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In Reply to: Ayre CX-7e CD player - first impressions. posted by kurt s on February 8, 2007 at 08:15:59:
I now have about 250 hours on the machine. You know 500 hours of break-in is a LONG time, that's 21 days operated 24/7.Anyway, I tried something new. Instead of having the RCA outputs feed a TVC where most of the time it is stepping up, making a load as far down as 14K ohms, I added a 27-based linestage with 200K input impedance to buffer it. It sounds much different this way. Much more solid dynamics and the tone is pretty spot on neutral to me, at least relatively. Did I lose any detail? Maybe a touch. It is another piece added to the chain. But there were gains that made up for that. The player is not as "mesmerizing" in its odd liquidity and slow bounce that the TVC alone had. It is still fully detailed in the soundstage with excellent image specificity, but perhaps lost a little depth and "roundness" to it. It will make the Lowther driver shout more often than with the TVC, a trait I could do without. I have to learn to turn down the volume more. The Lowther really only shouts when played loud. Having more gain tempts me to try louder settings, and then it's not the player's fault, it's my speaker. I can't imagine a Lowther user not front loading it. Without the gains of the front load, the driver would be shouting at significantly lower volume levels, and unacceptably so to me.
I don't know for sure which setup is better overall yet, but it goes to show how much the matings of components will affect the overall presentation of this player. And I am still a firm believer in using the "Measure" mode over "Listen" in this situation. I don't understand it that much, but the difference is enormous to me, and I like "Measure" way more at this point. Maybe for SET folks like me, it's often the preferred option as opposed for the balanced SS folks.
That about sums it up for now. It's only halfway broken in! Dang this is slow moving now. The first 100 hours showed the most change, now it's getting more subtle in movement.
Follow Ups:
Last night I again compared the addition of a 27 line stage against it straight into the TVC. I did a little tube rolling on the Type 27 triode in the line stage and took a Philco ST for more smoothness and less shout from the Lowther.Interesting experimental results. This combination just goes to show how delicate it is to drive a pair of Lowthers correctly. Too much microdynamics can actually make the Lowthers do some excessive "ringing", which is to say it excites resonances that you don't want to hear. There is a correct amount that my phono system seems to get about spot on. The CD player is now "bracketed". With the 27 line stage added it is too much and it causes excessive shouting effects, even at lower volume levels. With it feeding the TVC directly, it is not shouting at all, and might be considered slow sounding, but I can play it real loud and not shout the Lowthers. Hmmm... how do I optimize that for the middle ground, I wonder?
But I prefer the sound straight into the TVC for now. Much smoother, with more detail coming in without a resonance excitation overtaking the details in the recording, and like I said, it's mesmerizing. VERY 3-dimensional sound, rounded edges, not like cardboard cutouts. It's not the greatest for dance music maybe, but so good for a relaxing sound, like slow moving jazz pieces and rich orchestral works. The tone is beautifully on the nose, too. Horns are remarkable, and astonishingly good for redbook CD I have to say.
With this in mind, I have to say I cannot yet fault the player for doing what it does. I can almost make it do anything in spades, and all this coming from just the RCA outputs. I haven't even tried the balanced outputs yet, and probably never will. The question is what do you connect this player up to? How do you handle the signals it gives you? It can be quick, high paced and edgy to downright slow and sluggish, depending on the type of load and downstream components that are placed in there. My guess is that if you don't like this player, you might want to think about what's wrong with some other part of your system, at least from the line stage onward. I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. It's not weird to me, it only seems to show what's weird about what the rest of the system is doing. How else am I able to make this player out to sound so different in so many configurations? It must be pretty balanced and neutral sounding in the first place, IMO. YMMV.
I have an idea. The 27 linestage features a step attenuator of fixed resistors. I can feed the linestage output (with its 6K output impedance) to the TVC and dial in the optimal turns ratio that sets up well with the Lowthers for pace, timing, and minimal shout combined. Then use the stepped attenuator of the linestage as the volume control as normal. It might be a little stepped up to the amp, or a little stepped down at the TVC. But there I can make a dialed adjustment about the amount of "slowness" to the sound. I'll check it out tonight. Of course I might not like the loss of detail with all this signal processing.
Well, it did it just like I predicted! Man, can I call them, or what? :-)Yes, I was able to dial in the pace, rhythm, and timing, versus the excessive shout from the Lowthers by setting up various TVC turns ratios, and being fed by a 27-based linestage.
And yes, it also goes to show that the 27-based linestage is not as transparent and guiltless as I would have hoped. A lot was lost through this linestage, more than I had anticipated. Loss of detail, depth, and magic. Twas a disappoinment, really. The ultimate answer might appear to be a better linestage, something I'm not sure that will really be transparent enough to make me happy in this situation here. I think the TVC is pretty transparent, even more so in some respects than anything active I've heard.
And, so, I think I've found the winning formula for best sound from CD in my home. CD -> TVC -> 45 SET amp -> horn speakers, from the CD's RCA output and in "Measure" mode. Lovely sound. I dig it.
But it goes away for a few days as I am painting the living room and the stereo is now being torn down.
This is the first player I've had that I felt was worthy of a very transparent interconnect. Before I have used a nice sounding, silky smooth on top kind of IC, the one I used being an old inexpensive Wireworld Eclipse, 1m. That IC would help shut down the digititis coming out of the earlier players. The Ayre is void of digititis completely, unless the CD itself is recorded with it in it. Amazingly enough, a lot of those older CD's did not have a digital artifact like that in them, at least not after coming out the Ayre player.So for this Ayre player, I pulled out all the stops and put in my top gun IC, one that cost me $5 to make. It's a 36-gage magnet wire twisted pair that I solder to Radio Shack gold RCA plugs, in minimal lengths, only to cover the needed distance. In this case, 2.5' was needed. It's very detailed, needs almost no break-in, and is very neutral sounding. For other IC's I have, some are only 1' in length to cover the distance. As a protective shield, I use teflon tubing for the thin gauge magnet wire to go through. Yes there are better IC's that cost a lot, but this has worked so well for me and has sounded better than some $400 IC's I tried, including silver ones that I hated, and it just sounds even mo better the shorter the length I can make it. Easy custom fit IC's of high performance. Why bother with anything else, I wonder?
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