We measured the room yesterday (no audio equipments are present). We are very contended with the result: a delay time of 1/10 of a second measured at various spots, pretty constant. I do not know whether a delay time of zero is the best or not as this has to be taken in the account the characteristic of the audio electronic too.
In most residential settings, reflection dominates. There is not delay time at all. But if the delay time of the room is too long, the sound will become too dead.
One electric expert visited us over the weekend and suggest I should strengthen the gauge of the ground wire inside the MCB box for pure PHYSICS argument. The ground wire gauge should be double than that of the LIVE wire. That will allow faster draining of ground noises, thereby lowering the overall impedance of the whole electric circuit.
That's a very valulable opinion. We will make the change.
I can see tremendous amount of dedication to the construction of the whole room not only from acoustics and electrical point of view but also aesthetics. This is definitely unique and undoubtedly raise the bar.
Agree 100%. The spirit of young man cannot be under-estimated. It is the attitude that counts. I feel excited when I check the forum everyday even I am in Beijing.
This really kicks some serious asses! I'll try to reshuffle my hectic schedule to attend on Jun 23. Nothing excites me in the past six months as much as what you guys are doing. If you can make magic in residential setup, this room will only be better. It's the attitude that counts, even more important than the electronics. You have customers like DSo, Mr.Zanden and Raymond with tremendous amount of persistence and patience. That's the right culture to be planted. I am glad it bears good fruit.
Sorry, I have forgotten to mention Marvel, who provides us endless analytic reports on almost any components. They are always my references as the accuracy of his electronics analytics is very high upon my own listening of the same unit afterwards.
I am just doing the superficial analysis just like telling you sugar is sweet in taste...I really hope I could excel not just on my writing skills but also on the listening skills like other fellows here.
Tidal Contriva Diacera SE has landed to my place for a few days but I am giving it some time to burn in in order to share something more precise and fair. Initial impression: great match with the Tidal preamp and power. Do I miss Cessaro? Big time! Totally different camp and as a result quite different presentation. This is point 1. POint 2 is Cessaro has a more direct sound exhibiting the true characteristics of horn speaker while Tidal is more conventional. Cessaro is less demanding on the room acoustics comparatively speaking. At this moment, I can sense a much higher demand on 'skills' in order to play the Tidal suite well especially I do have listened to the benchmark in PT's place...will I reach there? No doubt about it but only as a matter of time....this time, I do have the patience for sure!! See I am not a hi-fi playboy now!
Yes, indeed we should form a Tidal team to share more experience...My Contriva Diacera has been installed for several days. I was a bit tied up with family business for the past few days and now it is over and I can share my experience for the first few days.
A whole Tidal suite really shocks me on the transparency and coherence...nothing come so close than this Tidal speaker in creating a natural couple with the amplifications stage. It allows me to learn and understand more about the design principle of Tidal:
1. not to create a hi-fi excitment to the minds
2. not to impose any coloration in order to please the audience
3. create the utmost coherence among the speaker drivers (which I think is the biggest success of the Tidal speaker) in terms of frequency response and speed of propagation.
CD SE is made on a diamond treble and several ceremique drives for the midrange and bass. The ceremic material is mutiple times thinner than the K-speaker that I have used many years ago. Price aside, the drivers in Tidal do not give me any slight resemblance of my previous listening experience. Of course,Marvel at that time was indulged in 'crispy' sound having a tragic difficulty in differentiating sensational treble and natural /harshness free treble. Looking back, though with very similar look and feel, the 2 brands of speaker are really different!
Back to the Tidal suite, the reconstruction of the musical images is assisted by a seemingly HD LCD screen in front of me. In the past when I was using Cessaro, pairing with Tidal Impact or Takumi, the soundstage is already very transparent, focused and have very high resolution. With the Tidal speaker, I can not only feel but 'see' Sissel singing in front of me with her figure standing right in front of me. What Tidal speaker can help elevating my listening experience is the 'visualisation' of the musical images more vividly.
