Thanks Alex, but. . . what about my original questions:
questions:
1. Ignoring obvious cost increase considerations, have you thought of trying the feasibility/results of a 'traditional true balanced design.', just purely as a proof-of-concept/sonic test, of course.
2. How much cost to the end user would be added by such a design?
3. Concerning a purely hypothetical DV50 tube-based mod, you can always move some of the tube circuitry to an external chassis. That is I believe what ModWright and possibly Exemplar have done.
NOTE: Yes. . . of course. . . I know it already. . . you do not have to say it. . . I am a real pain! |
Oops, I just realized that my 3rd question may be misinterpreted as an insinuation that ModRight and Exemplar may be in the process of modifying a DV50. I have no such info, nor I have ever heard such a rumour. I meant to say that ModWright and Exemplar are using 2-chassis designs on some of their modified Denons and Sonys. |
Thank you Alex for elaborating on your design philosophy. Guido |
AVGURU, Alex and all: how is the balanced output circuitry of Esoteric DV50 and X-01 achieved? Op amps, phase splitting, or double circuitry? |
Thanks again Alex about the DV50 info. If anyone has info about Esoteric X-01 balanced implementation, please post it here. |
ALEX, this thread is becoming hotter than You KnoWhat! Time for me to go and take a very long icycold shower, lest I perform some embarrassing act over the phone, involving colorful plastic cards and authorization codes, wich I may regret after eventual spousal disclosure!!!
Will you send an evaluation unit of the moded DV50 to SMILIN eventually?
I'd be curious to know why you ordered UX-3 instead of X-03 to modify: X-03 is more of a purely audio device.
Furthermore, If I remember correctly these new units may support an external DAC directly, as well as an external word clock. You might be able to perform your magic by connecting purely external boxes, which in turn would likely also be compatible with X-01. |
Thank you Alex, but why UX-3 instead of the slightly cheaper X-03? Does UX-3 offer you--as a developer--some advantages?
Concerning clocks I can only report hearsay: the Verona is said to improve significantly the sound of the DCS stack. Only by inference I hope that would extend to the Teac clocks, and of course to your new internal clock. Would the Teac clock be better than your killer clock or viceversa? I have no idea, of course. Perhaps our Iron Audiofools in Chicago will tell us one day which clocked CDP will "Reign Supreme!" That is why this amazing field is so much fun, even vicariously! |
Reb1208: and of course the hypothetical Chinese contractor would do everything with no money up front, just so because they have read our entire thread and are so in love with the idea.
Not only, but as an added bonus they will send their top engineers to Alex to learn how to get it right, and will adopt all the strict quality control procedures that Alex applies--at no cost to Alex that is. This contractor will also promise on their ancestor's burial mound never to sell the box to someone else, just because they are so nice. And all of this without expensive contracts, intellectual property lawyers, and other costly administrative/legal fripperies. Finally, this contractor is so incredibily flexible, that every time Alex improves his design, they will turn on a dime and make all needed changes seemlesly, with a 1-week turnaround on all boxes on the assembly line, and needless to say, at no additional cost to APL. Sounds like a fab idea to me! |
Good point Alex, I understand now your choice for UX-3. Will you preserve the balanced output on it? Looking forward to your clocking surprise for the new year! |
REB1208, my apologies for my previous attempt at humor. No offense intended. But I suspect that any APL 3910 equivalent contracted by Alex to an oversees jobber may end costing the consumer quite a bit more than what Alex is currently charging. |
LA45 and all, Dan Wright at ModWright produces a modified Sony 999ES universal in a two-box twin-tubed implementation, and charges as I recall approx $2700 for the top tier modified unit. Please see:
http://www.modwright.com/products/index.php?product_id=10
I am not qualified to assert if either of these two magicians is better than the other or viceversa, as I have not been blessed with the fortune of auditioning either's creations, but some members of the Chicago-based band of Iron Audiofools involved in the shootouts discussed in this thread have in fact preferred the ModWright over the APL. Of course, let us remember that at the levels of performance we are talking about, personal taste plays as large a role as objective performance. Furthermore, it is fair to remember that these shootouts were conducted prior to Alex adding the internal masterclock to his 3910. On the other hand as I recall the shootouts did not involve ModWright's latest implementations either. |
Fab review AVGURU! Just from memory, do you have a feel on how UX-1 is different from X-01? If you consider the moded DV50 keep in mind that at least at this time Alex is disabling the XLR balanced outputs. He is using 2-channel RCA outs only. Multi-channel and video may be disabled as well. |
Aldavis, I suspect you may be correct about X-01. By the way, may I ask you to put one space-char after each period? I am using a speech synthesizer to read the text and the poor creature cannot use your periods for prosodic control unless you do follow each with a space. If you heard it, it sounds like 'stream of consciousness.' Thanks, Guido |
Springbock10, yours is the $64B question. Moded units are not balanced, except for one APL3910 version which has XLR active outputs. Not a classic balanced design with duplicate circuitry, though: the 'balance' signal is created through phase splitting.
