Roberto's ET-7S2

[roberto]

AJ's female singer recommendations are spot-on. I would add Loreena McKennitt (admittedly an acquired taste) and a 3rd Cole: Holly Cole.

I have the DVD where she plays and sings at the Alhambra Palace in Spain. There, she uses a lot of different musical instruments from the time that the songs were written. Her voice is tremendous and you can hear that she fulls the room with it. Lovely timbre and also she is a great musician too.

Thanks Joe!

[AnotherJohnson]

Señor Costa is quite skilled!

Here’s a rarity

https://jackpearson.bandcamp.com/album/ukulele-jp-style

Peach music on a ukulele

[Big Dog RJ]

Finally, well done Robbo mate!

It's certainly nice to experience the better quality of what a version 2 can do. With a few tweaks and upgraded power supplies plus Vishays, things get a whole better over time.
Certainly sounds like JF did a good job of initial burn-in on the unit before sending, otherwise it wouldn't sound that different right out of the box. Which you've noticed.

Once it reaches optimal performance, you'll notice the very nature of neutral colours... pretty much the preamp gets out of the way, allowing more of the recording to flow. This is the main concept of the Enhanced Triode series.

In a highly revealing and compelling transparent system, especially with full range stats like the CLX's, this neutral nature in sound will be far more apparent. Sit back and enjoy those fine tunes!

Cheers mate, RJ

[roberto]

Hola RJ,

Quite right with your assertions. Now what I need is to put a lot of hours on it. Still is like having the handbrake leave on but just a little bit...still it is not running smooth. It will, I know. I have traces of harsh sound, specially on the sibilant words...its coming. Yesterday was without any focus, using today almost the same albums and songs, the focus had an improvement tremendously. At this point, I don't have speakers sounding, just a beautiful stage. Timbre is getting better...also the inner detail. So many nuances of the music had came forward. I think that my ears had a good rest without the quality sound of a this wonderful preamplifier.

The CLXs loves it. The drums, the cymbals, basically the percussion instruments had returned. The air though the sax like Ben Webster in his album " Ballads" is very detailed. The detail is coming out with more presence, it is much easy to listen to...I love this.

AJ is right! The difference with the V1 is not big, Right now I'm beginning to have more deepness, and the air between the instruments is more life like. A naturalness is beginning to come out with more fine points. The nuances of the music are more expressed. And when there is just a touch, you get it too.

[AnotherJohnson]

The 2 is definitely better than the 1 … but the 1 is very nice too. I was glad when I upgraded.

[admin]

Hola RJ,

Quite right with your assertions. Now what I need is to put a lot of hours on it. Still is like having the handbrake leave on but just a little bit...still it is not running smooth. It will, I know. I have traces of harsh sound, specially on the sibilant words...its coming.

That improvement should continue. My unit already had the burn in period and I found no harshness. The CLX's are very revealing speakers so it may just take a little extra time.

[roberto]

AJ, yes, the V2 is much better than the V1. About two hours ago, I got a sudden heavy low frequency transient and the pre did not play the music. I got the remote and touched mute, it did went to mute, hit again the mute switch, and another heavy transient came out, This transient is like when we unplug a RCA cable with the volume at high level. Again, suddenly came the music back and playing very nice. Something snapped inside the unit for good. The stage is wonderful. I'm getting more reverberation of the room. A naturalness as never before. Oh boy, this is unbelievable!!!

Right now I am listening to a Mr. Vladimir Horowitz The Last Concert. He plays with such finesse that he caress the musical notes in a such way that you get his love for the music. The way that he express himself with the music is amazing. And for the first time I am in tune with his manner to do this. He controls with magic, the intensity of the musical notes in a very special way to express himself...sometimes so soft that you could hear your breath. This preamp is giving me Mr Vladimir with all his naturalness magical musical notes to get to my ears...like an enormous blessing. Listening "Traumerai" (Dreaming) song is played with much endearment...I have my ears wide open!

