I feel young again. Will sure play around with the Preos and Impact when my gears finally arrive.
Jeff, you are spot on re: control on the lower mid bass. I recalled the first time when I audition the Impact, it was sitting on the floor and the wow factor is unforgetable.
Last night, I experiment with different interconnects and confirmed that the FMR is acting as an antenna which eventually leads to the static noise thru Preos. When I replaced that with SMR, most of the static noise went away (can still hear it if I pressed my ear against the mid range driver). What a dilemna!
I am glad I don't have this problem. Probably, different areas have different degree of contamination.
Don't waste the impact. Sitting on those MDF maple board with loose structure only creates vibration. Pull it out and put in on a SRA amp stand, that is the biggest bang for the buck area on SRA is you are not as crazy as us using the crazy rack and a dozen SRA boards. Your hair will stand up if the IMAPCT sits on the SRA. I went through this many times.
I decided to capture my views on the new FMR cables in this thread because I really want to reiterate my salute to Ulrik for his relentless effort in advancing the cable technology from an old one which many would have considered the end game! I just wonder there are too few the kind of people resembling Ulrik’s spirit out there to use another envelop after push broken one envelop from another one….
I started using Argento cables from their VDM series into the SMR and then SMR EE series finding myself rest in peace in the cable game for almost 2 years until the advent of the Flow Series. Initially I still find ‘gives and takes’ between the EE series and the Flow/FMR series in the power domain much depending on where the cord is applied. 2008 saw the birth of a special breed Olympic Reference giving me a new excitement like enjoying the Olympic Games. Fast, energetic and sporty which I once commented like a SMR EE junior. Yet, the throne of SMREE as the king of power cord as well as interconnect left untouched in my system.
In early 2009, the newly developed Flow interconnect runs an errand for Ulrik that he has succeeded in another breakthrough in both cable and connectors technology. I was utterly shocked by the ‘at ease’ TKO by this new interconnect to almost all cables it run across and over. Few escaped from this massacre including my beloved SMREE interconnect but many would have known, this period was not too long until the new cable giant: FMR came on to the stage slaughtering the remaining few survivors again ‘at ease’.
Evaluation criteria keep advancing as my system evolves as well as room acoustics further improved. EE as a power cord emits much energy especially on the bass pulls the trigger for me to upgrade my Cessaro Affascinta speaker to the next level thus providing more transparency from end to end. Instead of bringing this to an end, it actually starts up another round of revisiting the signal transmission after a recent visit to the lethally poisonous DV system in PT’s place. SMREE speaker cables have been with me for several years and I have developed a strong love and passion with it recalling its bright history of outperforming the then many flagship cables from other brands. I also recall defending SMR EE in front of Brother Fat. To me, still as of today, EE is legendary opening my eyes and ears to the advanced cable technology. Without much hesitation, I ordered the FMR Speaker cables and they were installed last week. Not requiring too long a burning in period, it just shines out all the musical details under natural light without any emphasis on any particular attributes. It outperforms SMREE speaker cable on the naturalness and resolution especially on the bass compartment producing much higher quality in tonality and harmonic decays on the mid bass to bass related music, eg. Cello, drums, etc. The magic is, once the bass resolution is enhanced, it brings yields to the upper compartments in terms of clarity and harmonic decays because it doesn’t ‘cloud out’ the entire musical picture!
The ending glory of EE: I got 2 new FMR power cables from PT last night replacing the 2 SMREE power cord from the power supplies of the 805. As expected, the overall tonal balance and linearity have not been adversely affected. Speed and bass clarity have both been enhanced noticeably bringing much liveliness and tempo! Echoing on my earlier discussion with DSo, the newly made batch of FMR power cord has been enhanced and possibly adopted with some new technologies from the FMR interconnect. I have 2 other FMR power cords belonging to some older generations and they sound not the same as the latest two which have more speed and do not sound over-smoothened. Relativity aways plays a key role in my entire history of cable exploration, with much improved room acoustics and speaker performance, it leads me to a better understanding and more accurate assessment on the relative difference between the 2 generations of flagships from Argento. I am glad to have been a genuine fans of EE for a much longer period than I would have thought given my wrongly perceived hifi playboy character. I am delighted to fully venture myself into a new era!