You may want still to look at the Esoteric X-01 which in my opinion still sounds Devine: balanced two channels, multichannel RCA, Redbook/SACD only, solid state (no tubes. Provision for external DAC expansion. Provision for external clock input. Must use a preamp with it. You should be able to connect an external tube-based DAC like the Zanden, which on aGon seems to go for approx 5K.
Noone has conducted an A/B comparison against EMM yet. From the reports I have read about EMM and my experience with X-01, you may find the midrange of X-01 to be more full bodied than EMM, but that is only a hypothesis of mine.
MGOTTLIEB is using X-01 as a transport for the DCS stack. He apparently found that the DCS stack in itself may have a little more 'sparkle', but the X-01 to his ears is a better transport than the Verdi for the Elgar/Purcell combo. I have heard the DCS tristack and the X-01 on different systems at different times and still prefer X-01. Let us remember though the words of the great Aloysius Q. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky, who once wrote that ". . . opinions--just like ephymeral Beauty--are found painfully planted only in the bleary eyes of the foolish beholder!" Or audiofool, say I. |
SPRINGBOCK10: the EMM DAC/pre was optimized to work with the EMM transport. Unless you wait for the transport, you will never know whether the pair will work and do magic for you. |
Thank you Metralla, your new info is very welcome. It adds a whole new twist to the field of moded units. |
DBLD, that may be an inherent problem with lower end transport. That is one of the reasons why I am so attracted by machines that use the VRDS transport mechanism. I am excited to see what Alex comes up modifying the UX-3, and hope the other modifiers will follow with full mods on similar units |
AVGURU and all,, my apologies for my last post. It was clearly untimely and unnecessary. I had just missed Charles's much broader, comprehensive, and equanimously worded point of order. I will herewith make a valiant attempt to refrain from starting or intervening on any such metadiscussions any further. |
TBG, you are an eternal optimist! With stock units a comparison is likely to last six months, but with the speed that moders evolve their creations, the technological Darwinism in these devices have made comparisons valid for 6 to 8 weeks at most. There is no religion no more, I tell you! The fun is mounting. . . exponentially! |
Just wanted to point everyone to a new thread just started, comparing X-01 with Emm, Teac P01, as well as the newest top of the line Sony and Denon players. Please see:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1104558827&openmine&zzGuidocorona&4&5#Guidocorona
Please note that while in this new comparison the EMM appears outwardly to be preferred to X-01, the characteristics the listener was looking for may be subtly different from those sought by some members of this thread's gang. But rather than discussing this issue at length here, I invite interested members of the Iron Audiofools to read/analyze/post to the thread I referred to.