The odd heavy transient event has not happen again, it is just playing with an artlessness that really the V2 is where acts for good and better. Highly this is a recommended component to have. Thanks Jeff for bringing such magic to my ears. The way that this unit get across the musicians is the thing.

[roberto]

Hola Chicos,

Almost 100 hours and I have to report that it is just giving LOVE!...Now the stage has come backwards, as it should. Holo May DAC is fully broken in and this is it's stage right now. The separation between the musical instruments is more evident than before. The edgy and hard sound is almost gone...the are some traces like having the hand break pulled a little bit, but now it is more easy going. It had changed for good dramatically with the stage and the hard sound. The black event that I had, has not showed again.

In the Album by Alan Broadvent "' Round Midnight ", the first track " Groovin' High " the left hand of Alan is amazing. The bassist Brian Bromberg has a unique way to make the double bass to resonate on the very low musical notes, the bass is profound and with much control. Alan is a great piano player too. What I hear is the way that he strikes the piano notes. The dynamics have changed so much for good that now is like a drawing. The solo by Brian is very interesting. You can hear his right hand plucking the strings and also how strong his left hand is. Listening to it, is like having a video. My mind sees him playing...this is an epic performance. Joe Labarbera is the drummer. He is so good, that he almost sings with the drums. He has a clock into his system. He marks the rhythm very precise and his cymbals do not sound like bells. This is a very good jazz recording!

The Album by Anouar Brahem " Bit The Astounding Eyes Of Rita " the song " Dance With The Waves " The bass clarinet is fantastic. It goes very deep and the stage size is very good. The Mandolin is played with pick and has usually 8 strings. The bass is a Fender electric bass and the drummer has only one drum. He is using a special stick with a rubber end. You can hear all the effects on the drums. The sound of the fender bass is very nice too. He is a fantastic bass planer. I don't know the musicians names, but are good musicians. A very good album for balance the whole system. Offers dynamics, a variety of strange musical instruments and the recording is very good. He has ECM recordings too.

Listening to the classical Music is another level. I will comment in my next thread. I haven't eat lunch...I'm starving.

Happy listening.

[AnotherJohnson]

Glad to hear that it’s going well.

As I’ve said before, I thought I’d reached audio Nirvana about 1987, but the advances keep on coming. I hope we get to the best before our old ears give out.

[roberto]

Don't worry about your ears. In the mean time that you can hear live cymbals and maracas, the harmonics on a violin, does not matter how your ears measured. You do know how your guitar sounds and how a piano sounds, those are the parameters to use. You do know when a metal strings are plucked or nylon, right? Well, many audiophiles don't know that. So I am not worried being age. I still hear things, that usually many do not know that those musical instruments are in the recording.

Play a lot of music in your new speakers...they do have a distinguished quality sound found only in Wilson speakers.

[AnotherJohnson]

If you have no age degradation of hearing, that is a rare blessing.

Bob Ludwig, Master of Mastering, is in our age group. From reports, he is able to compensate since he is aware.

I think that is the best most of us can hope for. We do not all hear the same to begin with, and the rate and type of degradation varies based on both genetics and life events and environment.

Many of my friends, including famous musicians, now suffer from tinnitus and/or hearing loss.

I went with my grandfather to his home village in Norway when he was 88 years old (33 years ago). It was my first visit and I was surprised by two things. First, many of his childhood friends were still active in community life. Some were well over 90 years old. Second, nearly every one of them had a large external hearing aid on their ear.

I think in my own case, that since the degradation is slow and frequency dependent, that I compensate for it by mentally filling things in as I know they should be. Psycho acoustics is a powerful reality.

YMMV

[roberto]

I am not going to say that my hearing has not changed during getting ageing. Of course my hearing has change. The good thing is that I might have hearing loose, I still can hear all musical instruments. I do not play my system sound too loud, and I stay away from high noisy ambiances. If I can not, I have in my pocket a pair of ear plugs. So I try to protect them from high noisy ambiance. So this is my recipe. Perhaps might help some of you, my dear friends. Tinitus? yes, I have some, and specially when I am in a noisy ambiance, I get it mostly on my right ear. Another reason why I stay away from those heavy noisy ambiances. Children shout a lot. When I am near them, I have my ear plugs on.

