Tír Na HiFi

A long overdue get together happened today in Nige's place.
First of all have to extend my big thanks to his mother who put up a lovely dinner for 5 growing lads - although my growing is only around the waist, these days :)

Because we haven't met in a good while there was quiet a lot to listen to & compare. A list of devices that we listened to & some of my comments:
Nige's battery powered amplifier
Pearse's Classé amp
Tony's Jadis tube amp

I don't think I heard the Classé amp but I found Nige's amp to be best & we used it for most of the source comparisons

Sources included:
Niges's tweaked SD card player
Pearse's tweaked PC build
Microrendu (stock)

To my mind Pearse's PC sounded best although SD card player was not too far away & Microrendu improved in sound as we went from iFi stock PS supply to 5V @1A linear supply to 6.6V battery, leaving it not too far behind the rest.

DACs used were:
Nige's tweaked Soekris X 2 (one fed by SD card & one fed by PC)
Lampizator

We used WTFPlay for all PC playback & trial version of HQplayer with Microrendu

We compared my prototype battery powered USB isolator & reclocker to an Intona USB isolator (powered by Paul Hynes PS?) & Regen with my battery powered mod - most seemed to prefer the prototype device & we left it in-line for most of the other source comparisons

Did we listen to anything else?

No paparazzi were allowed inside?!! :)

sima66 wrote:No paparazzi were allowed inside?!! :)

I did spot a guy in the bushes with telephoto lens - looked a lot like Pearse - maybe he'll sell us the pics he got?

Lot's of great music from top ranking equipment. The performance and versatility of the Lampizator Big 7 was very impressive but once again the star attraction was Nige's (un-named) Amp. Best I've heard. Thanks for a fun afternoon.

Certainly big thanks to Nigels Mam lovely dinner prior to a tough afternoons unblindfolded testing of the equipment listed by John, would concur the new prototype thingy sounded distinctly different to the intona/battery regen combo. Personally preferred it really nice analogue flow from it and the Big7 sounded sublime with whatever new card Pearse has fitted to it. We used predominantly Nigels amp on the day and thankfully even though Nigel likes to change connectors and speaker cables on the fly all equipment survived intact. Great to meet up again after a long break thanks to Nigel for hosting it and keeping us all fed and watered throughout the day.

Another thanks to Nige and the family for putting up with us for almost 8 hours...at least there was no Oscar Peterson on the day and we could not find any Talking Heads no matter how hard we looked!!
Remain in Light was in the WAV folder after all Tony, i knew I had it somewhere :-)

Sadly John I forgot to take pictures later when all the kit was installed and without the Jadis in place...just too much going on that day.
I did get one earlier which I have posted below, the Big7 is in the back row and the second Soekris Dac is behind the curtains at this point in the day.

Stars on the day were Nige's amp and John's IsoHub or whatever it will be called, my order is in for both of them and looking forward to both seeing the light of day in my rack.
That apple tart did come close though.....

The MicroRendu acquitted itself well, though it took Linear and then battery supplies to get it to sound anyway good and at that it comes close to my audio PC but not close enough that I would consider it yet though.
For someone starting out in digital playback it is a good launch pad to some good sound if you go for a good power supply and add the IsoHub or similar on the USB out side to the DAC.

Lots of good and varied sounds on the day, too many to list here.
Thanks to all for a great day.

A big thanks to Nige for hospitality and to his Mom for the great dinner. Also, thanks to Tony for the lift and the little site-seeing.

That indeed was a quite interesting day. I had the first opportunity to listen to Nige's amp and his SD card transport+Soerkris combo. The amp is the top-class - no doubts about it. Experiments with John's black box were also interesting. My first impression was that I did not like it, but it did not take long and I changed my mind.

Richard, if you're reading this I did go to that shop in Moynalty & bought another "special" apple tart & told them they were being talked about in China which tickled them.

All that got to sample the tart agreed it was one of the best.

Back to audio - I forgot that we tried the Microrendu only with my ISOHUB on it's output - we never tried without. It's amazing that even with a USB hub chip in the microrendu & my ISOHUB isolation & reclocking in the signal path, the quality of the microrendu's PS matters to the eventual sound.

I rated best sound of the day to be the combination of Pearse's PC + ISOHUB + Soekris DAC & Nige's amp closely followed by Nige's Sd card + Soekris DAC into Nige's amp

Thanks guys
ive relayed the thanks for the food back to where it is deserved, i knew it would be a long day:)

thanks for bringing the gear for the comparisons guys i know its quite a bit of hassle so cheers for that
i really knew my makeshift pc wasn't up to it when richard and john was here a few weeks ago it was vastly inferior to the sdcard player
so was great to get a good pc to run the dacs
ill have to revise some of the botched test wiring on the sdcard/soekris dac and get a rematch
lampi sounded much better than i remembered

was real glad to hear sound from the microrendu we sure found it time consuming to get going under the circumstances
was yet again proof how much power supply influences the result as we went from stock supply to linear to lifepo4
if the damn thing wasnt 600$ id take my soldering iron to one

i liked the isohub quite a lot its detailed and fluid, i believe there is nothing on the market like it?, probably a must for audio pcs

Great reading about this guys, sorry I couldn't be there.....