In terms of tonality and musicality, certainly Tidal suite would not please everyone as it requires very good acoustics to reveal the true details of what the source (CD/LP) can produce. If the source and/or acoustics is not right, Tidal would be very unforgiving and cruelly reflecting....is it good or is it bad...sweet lies are always ear soothing...To me, my strive remains the same to remove as many variables as possible from the audio chain in order to get me closer to the original recordings. On one hand I am glad to build up my first ever amplifier+speaker suite, I still want to salute to Ralph of Cessaro and Robert Koda of Takumi...I will be swap using them once is a while...
Photos will be posted tomorrow when my new rack Critcal Mass is delivered....
I went to AE's audioroom this morning together with PT...a perfectly sized audioroom with acoustics not too 'dead' like a studio or not too 'live' with sound bouncing back and forth. Lots of effort have been made by the crew to evaluate and install the different types of damping, absortion and diffusing materials alongside the renovation process.....the room is undoubtedly world class and I am sure it raises the bar and set a new standard for future renovation of the homes of audiophiles, Mr. DV certainly is the next one...I might be the next...
A full Tidal suite with exactly the same setup in PT's previous home audition room, but in a much large breathing space. The advantage is a further expansion of the physical size of the room thus making the soundstage spanning out more freely without much bouncing back. Positioning of the speakers can be more precise the take both the advantage of the rear wall reflection and distance from the audition position to allow ample distance for the traversing of the bass wavelength...special material on the ceiling and the backwall also does a nice job in balancing the reflection and absorption.
We used Andrew Manze's Mozart violin concerto for the fine tuning of the speaker position and we discussed at length what should be the best cable matching the Tidal flagship preamp. Of course the biggest topic I spent lot of time with PT is how to generate more bass out of the Sunray given the breathing space is much larger. PT has ordered the T1 subwoofer for the Sunray but until then, we must think of some interim measures to make sure this Sunray tower shines out in this audition room....PT has previously adjusted the gain of the bass drivers in the Sunray during the audition session with Azurri. We moved the speakers towards the listening position by about 15cm (6 inches), the soundstage is more complete with a deeper depth into the z-axis. The trade off is however less bass reflection by the rear wall. I personally like this setup more because bass is at best to come out from the first dispersion rather than relying on the 2nd reflection by the rear wall. I also did the same for my CD SE. Due to space constraints in my living room, I can only move the CDSE 15cm closer compared to Cessaro.
The neutrality of the audition room plus the super transparent and colorless Tidal suite, it helps me and PT big time in understanding more about the use of cables,the need for Spartan, the power of Troy...all comes out 'naked' under Tidal.
Time was too short for me today to try all the CDs that I brought there.....
One question for Jeff in Taiwan who also own the Tidal Precensio, what power cords are you using? I recommend FMR.
Comments
In most residential settings, reflection dominates. There is not delay time at all. But if the delay time of the room is too long, the sound will become too dead.
One electric expert visited us over the weekend and suggest I should strengthen the gauge of the ground wire inside the MCB box for pure PHYSICS argument. The ground wire gauge should be double than that of the LIVE wire. That will allow faster draining of ground noises, thereby lowering the overall impedance of the whole electric circuit.
That's a very valulable opinion. We will make the change.
I am just doing the superficial analysis just like telling you sugar is sweet in taste...I really hope I could excel not just on my writing skills but also on the listening skills like other fellows here.
Tidal Contriva Diacera SE has landed to my place for a few days but I am giving it some time to burn in in order to share something more precise and fair. Initial impression: great match with the Tidal preamp and power. Do I miss Cessaro? Big time! Totally different camp and as a result quite different presentation. This is point 1. POint 2 is Cessaro has a more direct sound exhibiting the true characteristics of horn speaker while Tidal is more conventional. Cessaro is less demanding on the room acoustics comparatively speaking. At this moment, I can sense a much higher demand on 'skills' in order to play the Tidal suite well especially I do have listened to the benchmark in PT's place...will I reach there? No doubt about it but only as a matter of time....this time, I do have the patience for sure!! See I am not a hi-fi playboy now!