Music is the most important thing to me in this part of my life. So taking care of my ears is a good thing for me. I thanks God for letting me have my hearing capability still in a good shape. I can hear all the violin musical notes even the highest pitch! I enjoy a lot all the violin concertos by Paganini and one of best violin players is Mr. Salvatore Accardo and he loves to play a lot of harmonics with his wonderful Stradivari. I can hear it all, again, thanks to God.

[AnotherJohnson]

I can’t speak for you. In a variation of “your system, your ears,” we have “your ears, your ears.”

Most people adapt and cope.

A related joke -

An elderly couple lived together in a two story house. They were very spry, and the stairs were no obstacle. The bedrooms were upstairs. The kitchen, laundry and living room were down.

One day the old man had taken a nap, and he woke up hungry. He hollered to his wife who was in the kitchen. “Honey! What’s for dinner?”

He heard no response, so he went to the top of the stairs and shouted again. “Darling! What’s for dinner?”

Still he heard no response. So he went down the stairs and near the bottom he yelled “Sweetheart! What’s for dinner?”

He was frustrated now. He still didn’t have his answer.

He walked straight into the kitchen, looked deep into his wife’s beautiful brown eyes and said. “Honey, we need to get your hearing checked. What’s for dinner?”

She looked right back into his baby blues and said “it’s the same thing as I’ve already answered three times. We’re having chicken for dinner.”

[roberto]

Well, that's a good one...lol.

I have an uncle who is in love with the music too. He is only four years older than me. He needs a hearing aid. The thing is, he listen to the music with much pleasure, and he always says that he can understand the lyrics in the music but not when we talk to him.

In now days, there are so many hearing aids, some are computer controlled. The Dr measures the able hearing and with a special software, the hearing aid is programmed. You can choose for music, or for normal hearing.

I still can call the tip of the stick of the drummer. On these days, the use of the nylon covered tip is the standard, but some drummers like the wooden tip. You can hear easy the difference. One is bright-crispy and clean break sound, the other has more darker sound. The good thing is that CJ Shows this easily.

There are electronic music with super high pitch tones, and perhaps those I am not able to hear them...the good thing is that I can hear well all my guitars, and all musical instruments. And I hope that I remain as I am...if not, I will get the hearing aid programmable.

[AnotherJohnson]

There are some really customizable hearing aids available these days. Like you, I am blessed to not need them.

My sister is a PhD level audiologist who spent her career in clinical work and graduate teaching, so she is literally tuned in. I try to stay current myself, having completed a graduate degree with a focus on acoustics and noise control 48 years ago.

Hearing changes are real, but usually gradual. So we adjust and compensate. My biggest challenge is my wife’s soft sweet southern soprano drawl. If she is not looking at me, beaming her voice at me, I may miss what she says. Sometimes this is “convenient.”

I know from testing that my hearing responses above 15 kHz are suppressed compared to 50 years ago. Lucky for me there is little music up there. But shimmer and sparkle are affected by this loss.

When comparing equipment, the evaluation is always relative. Even comparing live to reproduction, if the same person listens to both, the preference that emerges is legitimate for that person.

Speaking of comparing live to reproduction, now that there is less fear of Covid, more live events are scheduled.

I find myself in the audience several times every month. Amplified performances, with drum booths on stage, bass, guitars, vocalists etc can be quite complex to unpack in the live setting. The best seat is usually next to the mixing board.

Oftentimes, the home system beats the live performance. Especially on drums. The booth just creates a thick veil on the natural sound.

But I’ve been in discussions after the fact, and many listeners hate live drums because they can be so dominant. The booth allows the drums to be brought down in the mix.

[roberto]

Well, I am hitting the 150 hours with continuous playing. And each day is getting better. Right now, what it is more evident and easy to listen is the ability to do like a drawing of the musician playing. There are more detail and more life like over all sound, but with an exquisite way to do it.

