The fuse is burning-in with the usual up/down progress, I started the system on Tara since Monday and am trying to get enough hours on it for a visit by John on Saturday.  Last night it was sounding pretty good, with outstanding bass and dynamic slam.  Now it just needs to develop the midrange and soundstage a little more.  It'll get there but Oranges won't be rushed!

Thank you, John. It was great to see you and catch up today.

I was in two minds whether to leave the still burning-in SR Orange fuse in the P12 or return to the well-used SR Red, so I had a quick listen this morning before John's arrival and decided on balance to leave the SR Orange in place. The Orange is better than the Red by this point and all I could detect was a trace remnant of glare in the midrange, which is what John heard. I am hoping that another 100 hours will calm it down.

A lot has happened since the turn of the year, with the two JS-2 power supplies providing a substantial uplift in sound quality, and the rest coming from the P12.

The system is singing really well now and I'm happy to leave it be.

The Black Ravioli Big Pad Plus footers under the streamer and DAC/DDC are now the right way up (!) and the Orange fuse in the P12 is getting ever better. Things are sounding amazing, a big step up this year down primarily to the two JS-2 power supplies with Sapphire DC cables feeding the clocks.

Yello's album Flag is one of my all-time top 10, fantastic music finding Yello on one of their first musical peaks. It's also a difficult album to sound good. While The Race sounded great on 12" vinyl, the CD was flat as hell and the LP quite a lot better but still relatively flat. The Qobuz stream is 'only' 16/44 but it packs an almighty punch and Flag has never sounded better.

The music is complex and dense, using samples from their vast library to compose music like no other band, and unique even among their own work. The track Tied Up can sound flat and lifeless on CD, but what I'm hearing is punchy and vibrant in the extreme, with detail such that you don't quite know where to listen, bongos that pop right out of the mix and the soundstage being filled with atmosphere. It's an extraordinary work and is utterly spellbinding when it sounds as good as this. A recording that truly separates the men from the boys.

So, the system has come together really well. I can't hear any bottlenecks and, once again, the Ushers just take another step up when challenged, still showing no signs of reaching their limit. They really do scale rather well.

The remixed version of Oh Yeah on Touch is the one to play.  Then you can play Bostich (Reflected) as used on some TV programme.  Fantastic!

I went to the Bristol show today and found it rather disappointing. However, I went with my son so it was great to listen together and catch up. We focussed particularly on a pair of Acoustic Energy floorstanders being demonstrated. Interestingly, his approach from a music creator standpoint and mine from a listener point of view co-incided perfectly and that was completely unprompted.

We listened to a song we didn't know but I recognised the voice. A quick Shazam revealed it to be All About You by Sophie Zelmani, another female singer I like very much. We commented on how her voice sounded shut in and the treble was missing a lot of harmonics and note decay. The whole sound was not selling itself to us. I resolved to play it at home later.

Well, here I am playing it again and it's like hearing a different song altogether. It is full of energy with the acoustic guitar exploding from the speakers and her presence big and right there in the room.

I'm saying this not because my system slays what I heard at the show (it does) but because I'm shocked that more effort is not made to demonstrate a good sound by the vendors. We left that show trying to fathom how we could go about selecting decent components based on what we had heard. It would be no better than pot luck, we concluded. Vendors spend a lot of money running a room at a show. They really need to know how to get better sound from their gear and some of them need to bring some room treatment with them. The poor punter must be left confused and none the wiser based on the sounds created today.


That track by Sophie Zelmani:
open.qobuz.com/track/4554161

That sounds disappointing Martin.
I think unfortunately, most are still completely unaware of the importance of reducing noise and vibrations for digital equipment. I’ve read comments recently suggesting that equipment without moving parts can’t possibly need anything to inhibit vibrations.
I’ve learnt a lot here on TAS over the last few years that I’m gradually implementing.

Most exhibitors, manufacturers, dealers, perhaps all of them are not able to join the dots

Plenty of them will deny anything out of their normal script

Yeah these guys hawking wares need to get a little more hi-tech. At least bring along some acoustic treatment for their rooms.
Maybe someday

The Sophie Zelmani above is a stunner. I love discovering new music, even from artists I already know.