Article: The Next Step in my Audio Journey — When System Synergy Trumped Individual Components

[chrille]

Hmm, interesting development and big change to your system, but if I understand this article  correctly you are now saying that a conventional dac chip based  NOS? dac  with a chip that is out of production? is what you now prefer over  Dave with PGGB?

And also that PGGB that both you and Romaz used to rave about is not as important as the sum of the parts in this equation?

Confusing to me.

And when you say this, do you or Romaz or Vinnie? also  have any reference recordings where you have direct reference to live sound in the hall versus recorded ?

 

Then again, with all the hazzle involved with using PGGB I have still not bought into that, mainly because  of the weird track length limitations involved. 

The Mahler 5 first movement you so kindly helped my process breaking into two parts around the 12 minute mark was VERY annoying. The last thing I want is a break in a symphonic movement with an audible glitch via my players. And all the hazzle to stitch things  together correctly with most of the music I listen to.  But  that M5  is one of several other large scale symphonic music  recordings in my masterfiles collection  where I was actually there during the recording sessions both in the hall and control room. And although I still think that upscaling or maybe even  better actually record at 32/768khz can be beneficial to the end result in a good enough system I am also waiting to get to hear what Rob Watts  has "up his sleeve" with the upcoming X Mscaler later this year,so I would absolutely not count out his tech solutions quite yet.

Or have dac chips really become THAT good?

 Brama? You should have informed him how to spell it correctly before release?

Cheers Chrille

[Ben-M]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

You can post on the WBF thread and ask, but I would be very surprised if he were. These enhancements enhance the value proposition for Extreme customers.

Just my speculation, but I wouldn't bet the driver tweaks would be moving outside the Taiko system. There's no guarantee that outside the total Taiko controlled environment that the driver tweaks would even apply the same way; the Taiko system really goes overboard in controlling so many aspects of the whole thing from every perspective. And besides that, it wouldn't really make sense to me to "sell" it. I'd expect limited ongoing sales and a bunch more troubleshooting needs all for not much personal/Taiko benefit. Just got to buy an Extreme!

 

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

I just listened to Vinnie's new Brama integrated amp at AXPONA, and while it sounded excellent in the system it was deployed in, I have no way to gauge how it would compare to my L2i SE. The expectation Vinnie sets is that the Brama is in another league of performance, with a price tag to match.

 

It turns out that the speaker outputs of the L2i SE are single ended, in that the L- and R- speaker terminals share a common AGND (analog ground). So even though I'm adapting the L+/L- and R+/R- banana outputs to 4-pin female XLR with the Transparent Ultra adapter, I can use the Helix in the path by using XLR to 6.3mm TRS adapters on both ends.

 

I hope the above is clear. Just to make it clearer: The Transparent Ultra cable is terminated with a 4-pin male XLR plug on the amp end. Keep that in mind. 

 

Here is the path without the Trinity Helix:

• L2i SE > Ultra bananas-to-female XLR-4 adapter > Ultra cable > headphones

And here is the path with the Trinity Helix:

• L2i SE > Ultra bananas-to-female XLR-4 adapter > male XLR-4 to male 6.3mm adapter > Helix > male 6.3mm to female XLR-4 adapter > Ultra cable > headphones

 

To make this Helix path even cleaner, I could have Transparent build me an Ultra bananas-to-male 6.3mm adapter.

Thanks for replying about both points. 

 

1. I just checked out the new pictures of Vinnie's Brama line, it's really clean with high-end watch-face style dials. But I miss a bit of the aesthetic "character" his other/older gear had. Hopefully he's going to add some more details to the external design to really dial it in.

 

I hope you get to check out the sort of matching upscale Brama version of your L2i SE down the road. 

 

 

2. That's interesting news about the the L2i SE actually only outputting L- and R- single ended off the speaker taps. I've been looking at new subwoofers lately and saw ones (No. 25) by REL that take the direct high voltage speaker tap output as their input signal, BUT REL said this is only OK for non-balanced differential outputting speaker amplifiers.

 

I had never even heard of such a thing. Not that I -knew- for sure that amps all output balanced, differential (L-, L+, R-, R+) off theirp speaker taps, but I sort of expected that to be the case since they're all labeled with those signal signs and I don't know where there's any sort of "list" that states that status for amps. It's not listed in general specs, that's for sure. 

 

Anyway, that's convenient news that the L2i taps line right up with connecting to the SE Trinity Helix. Do you actually have those required pigtails for that chain you outlined? Even if not, the versatility of that Transparent headphone cable seems pretty great. They're probably the only one I've heard of that have been able to "win" with the adapter sets on a headphone cable. The idea has been around for a while, but it never seems to have taken off. 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

4 hours ago, chrille said:

Then again, with all the hazzle involved with using PGGB I have still not bought into that, mainly because  of the weird track length limitations involved. 

The Mahler 5 first movement you so kindly helped my process breaking into two parts around the 12 minute mark was VERY annoying. The last thing I want is a break in a symphonic movement with an audible glitch via my players. And all the hazzle to stitch things  together correctly with most of the music I listen to.

