What's up with the Argento/Esoteric party this Friday?
In light of the fever out-there, AE would supply one Extreme Edition Digital XLR in partnership with Marvel bro's EE XLR digital to squeeze the best out from the dual aes/ebu config of the esoteric digital sources.
Marvel bro, pease post details and photos afterwards.
Marvel bro, pease post details and photos afterwards.
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One is on loan from AE and another one belongs to me. Please bring (if possible) your SMR SE digital so that we could compare the two. I used SMR SE digital before so I more or less know the difference in my 'then' system. SMR EE is another league with a much fuller body and control on the bass according to my previous impression. If we could compare them on the Eso gear, it would certainly give me a new perspective.
See you.
Marvel
May I suggest test more live recordings? It is better to involve the voice of children too because any coloration will immediate weather down the fragility of their angelic voices.
Marvel bro, can you bring some Anna Netrebrko's recording too? I am sure without more difficult testing, the fellows at AE are not satisfied.
J
I have with me:
1. Steamboy-Original Sound Track
2. Noye's Fludde - Britten
3. Credo - Helene Grimaud
4. Peter, Paul & Mary in Concert
argento SMR EE power cord.
mile away vs FMR
PT, any EE power cord available???
The SMR EE is NOT a standard offering in the Argento catalog. It is tailored made for crazy customer.
Both SMR and FMR excel in different areas. The SMR EE is MORE DIRECT and DISCREET - closer to the Hi Fi sound that we are familiar with. The energy disperson, if seen from the perspective of a TRIANGLE, the SMR EE, according to Marvel bro based on his Baldur power amplifiers, delivers more bass energy. The bass energy is delivered in a relatively more FORWARD manner than FMR.
FMR, on the other hand, concerns the FLOW of the music. It is like the missing link between individual musical notes. Timbre is revealed with more color, more coherence, more shadings - better balance between LIGHT and DARK. In the case of SMR EE, the contrast of timbre, in my opinion, has higher share of WHITE than DARK - hence a little bit forward, a sense of more transparency, and hence easier to spot the differences.
Again, these cables are state of the art stuff, and it all boils down to system matching to yield which is good and which is bad. Have anyone of you heard PT system lately all wired by Level One only? There are no Flows, no FMRs, no SMR EE. Azzuri and Studiogrey had recently visited him and they should know the performance of it. Azzuri ended up buying the Orpheus O1SE, a SMR SE digital and probably the Wavac amplification soon.
The AE resident system wired completely by FR, with one FMR for 2 days, there are no SMR EE powercords. One customer request the test of SMR EE against the FMR on the phono stage and three of them thinks the FMR is harmonically better than SMR EE. They end up in Vencie Audio getting the FMRs.
6 months ago, when the resident Horning Eufrodite is fed by one single SMR EE powercord, we had sold year to date 6 pairs of speakers with 4 pending delivery.
I am really glad that many newcomers are recognizing the merits of Argento. I can tell you that even the Level One mark 2 is widely sought as of today although it was introduced 2.5 years ago. And PT is still using them with FLYING colors! I am very grateful of everyone praising Argento now. At the same time, I also want to caution fast type of reasoning such as A is better than B, B is better than C, and so A must be better than C. PT can show you the strength of each in each system.
Voy, Jeff, Hung and our resident Marvel bro respectively use both SMR EE and FMR in their mega systems. All of them report the same results: they are not better than each other. In some areas, EE still the King but FMR delivers something which the EE can't do either.
Once again, thank you for the trust in AE and Argento.
J
We had only a bit over one hour at the place, as we have another dinner gathering shortly afterwards. That means we didnt' really have time to explore the P/D03 much (see below).
The P/D03's character is very plastic in that it can be made to sound anyway you want, from the mechanical, precise machine to being mellow and sweet. The following settings can be combined at will to effect the sound desired:
- PCM/DSD encoding and transcoding between the two, including upsampled PCM at various frequencies
- Clocking scheme, including separate internal clock, D03 as master and G0s as master. Each clocking scheme can have multiple clock frequency to choose from, and each sound quite distinct.
- Each chassis is not grounded. Instead, grounding connection is provided. So once can adjust the sound by using different ground wires.
- interconnect scheme. The two can be linked by FireWire, dual AES, AES or S/PDIF (though for full function, either FIreWire or dual AES must be used)
And we having even counted the cabling yet. I was at the showroom 5 times in total, and the sound can pretty much be adjusted at will.
So having said all that, plus last night associated equipment being Accuphase 2810 pre-amp going to Adam active speakers, while the particular setting may allow SMR EE to siginficantly out-perform the FR when plugged into the D03, there may be configurations where the effect is less clear cut.
My take is that the P/D03 set is very sensitive to tuning, and by itself it's pretty accurate tonally and even in energy distribution. I haven't found any deadly sin with it yet. So with the right cabling and support, I am hopeful that it can be brought to perform at a very high level indeed.
After studying the info of SMREE that PT mail to me, good stuff like jewelry even price!
The party of yesterday night let me disappointing when back to home listen my own gear. The EE cables make the esoteric into next level! The costing also vertical limited.
In that one hour listening, I found Eso combo a very neutral and balanced. SACD playback is naturally the main selling point and therefore there was no disappointment at all when we played a couple of SACDs. On CD playback, obviously my demand would be highter drawing reference to other reference systems that I have listened as well as my own one. With the 2 SMR EE digital cables running between the transport and DAC, one for the right channel and one for the left, all details on the CD seem to have been sucked out only blurred a little bit possibly by the preamp and the active speaker which frankly I am not particularly impressed with.
If we had more time, I bet another interesting comparison would be between the D2 and the 03 combo. Can Marvel stand the temptation? Nowdays, a solid and bold YES because I am drowned by the music produced by my new LP system (though still needs quite a bit of tuning)...
Marvel