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Changed my Digital front end- the "components don't sound different" issue

Posted by Awe-d-o-file (D) on June 25, 2009 at 10:47:20

When I was 12 my dad bought me my first stereo. It was a Realistic Modulaire. A low powered receiver that only had ceramic phono input and came with a set of speakers. Within a few weeks I had my dads old Eico kit tuner(HFT-90) plugged into the aux input and I noticed even back then it sounded better and different than the tuner built in to the receiver.

A couple of years later my neighbor, Clint Holmes the singer, said I could borrow his Shure Vocal master PA system . How cool was that? "It's in the garage Earl, just go get it when you want try it." Clint also gave me two Richard Pryor comedy albums which was also pretty cool for a now 14 year old kid. A great neighbor for a little kid to have. He also was a great baseball player and refused a minor league deal with the Phillies.

So I take the wheel barrow and go fetch the Vocal Master in two trips: one for both 5 foot tall narrow cabinets and one for the head. By this time the Realistic has been replaced with a Superscope integrated and a Gerrard magnetic phono cart 40B with lawn mowing money. I take the tape out and go into the vocal master I set up in the living room. My parents came home to me blaring Kool and the Gang "Funky Stuff".

OK the last two paragraphs was just a cool story from my childhood and not related to the subject so back to it. I have posted here and elsewhere that my Trivista SACD player finally gave in to the Philips transport problem late last year.(no parts available from Philips) I then used it as a DAC. A fellow inmate gave me a better $500 Sherwood CDP than the DVD player with no internal display I was using as a transport. It read faster and better and sounded better too. I changed its hardwired stock power cord to an $50 Ernies DIY power cord and did some internal and external vibration tweaks; the previous owner had already upgraded power supply diodes.

When the Trivista transport "went" it was a slow death. It would play two or three tracks then die. After switching to the separate transport for 30 days I decided to see if the Trivista would still play a disc. Sadly it did, I say sadly because you could really hear the improvement that its transport made after listening to the "combo" for a month or so.

Last night the DAC portion of the Trivista finally also went south. Bummer! I checked the digital cable, cleaned and Pro Golded it and put on some silver grease and put it back together. Turned the CDP and Trista off and back on. These things did not change the sound but I only got one more song out if it before it died again.

So now its time to just use the Sherwood. I took the Trivista away and put the RCA's into the Sherwoods analog out. My first impressions using my reference recordings were that it was "different" for sure. Not earth shatteringly so though. The Sherwood had enough output to easily drive my passive bi-amp setup. I didn't even notice a volume difference, that's nice.

I was pleasantly surprised that the image was not diminished in any way. It seemed the HF wasn't quite as good as before and the mids seemed more present, perhaps due to the slightly diminished HF. I did notice less sibilance on the Massive Attack vocal on "Karma Koma". Was that due to less HF or less digital garbage? Perhaps not having a digital cable anymore was helping reduce that? The cable was a several year old Vampire digital cable that retailed for about $125. I listened to a few more tracks and went to bed. So, not bad, not as bad as I thought it would be.

This morning I decided to rape the 20A IEC off the Trivista chassis and put it on the Sherwood so I could use my better power cord. When I did so I also wired it directly to the transformer primary bypassing the power switch and little power input board with those cheap molex connectors. This greatly improved the HF and no power switch is not an issue since it plugs into a PS Audio P-300.

It really sounds better than the combo of the Sherwood and Trivista did and approaches the Trivistas sound when its transport worked. So I think stuff sounds different. If you do or don't so be it. I have always felt that there is a logarithmic financial return on hi-fi in that you need to spend many more dollars to get only a small improvement in sound and this journey has seemed to validate that. Now that I'm broke and can't plunk down big money for a new digital front end that is a satisfying validation of my long held theory.

ET

God I'm a real windbag today..............

ET

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936

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Kimber Kable

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