piece with just a piano and cello (Its the theme from the movie 'Babel'). When I was here a couple of months back, I heard it on PT's Cessaro's with the 805mk2s and became overwhelmed with my own emotion. This time I felt the sadness of artists playing the music.
The track that sealed the Sunrays in the 'When I grow up I wanna buy them' catergory for me was the first track from Diana Krall's 'Live in Paris'. I could see her right infront of me. I heard and felt her finger touch each key, and felt her foot depress the piano pedals. It was scary but SUPREME! .... and my heart is still pounding from that near transcendental experience.!
Oh, and I guess I need to order the (within my budget) Tripoint too. We tried the tracks with and without the electronics connected to it. Night and day!
So what was the sound and feeling that the Sunray imparted on the music from the source? To my untrained ears, it imparted no sound and no feeling, but I heard and felt what the artists were hearing and feeling...
I'm now in a quandry. The Contriva Diacera I ordered is half the size of the Sunray, and my listening room is 4 times the size of PT's room. How will it sound like??? I'll report once it arrives in August.
All I can say is if you can afford it, get the Sunray. It will light up any mood!
Having ordered the Contriva Diacera, I of course insisted on listening to the Sunray....and now thinking back over the last couple of hours, I am glad I did. They were the most magical hours ...ever.
When I first came face to face with them, a few thoughts came to mind. They were actually larger than they looked in the photos, but looked like a modern art piece. I would buy them and place them in my living room just to look at them! Of course I also thought that my wife would probably think they looked like something from a Star Wars set. She still calls my Wavac 805s 'Soda Bottles', because the tube look like soda bottles...
Anyway here's what I felt... (I really don't know how to use the exotic highfi jargon to describe the sound
We start listening. I came prepared with a couple of my cds, that I always use to audition. The first track was Mils Lofgren's 'Keith don't Go'... it was a little underwhelming. Maybe I wasn't used to the sound. Where was the bass? Where was the colour? Where was the passion? On my Zanden->Vekian->Wavac PR-T1->Wavac 805->Horning setup, the sound was glorious! The highs tingled and the bass punchy. A $100+k Euros for this??
Next came Boz Scaggs Live 'Lowdown' recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Franciscco, a venue I've probably been to maybe 20 times, and one I knew very well. WOW! I was getting used to it. Yes, it was ALL there. I could hear everything. And we played it loud, yet I did not feel it was loud. Interesting. What was this Sunray sound that I was beginning to like?
A few more other tracks made me start really enjoying the experience. The sound wasn't in your face. It wasn't trying to showoff. It wasn't overly passionate. Neither was it cold.
I really started getting entranced when we played Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Bibo no Aozora'. Its a hautingly beautiful piece with just a piano and cello (Its the theme from the movie 'Babel'). When I was here a couple of months back, I heard it on PT's Cessaro's with the 805mk2s and became overwhelmed with my own emotion. This time I felt the sadness of artists playing the music.
The track that sealed the Sunrays in the 'When I grow up I wanna buy them' catergory for me was the first track from Diana Krall's 'Live in Paris'. I could see her right infront of me. I heard and felt her finger touch each key, and felt her foot depress the piano pedals. It was scary but SUPREME! .... and my heart is still pounding from that near transcendental experience.!
Oh, and I guess I need to order the (within my budget) Tripoint too. We tried the tracks with and without the electronics connected to it. Night and day!
So what was the sound and feeling that the Sunray imparted on the music from the source? To my untrained ears, it imparted no sound and no feeling, but I heard and felt what the artists were hearing and feeling...
I'm now in a quandry. The Contriva Diacera I ordered is half the size of the Sunray, and my listening room is 4 times the size of PT's room. How will it sound like??? I'll report once it arrives in August.
All I can say is if you can afford it, get the Sunray. It will light up any mood!
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Comments
It is a very lethal invitation, isn't it? As a close comrade of PT, I still haven't visited PT because recently I have my speaker upgraded, add a few FMR cables here and there. Jeff from Taiwan told me to enjoy my system before visiting PT's Sunray. I know he really means it because Jeff has the same set up. Mind you that the Tidal pre+amp would also be essential ingredients contributing to this overall success. I heard it in Alecy's place so I am pretty sure the system synergy between the Impact and Tidal speakers should not be undermined.
Marvel
The first thing that struck me last night when I entered the room was the 2 huge pillars in a highly polish piano black finish. Gorgeous as they look matching perfectly with the Preos and Impact sitting both on the SRA Ohio platforms. PT has also installed 3 acoustic paintings and one ‘Cloud’ on the ceiling all designed by Tidal in order to create a more proper listening space for the 2 giants.
The source is the familiar Zero transport + Vekian sitting on the coral feet and SRA and all are connected to the Tripoint. As usual, we listened to a variety of music including Belafonte at Carneige Hall, 2 local pop singers: Eason Chan and So Wing Hong, Bach Piano concerto by Helene Grimard (my favourite pianist), Mahler, female vocal, violin….one track after another non-stop.
Sometimes when we audition a system, we might be listening to the ‘gears’ rather than the original music and that is what I call the coloration. If the coloration is dosed in an extremely skilful and seamless manner, it would create magic and musical pleasure follows. Perfect examples are Zanden and DaVinci. Tidal is in a totally different camp of thought, it constructs a very vivid virtual space and neatly places all the musical images in the right weight, scale and spatial cue. The perfect ‘one piece’ type of design between the amp and the speakers work seamlessly in portraiting a musical picture without any gap and overlap. By means of gap and overlap, I am talking about both on the time axis, virtual 3-dimensionality and the frequency range. The integration is just done perfectly well!! I recall having similar experience listening to Alecy’s system a few weeks ago but this time, PT’s system has Sunray and SRA.
I am utterly impressed not by the Tidal suite, I am impressed by the live like music it produces by not playing a part in ‘inventing some’ in the process of signal transformation. This is really a ‘plug and play’ suite matching perfectly with my liking!
Marvel
did you listen to Eason Chan Live?
This Tidal system really amazed me this afternoon. Big speakers in a small room absolutely no problem. There is tremendous ease with control. The resolution is not really resolution because I feel like directly listening to the source without amp and preamp. I wish there is an analog setup there. The Sunray is made for the analog.
Dick