You could now use wavpack with PGGB and get over the hassle of split files (because of the size limitation of 4GB with wav files).

 

3 hours ago, Ben-M said:

I had never even heard of such a thing. Not that I -knew- for sure that amps all output balanced, differential (L-, L+, R-, R+) off theirp speaker taps, but I sort of expected that to be the case since they're all labeled with those signal signs and I don't know where there's any sort of "list" that states that status for amps. It's not listed in general specs, that's for sure. 

 

Anyway, that's convenient news that the L2i taps line right up with connecting to the SE Trinity Helix. Do you actually have those required pigtails for that chain you outlined? Even if not, the versatility of that Transparent headphone cable seems pretty great. They're probably the only one I've heard of that have been able to "win" with the adapter sets on a headphone cable. The idea has been around for a while, but it never seems to have taken off. 

 

It is not obvious from specs that the speakers were not true balanced differential, had to ask Vinnie (could have possibly found that with a multi-meter too). I have two Trinity Helix modules and wanted to very much use them with my headphones. The transparent banana to 4pin adapters were a big step up and their modular nature makes it so easy to drive either my Omega speakers or my headphones (from speaker posts) or my electrostatic amp (from RCA out) while always having the Trinity Helix modules in the path. 

[austinpop]

3 hours ago, Ben-M said:

Do you actually have those required pigtails for that chain you outlined?

 

Yes, over time I have acquired these pigtails. Some of them are standard, and some are custom, but Transparent will build ether on request.

 

3 hours ago, Ben-M said:

Even if not, the versatility of that Transparent headphone cable seems pretty great. They're probably the only one I've heard of that have been able to "win" with the adapter sets on a headphone cable. The idea has been around for a while, but it never seems to have taken off. 

 

Yes, it is a very versatile system!

[Ben-M]

14 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

It is not obvious from specs that the speaker posts on the L2i SE were not true balanced differential, had to ask Vinnie (could have possibly found that with a multi-meter too).

 

I have two Trinity Helix modules and wanted to very much use them with my headphones. The transparent banana to 4pin adapters were a big step up and their modular nature makes it so easy to drive either my Omega speakers or my headphones (from speaker posts) or my electrostatic amp (from RCA out) while always having the Trinity Helix modules in the path. 

Thanks for saying a bit more about this. And besides that, thanks for your ongoing and expanded development with PGGB. 

 

So if you have 2 HFC Trinity Helix modules, does that mean that you've got:

A.) 1 in-line from the L2i SE speaker taps on a Transparent pigtail, which you sometimes connect to your dynamic/planar headphones and other times to your Omega speakers and

B.) you've got a second 1 in-line from the L2i SE RCA outputs vvia Transparent pigtail to feed your electrostatic headphone amp?

 

14 hours ago, austinpop said:

Yes, over time I have acquired these pigtails. Some of them are standard, and some are custom, but Transparent will build ether on request.

 

Yes, it is a very versatile system!

That's interesting. 

 

The reason why I'm asking in detail about that is that in your system flow chart up in the article, it doesn't show anything about the Trinity Helix module still being in play, and in the pictures it's also sitting there disconnected. But I remembered across your posts before where you were saying it was a nice addition to the chain even though it was comparatively expensive, which made me sort of surprised if this was now not the case and also chalked up to your greater topic about system synergy.

I also have the HFC Trinity Helix, but there aren't like a legion of people out there with them, so I'm always interested in asking about people's different experiences with them. 

 

Also, they're not listed on the updated HFC website anymore, so I wonder if Rick stopped selling them?

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

6 hours ago, Ben-M said:

So if you have 2 HFC Trinity Helix modules, does that mean that you've got:

A.) 1 in-line from the L2i SE speaker taps on a Transparent pigtail, which you sometimes connect to your dynamic/planar headphones and other times to your Omega speakers and

B.) you've got a second 1 in-line from the L2i SE RCA outputs vvia Transparent pigtail to feed your electrostatic headphone amp?

I have the two trinity Helix modules in series and they are connected to each other by a short  1/4 inch male to male stereo TRS cable made by DHC. The Transparent pigtail connects to one end of the Trinity helix module from L2iSE, on the other end I either use another Transparent adaptor with my headphones, I also have TRS -> speaker posts adapter that I connect my speaker cables to. When I want to use L2iSE as DAC/Pre, I also have adapter cables to connect from the RCA out of L2iSE to Trinity Helix modules and the other end I have adapters taht go from TRS to RCA into my HGSSHV Carbon estat amp. It may look like I am going out of my way to accommodate the trinity helix modules, and yes I do that because in my system they are worth the hassle and they have been a constant in my setup even when other components changed.

 

If you think I am crazy for using two these modules, wait till you hear that I know at least one person who uses 4 of these :)

 

[sb6]

Interesting reporting, thanks. I'm curious if you have your system in your HT room why you wouldn't turn that chair 90 degrees and use it for 2 channel to get the full range and more realistic effect of playback via loudspeakers?