The dynamics and the timbre had come more palpable, tangible, real. The size of musical instruments are presented with much care. There is a sweetness that I didn't have before, specially with the cello. Strings instruments have more definition and the harmonic texture is more accurate. Robert Oppelt, a double bass player, has a unique recording for my ears, with the 1-6 waltzes by Dragonetti, the sound of this big, huge double bass is amazing.

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Bass-Robe ... B015L1S34M

I use this recording for test how the system controls the dynamics, timbre and bass performance. The bass must sound robust, but with the normal coloration that the instrument has. There are certain musical notes that resonate more than others, and the musician takes advantage of this and he on purpose plays some notes stronger and louder than others. You can hear the control of these notes by the musician and also how the room responds to that.

I also have a hi-resolution recording. Ashley Solomon plays the Telemann Twelve Fantasias for Solo Flute. The format of this is recording is a DSD 256X native, frequency sampling rate (11,2896Mz). Immediate what you hear is the size of the room, the ambiance, the normal reverberation of the place. Also sure how dynamic is the flute. You can hear the air flowing without any effort. Another shining recording for my ears. Crystal highs are here.

[Big Dog RJ]

G'day Robbo mate,

Glad to hear that things are going mighty fine with the ET7S2 and improving along the way...

Not too sure about that low transient pop noise you experienced before... that certainly didn't happen when I had the ET7S2 or the GAT. Both were on loan whiles the owner was on long service leave, so 6 months in total to experience any sort of on/off transients. I only tried the GATS2 for a short while, so can't comment on any noise there either.

However, when I had the ACT2, that same sort of loud transient pop would happen all of a sudden and shut down the preamp. LEDs would stay on one side, with mute engaged but the tubes are off. Then when mute is pressed again, it suddenly engages the tubes to power up and everything comes back on with a loud pop! This is because the power amps are still on, and this causes the heavy loud pop, which is not a good thing!

This can damage the speakers if it's happening too often. I then sent the ACT2 to CJ for a full check up and they confirmed that the grounding was a problem, plus the mains wire was too long, so it shorts out a certain section of the signal path after a few hours into play...
They shortened the mains wire, and added an extra copper plate for grounding, plus upgraded the ACT2 to the S2 version. Things were much better after that and the transient pop never happened again.

This very same loud pop also happens with my TT rig. Whenever I use that aluminium disc mat by Spec, it causes static build up, and shuts off the preamp with a massive pop noise. Then when I press mute again, power is resumed with another massive pop! So now I don't use the Spec mat at all! I contacted Spec and they just sent me a special carbon fibre mat that has no static issues.

So, I don't think that transient pop was a normal thing and I've not experienced this with the ET7S2 either. Since it's not occurring again, I guess it's OK but I would keep a close eye on it just for peace of mind...

Best, RJ

[AnotherJohnson]

Static discharge is a good guess. Hopefully it will turn out to be a one time event. I blew out some speakers once with an unexpected transient discharge.

Glad that the differences between the s1 and s2 are obvious in Bobby’s system. Certainly the CLXs are capable of showing them off.

[admin]

I've seen this with static discharge as well. Any chance this happened when the air was dry? We have very dry air in the winter here up north and I get static discharge when I touch my equipment on occasion, especially if my wife left her blanket on my listening chair (which builds up static easily). In the summer when it's humid it tends not to be a problem. A humidifier can help, but in the winter time, I always discharge any static before turning things on.

[Big Dog RJ]

Yes, that's why I'm not fully convinced when Robbo said that this unexpected transient pop just happened, and then suddenly he pressed mute and something for good clicked back in and the ET7S2 is sounding more wonderful than ever... uh?

I've never come across such a phenomenon nor heard of any such CJ preamp suddenly kick-starting itself towards better sound. BUT that loud pop I've definitely experienced many times through that annoying static problem I had both with the ACT2 and by using the Spec aluminium disc mat.

I'm wondering if Robbo's ET7S2 had a static fit... but since it's gone now or at least seems to be not happening... then I'm sure it's playing fine tunes!

Would be good to know what the heck that transient pop was all about, especially for other ET7 owner's.

Cheers, RJ