|
TBG, if the Chicago gang and its remote members find them enjoyable, rewarding, uplifting, revealing, exciting, an a welcome escape from dayly drudgery etc. . . the shootouts are useful, at least to them/us. In life very few things are actually formally 'useful'. I do understand how such communal North Eastern activities may go against your ascetic South Western grain, yet. . . |
TBG, the great value of the shootouts is not so much in a hypothetical consensuality of the results, but in the activity itself, and the miriad of observations made during it. I find it perfectly acceptable that after the current round the team seems to be split over ModWright and APL, and that the performance of X-01 still ominously looms, with hypothesized superiority, even if not compared directly. We all accept the fact that we may be looking for subtly different things, as Steve Milin and Bonn can confirm, and as I pointed out in my pointer to the other X-01 thread. Nothing wrong with that: finding differnet truths from the same experience. Only if you were a logician you would find this objectionable, as in "ex falso sequitur quodlibet". Or in other words, one can reach any conclusions from false premises. But we are not logicians around here, or at least, I am not while I am listening to music. Apologies, by the way, I am a Texan as well, as I have resided here 6 wonderful years, minus 6 awful months of August, needless to say! |
Luke, thank you so much for your offer to contribute without being argumentative. For this very reason, I may decide to ignore the fact that you may be confusing transient response and coherence across frequency range with what you call 'timing and rhythm'. As this is a very busy thread, not all postings are always responded to equally thoroughly, including many of my own. If an important question from you has not been addressed yet, the best thing is to ask once again. Eventually, someone who feels qualified answering, in fact will do exactly so. Please do not hesitate, to repost your questions in the happy spirit that has characterized the bulk of this discussion. |
Thank you Doc Luke, you are correct in inferring that musicality may mean different things to different people. I was perhaps overreacting to your just slightly barbed suggestion of elitism among the longtimers of this thread and I could not resist raising one of my favorite pet peeves in exchange. Perhaps poor 'timing pacing and Rhythm' (TPR?) may be deemed the audiophilic 'heartburn'. Like heartburn has nothing to do with the old ticker--as my family physician once painstakingly explained, while assuring me that I was truly not dying yet--so TPR has little to do with rhythm, as no audio system that I know of has the ability of altering the rhytmic signaature of any piece of music.
Hopefully not sounding too volatile, Guido |
Doc, by the way, PSCIALLI does own a Musical Fidelity tube output stage, and I hope he will soon try it out on his new ModWright. I know he did applied it to his former Denon 2200, and it did improve the sound of that particular unit to some extent. |
DBLD, I couldn't have said it better myself. in fact last night I wrote, then deleted, a much less eloquent version of your post. I would invite Richard, Dan and others to post and contribute with their knowledge to our enjoyment. Alex posted his prices here because he was requested so by several of us. But mostly Alex has shared his expertise and his unique views of matters digital. And the beauty of it is that I do not even have to agree with him all the time in order to appreciate his input and his openness. In fact he has freely shared with us information that would by many companies most likely be deemed as valuable intellectual property to be protected from the eyes of competitors at all cost. So, Richard, please join us and share your views of the world. |
TGUN5, according to the X-01 review published in July 2004 on Soundstage, the X-01 has maintained the RDOT filter and has dropped the apparently older FIR technology. See:
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/esoteric_x01.htm |
Dear Richard, I defend your right to post to this or any other thread and enlighten us with your obvious knowledge, and experience in the matter at hand as soon as you have found in yourself the fortitude to participate in the spirit that his thread was started, and has largely graced us to this date.
As I respect your professionality and wisdom, I trust that the sudden burst 'ad hominem' was an isolated instance and will in no means become part of a trend.
On the other hand, if you understandingly still feel overly stressed and you suspect you may very well soon fall victim to another such urge to vent some frustration on what amounts to your marketplace, I will feel perfectly comfortable if you decided to avoid posting here for a brief spell of self examination and meditation on the subject of marketing communications and language modalities.
Only marginally amused, yours, Guido Dante Corona |
711, your humor is contageous. Yet, let's all try to avoid playing at 'MY DAC'S BIGGER'N YOURS!"