Marvel
We should form a Tidal union together with Katongkid, your good seld, Jeff and Alecy.
By the way,where is alecy? He carries long and deep experience with Tidal for almost 3 years.
Ray
Yes, indeed we should form a Tidal team to share more experience...My Contriva Diacera has been installed for several days. I was a bit tied up with family business for the past few days and now it is over and I can share my experience for the first few days.
A whole Tidal suite really shocks me on the transparency and coherence...nothing come so close than this Tidal speaker in creating a natural couple with the amplifications stage. It allows me to learn and understand more about the design principle of Tidal:
1. not to create a hi-fi excitment to the minds
2. not to impose any coloration in order to please the audience
3. create the utmost coherence among the speaker drivers (which I think is the biggest success of the Tidal speaker) in terms of frequency response and speed of propagation.
CD SE is made on a diamond treble and several ceremique drives for the midrange and bass. The ceremic material is mutiple times thinner than the K-speaker that I have used many years ago. Price aside, the drivers in Tidal do not give me any slight resemblance of my previous listening experience. Of course,Marvel at that time was indulged in 'crispy' sound having a tragic difficulty in differentiating sensational treble and natural /harshness free treble. Looking back, though with very similar look and feel, the 2 brands of speaker are really different!
Back to the Tidal suite, the reconstruction of the musical images is assisted by a seemingly HD LCD screen in front of me. In the past when I was using Cessaro, pairing with Tidal Impact or Takumi, the soundstage is already very transparent, focused and have very high resolution. With the Tidal speaker, I can not only feel but 'see' Sissel singing in front of me with her figure standing right in front of me. What Tidal speaker can help elevating my listening experience is the 'visualisation' of the musical images more vividly.
In terms of tonality and musicality, certainly Tidal suite would not please everyone as it requires very good acoustics to reveal the true details of what the source (CD/LP) can produce. If the source and/or acoustics is not right, Tidal would be very unforgiving and cruelly reflecting....is it good or is it bad...sweet lies are always ear soothing...To me, my strive remains the same to remove as many variables as possible from the audio chain in order to get me closer to the original recordings. On one hand I am glad to build up my first ever amplifier+speaker suite, I still want to salute to Ralph of Cessaro and Robert Koda of Takumi...I will be swap using them once is a while...
Photos will be posted tomorrow when my new rack Critcal Mass is delivered....
A full Tidal suite with exactly the same setup in PT's previous home audition room, but in a much large breathing space. The advantage is a further expansion of the physical size of the room thus making the soundstage spanning out more freely without much bouncing back. Positioning of the speakers can be more precise the take both the advantage of the rear wall reflection and distance from the audition position to allow ample distance for the traversing of the bass wavelength...special material on the ceiling and the backwall also does a nice job in balancing the reflection and absorption.
We used Andrew Manze's Mozart violin concerto for the fine tuning of the speaker position and we discussed at length what should be the best cable matching the Tidal flagship preamp. Of course the biggest topic I spent lot of time with PT is how to generate more bass out of the Sunray given the breathing space is much larger. PT has ordered the T1 subwoofer for the Sunray but until then, we must think of some interim measures to make sure this Sunray tower shines out in this audition room....PT has previously adjusted the gain of the bass drivers in the Sunray during the audition session with Azurri. We moved the speakers towards the listening position by about 15cm (6 inches), the soundstage is more complete with a deeper depth into the z-axis. The trade off is however less bass reflection by the rear wall. I personally like this setup more because bass is at best to come out from the first dispersion rather than relying on the 2nd reflection by the rear wall. I also did the same for my CD SE. Due to space constraints in my living room, I can only move the CDSE 15cm closer compared to Cessaro.
The neutrality of the audition room plus the super transparent and colorless Tidal suite, it helps me and PT big time in understanding more about the use of cables,the need for Spartan, the power of Troy...all comes out 'naked' under Tidal.
Time was too short for me today to try all the CDs that I brought there.....
One question for Jeff in Taiwan who also own the Tidal Precensio, what power cords are you using? I recommend FMR.
Marvel