How many will that be when the latest arrives ?

A picture when it does please

The Last Year

2021 was the year when I transformed my system back from one where all the components are working well in isolation to a truly satisfying music maker with everything working in synergy.

Major Component
The Gustard X26 Pro DAC turned out to be exactly what I wanted: a superbly executed example of the ES9038Pro dual mono chipset.  This is the DAC chipset for me with incredible detail retrieval.  Gustard have done a magnificent job in execution, highlighting both resolution and soundstaging/depth attributes at the same time.  It's no longer one or the other, I have it all.  As with the LKS before it, I removed the trusty Burson buffer and drive the power amp directly, using the DAC in digital volume control mode.  A further improvement and simplification of the signal path.

Clocks
Another significant change was to add two AfterDark clocks after a period of experimenting with the BG7TBL.  Each is used with a reclocker.  Timing, bass tightness, soundstaging and dynamics all took a significant step upwards.  Much, much more of the music was revealed in the process.  I experimented with externally clocking the Gustard, but its internal K2 clock is so damned good that I heard no improvement.

Grounding Boxes
After the clocks, the most significant upgrades I have made to the system, the transformatory additions that have lowered the noise floor, increased depth perception, improved fine detail and expanded dynamic range, are a redeployment of and additions to my grounding strategy.  A combination of using grounding boxes on the mains earth together with grounding each individual digital component.  I removed all grounding of analogue components as I can't hear a difference - digital components, though, all improve significantly.  They have taken the high performance components and sewn them together in a team performance that is incredibly satisfying.

Cables
One significant change was to a Mad Scientist Black Magic USB cable for the ultraRendu to Mutec link.  This gives a more liquid and flowing midrange delivery than the Wireworld I was using.  Honourable mentions go to the two Belden 4694R clock cables and the short AfterDark Constellation ethernet link between EtherREGEN and ultraRendu.

What's Left?
Not much.  I am experimenting with grounding the clocks as well as the components they feed.  For now, that's all that I can think of.

I played some music for my son yesterday, who appreciated the changes since he last heard it a year ago. He is an amateur music creator with some studio experience and remarked mostly at the dynamics, something that he has been taught to compress as a standard technique for his genre of trance/dance composition. He used different descriptive language, which is always fun, but was impressed with the level of clarity, despite being used to revealing studio monitors. It was nice to catch up and play him things he hadn't heard before, even trying him on a bit of Hawkwind at one point. He made an instant link with Black Sabbath, which was interesting.

Yes, and needless to say a lot of it was highly compressed and a bit harsh. I can spot bad mastering with ProTools quite easily. A few, though, sound incredible such as Jon Hopkins whom we both like.

My 4th Aucharm grounding box has arrived. I'll wire it in this evening, to the 2nd clock feeding the Mutec reclocker.

I swapped it to my DAC as a 2nd grounding box. That's more like it!

Black magic rather than logic by our current knowledge

Wouldn’t the grounding box ‘ground voltage’ float to whatever the QP-1 ground voltage was at?

Cheers Bill

We;; at least it rules out placebo