True Confessions (Trio15 Horn1)
Five Days After Assembly
“Dear Ze’ev,
Here’s an intermediate reaction from your probably lowest living customer in Europe (4m below msl at my place).
As expected, during the first days sound changed from hour to hour, or even faster. These changes are now gradually slowing down after 5 consecutive days of playing. At the moment I like what I hear, soundscape is opening up in three directions, and the spectrum gets more and more balanced. Refinement of the high tones develops bit by bit, which is good.
Attached is a picture of the set-up in my living room. Initially I had some doubts on damping the room since it’s rather hard sounding and a bit reverberating, but that appears not to be an issue, at least not now.
As you can see on the picture, I own a VdVeen EL34 based pp amp, presently driven by KT77’s, which I could modify to around 0.07% 2nd order distortion at 1W@6Ohms. which sounds very detailed and clean. The trio’s allready show that cleanliness. Alternatively I also use Hypex nc400 mono’s. These make really a different sound. I like both, however. Further upstream, not shown on the picture, is Music First TVC, Lehman Black Cube preamp, Michell Gyro SE tt, Jelco SA250 arm fitted with Jico Seti-Hori cartridge, the analogue branch. The digital branch comprises of a DIY dac based on four parallel NOS decks, I2S fed by RPi plus ALLO Kali reclocker.
Sorry for all these details, it reads a bit like showing of…. ‘music’ is the drive we share, all else are peripheral requisites, so far I like these peripherals that you developed.
Happy easter weekend !”
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Few Good Weeks after Assembly
Dear Ze’ev
Suddenly I realized, audition time must be over by now, and I wasn’t sharp on its start either. So I guess I owe you some confessions and observations. First of all, you will not get these great speakers back. (bluntly breaking the ice….;-)
First confession
I had the impression that I was used to quite a wide and deep soundspace. That appeared to be a false impression. These speakers really can take you into an envelope of sound. Depending on the sound-engineer’s mastering, some recordings let you perceive sound from an angle of about 70 degrees on either side of the center, the more conventional recordings give you tunnel-deep perception. I mean from the front to the back, very deep.
Second confession
I thought that my room was acoustically difficult to tame. Having spent months studying on acoustics, theorizing, measuring and experimenting with damping material appeared to be a waste of time. These speakers just need distance from the walls and when placed relatively close (2½-3m or so) to the listening position ‘and’ are well broken in, you have nothing to wish for. No need for damping or bass traps anymore.
Third confession
At first I thought open baffle bass production was an illusion compared to a well designed Transmission line speaker that I used to have. This impression appears to be false as well. During the four weeks these woofers became better and better. In fact the whole breaking in seems to be much longer than I thought, Over time I notice improvements even still after an estimated 350 hours or so. This yields for the horns as well.
This brings me to wonder how on earth you could develop a speaker like this, when it takes a month before you can hear the end result? Either you must have had highly valid predictive skill or lots of patience and perseverance. Maybe both.
Fourth confession
These horns are rather addictive! As most of us work from our homes these days, so am I. I have to confess that an audio supported lunch break can easily result in forgetting to lunch. (with the consequence that you have to work until late in the night to get your targets done 🙂
Observation one
Although I own Class D mono amps which distortion-wise perform hundreds of times better than my kt77 push pull VanderVeen UL40S-Power amp, the latter has not been disconnected from the set for the last two or three weeks. These speakers seem to be an excellent match for this amplifier.
Observation two
I’ve always noticed some degree of improvement between the start and the end of the first side of vinyl. These speakers make it clear that the improvement starts between 5 and 10 minutes after which apparently the needle’s suspension, the cartridge or preamp have warmed up.
Observation three
I thought the configuration of my set had settled after the years. Well, these speakers gradually made it clear that shortening inerconnects, even high quality, have a big effect. So my house is in a mess now, rewiring, re configuring, thinking over a HiFi rack for instance, even the car battery, which feeds the DAC, has found temporary asylum in my living. And although female intervention in electronics associated decoration is history for years now, my aim is to resettle again as soon as possible. (even I have my limits 🙂
So cheers to you Ze’ev! I had my reservation, shooting savings into the stratosphere and expecting some rain after – guess what? I got torrential HiFi rain making me happy every day!
Stephan (NL)