Last remark: many who know my system as well as I do would say, I still have SMR EE digital running on my CD source. Yes indeed, I sold one SMREE AES/EBU recently to a friend and keep one SMREE RCA digital and very recently I bought an AES/EBU digital with the old label of SMR EE, guess why? Ha ha ha!! (not to be cont’d)
This is a mega system using two pairs of Boulder 2060 driving a pair of West Lake Flagship reference (with active crossover). The preamp is the legendary Cello Suite. The digital source consists of Wadia 270 transport and Cello dac.
A sea of Argento cables running everywhere. The placement of two FMR XLR cables today "transformed" the transparency of this system. The bass is no longer muddy and slow. The imaging definition becomes much more pinpointing "without" rigidity. The depth of the sound-field has become much more apparent. Objects separation is much better without sounding broken. (The soundstage has become the continuous type; not the broken type.) One pair running from the Cello EQ to the active crossover; another pair running from the Cello EQ to the Suite.
This boudler/westlake system is simply a fundamental mis-match from top to bottom. I don't understand why any distributor with a reasonable knowledge of electronics and simply physics would recommend customers spending big bucks to get half of the potential.
The westlake is a good speaker for monitoring purposes. But why would a speaker with such high sensitivity requires amplifier with such high damping factor? The result is simply the sacrifice of bass energy, lack of true dynamic responses.
The FMR can improve the speed and clarity of this system tremendously as those big diameter bass units requires speed and control.
But the fundamental problem is the mis-match between the amp and the speakers.
Alecy, I'm happy for you. You have one hell of a great system that I can imagine outperfoming many mega systems built illogically without taking care of the fundamentals (electrical parameters, acoustics parameters, vibration parameters).
When will you burn the FE rack? There are still rooms for big improvement. By the way, please connect a ground wire from the Tripoint to the motor of your turntable - it will shock you.
This has been one very happy weekend for me. The kind encouragement from the fellowships has fuelled my imagination to try out a few minor modifications to my system. These are minimal cost adjustment but the results has shocked me as much if not more than the bigger investments recently.
1. Install the Simens cca tube in my Zanden dac
2. Connect the Orb K-power cable to the Kyoto for feeding the source equipment.
3. Set up 2 RPG skyline diffusors to the LHS hardwall to disperse the energy coming off first reflection.
The impact is immediate and undeniable :
(1) Mid range and lower mid base has much better definition and depth
(2) Overall resolution firmed up substantially. Gone are previously unperceived wobbly imaging allowing me to enjoy the furthest ends of the soundstage (XYZ axis) with no ambiguity
(3) The system seems to have found an extra half an octave below - obviously still far short of what mega-bucks big speakers can offer in terms of whole picture - but is already much better than before. If I was hearing HKPO before, now it is BPO / CPO.
Was listening last night to Alban Berg playing Beethoven's string quartet #9 as well as Schwarzkopf singing Strauss's Rosenkavalier. The Tidal + Zanden suite managed them beautifully. The seamless rendition of the quartet and Schwarz's sweet romancing still rings in my head this morning but already dreaming of tonight's program : Mahler's Resurrection by Bernstein.
Comments
I feel young again. Will sure play around with the Preos and Impact when my gears finally arrive.
Jeff, you are spot on re: control on the lower mid bass. I recalled the first time when I audition the Impact, it was sitting on the floor and the wow factor is unforgetable.
Last night, I experiment with different interconnects and confirmed that the FMR is acting as an antenna which eventually leads to the static noise thru Preos. When I replaced that with SMR, most of the static noise went away (can still hear it if I pressed my ear against the mid range driver). What a dilemna!
Don't waste the impact. Sitting on those MDF maple board with loose structure only creates vibration. Pull it out and put in on a SRA amp stand, that is the biggest bang for the buck area on SRA is you are not as crazy as us using the crazy rack and a dozen SRA boards. Your hair will stand up if the IMAPCT sits on the SRA. I went through this many times.
I started using Argento cables from their VDM series into the SMR and then SMR EE series finding myself rest in peace in the cable game for almost 2 years until the advent of the Flow Series. Initially I still find ‘gives and takes’ between the EE series and the Flow/FMR series in the power domain much depending on where the cord is applied. 2008 saw the birth of a special breed Olympic Reference giving me a new excitement like enjoying the Olympic Games. Fast, energetic and sporty which I once commented like a SMR EE junior. Yet, the throne of SMREE as the king of power cord as well as interconnect left untouched in my system.
In early 2009, the newly developed Flow interconnect runs an errand for Ulrik that he has succeeded in another breakthrough in both cable and connectors technology. I was utterly shocked by the ‘at ease’ TKO by this new interconnect to almost all cables it run across and over. Few escaped from this massacre including my beloved SMREE interconnect but many would have known, this period was not too long until the new cable giant: FMR came on to the stage slaughtering the remaining few survivors again ‘at ease’.
Evaluation criteria keep advancing as my system evolves as well as room acoustics further improved. EE as a power cord emits much energy especially on the bass pulls the trigger for me to upgrade my Cessaro Affascinta speaker to the next level thus providing more transparency from end to end. Instead of bringing this to an end, it actually starts up another round of revisiting the signal transmission after a recent visit to the lethally poisonous DV system in PT’s place. SMREE speaker cables have been with me for several years and I have developed a strong love and passion with it recalling its bright history of outperforming the then many flagship cables from other brands. I also recall defending SMR EE in front of Brother Fat. To me, still as of today, EE is legendary opening my eyes and ears to the advanced cable technology. Without much hesitation, I ordered the FMR Speaker cables and they were installed last week. Not requiring too long a burning in period, it just shines out all the musical details under natural light without any emphasis on any particular attributes. It outperforms SMREE speaker cable on the naturalness and resolution especially on the bass compartment producing much higher quality in tonality and harmonic decays on the mid bass to bass related music, eg. Cello, drums, etc. The magic is, once the bass resolution is enhanced, it brings yields to the upper compartments in terms of clarity and harmonic decays because it doesn’t ‘cloud out’ the entire musical picture!
The ending glory of EE: I got 2 new FMR power cables from PT last night replacing the 2 SMREE power cord from the power supplies of the 805. As expected, the overall tonal balance and linearity have not been adversely affected. Speed and bass clarity have both been enhanced noticeably bringing much liveliness and tempo! Echoing on my earlier discussion with DSo, the newly made batch of FMR power cord has been enhanced and possibly adopted with some new technologies from the FMR interconnect. I have 2 other FMR power cords belonging to some older generations and they sound not the same as the latest two which have more speed and do not sound over-smoothened. Relativity aways plays a key role in my entire history of cable exploration, with much improved room acoustics and speaker performance, it leads me to a better understanding and more accurate assessment on the relative difference between the 2 generations of flagships from Argento. I am glad to have been a genuine fans of EE for a much longer period than I would have thought given my wrongly perceived hifi playboy character. I am delighted to fully venture myself into a new era!
Last remark: many who know my system as well as I do would say, I still have SMR EE digital running on my CD source. Yes indeed, I sold one SMREE AES/EBU recently to a friend and keep one SMREE RCA digital and very recently I bought an AES/EBU digital with the old label of SMR EE, guess why? Ha ha ha!! (not to be cont’d)
Marvel
The westlake is a good speaker for monitoring purposes. But why would a speaker with such high sensitivity requires amplifier with such high damping factor? The result is simply the sacrifice of bass energy, lack of true dynamic responses.
The FMR can improve the speed and clarity of this system tremendously as those big diameter bass units requires speed and control.
But the fundamental problem is the mis-match between the amp and the speakers.
God bless you.
When will you burn the FE rack? There are still rooms for big improvement. By the way, please connect a ground wire from the Tripoint to the motor of your turntable - it will shock you.
Ray
1. Install the Simens cca tube in my Zanden dac
2. Connect the Orb K-power cable to the Kyoto for feeding the source equipment.
3. Set up 2 RPG skyline diffusors to the LHS hardwall to disperse the energy coming off first reflection.
The impact is immediate and undeniable :
(1) Mid range and lower mid base has much better definition and depth
(2) Overall resolution firmed up substantially. Gone are previously unperceived wobbly imaging allowing me to enjoy the furthest ends of the soundstage (XYZ axis) with no ambiguity
(3) The system seems to have found an extra half an octave below - obviously still far short of what mega-bucks big speakers can offer in terms of whole picture - but is already much better than before. If I was hearing HKPO before, now it is BPO / CPO.
Was listening last night to Alban Berg playing Beethoven's string quartet #9 as well as Schwarzkopf singing Strauss's Rosenkavalier. The Tidal + Zanden suite managed them beautifully. The seamless rendition of the quartet and Schwarz's sweet romancing still rings in my head this morning but already dreaming of tonight's program : Mahler's Resurrection by Bernstein.
Maybe you will achieve more by applying one Skyline diffusor at the back of your listening position, using just one skyline diffusor on the sidewall.
Ray