Doc Luke, Audiophilia Nervosa is an extremely debilitating hereditary condition. It is more formally known as Degenerative Audiophilic Chorea (DAC). It was first recognized and described in 1989 by a team of European neurologysts, audiophiles and philosophers of music lead by Gavronsky and Pugnetti of the Istituto Don Gnocchi in Milan.
See: Aloysius Q. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky, Dr. Luigi Pugnetti et Al. Environmental triggers and sex-linked predisposition in late onset adventitious Audiophilic Dementia (Acta Medica Refutata, vol 35, No. 4, pp. 435 - 459. Appenzell, 1989).
The authors describe DAC as a acute disturbance of the central nervous system, usually having an onset in very early middle age and characterized by involuntary muscular movements, uncontrollable usage of credit cards, increasingly severe and expensive delusions, disastrous lapses of financial common sense, and general progressive intellectual deterioration, accompanied by often mewlings, drewlings and ritualistic genuflection and prostration in front of any gleaming audio component.
DAC attacks the cells of the basal ganglia, clusters of nerve tissue deep within the brain that govern coordination, as well as the cortex, which is expected to govern common sense.
The onset is insidious and inexorably progressive; no treatment is known.
Psychiatric disturbances range from personality changes involving compulsive purchase or modification of audio equipment, in the abscence of which the sufferer experiences apathy and irritability, to manic depressive or schizophreniform episodes when away from one's audio components for any significant amount of time.
Motor manifestations include flicking movements of the upper extremities, towards credit cards and compulsive signing of any audio sales slips, a lilting gait, in front of high-end audio stores, and motor impersistence (inability to sustain a motor act such as tongue protrusion), unless ever-more-frequent and progressively expensive upgrades to the patient's audio system are applied..
In 1989 the gene responsible for the disease was located by Schmaltzenstein-Gavronsky and Pugnetti; within that gene a small segment of code is, for some reason, copied over and over.
Genetic and audio counseling is extremely important, since 50% of the male offspring of an affected parent inherit the gene, which inevitably leads to the disease if the subject is exposed to any high-end system worth of such an appellation.
An autosomic recessive form of the disorder likely also exists, but is very rare, according to the scant epidemiology studies of DAC, as far less females than males are affected. The prognosis is rather bleak. Sufferers invariably end their days divorced, indigent, externally semicatatonic, with a silly grin on their faces, while immersed in a permanent REM state, dreaming of evermore extravagant system upgrades. |
Phil, it is sad indeed to behold how the masses of the DAC afflicted are surrounded by unscrupulous individuals and companies that foster their doom and feed on their despair. From mysterious corporations that promise the poor wretches audio nirvana through gleaming pieces at staggering prices, to modifiers-magicians who sell promises of relief from the horrid compulsions of DAC for much more moderate sums, to British physicians who insite the whole sad lot to self-medicate for only penneys a day. And it's all downhill from here! The only thing left is to admit it in public, to declare our state, to cry out our fate. . . Yes, it is true, I too Guido, have DAC! I too am an audiophile, was bborn an audiophile, will pass on to Nirvana as an Audiophile! |
DBLD, the news is exceedingly worrysome. Your findings may make Schmaltzenstein & Pugnetti's study obsolete. It is quite possible that DAC may have mutated and now is born by a prion particle, such as in Jacob Kreutzfeld dementia, also known as spongyform encephalitis, or more vernacularly Mad Cow Deasese. I know this is an exceedingly private matter but, as classic J. K. infection requires the ingestion of central nervous tissue from a contaminated victim, have you ever feasted on the cerebrum of any audiophiles you didn't like? The alternative is even worse, because an airborn DAC prion may turn this elitist disorder into a world pandemic. Oh my God, I have images of Doc Luke ministering to the sick in a Britain transformed into a ghoulish audiophilic nightmare worthy of the most apocalyptic novels by John Wyndham and John Christopher. |
Kyle, respectfully I must request that you abstain from personal attacks on anyone on this list. I am truly not interested in reading about any professional or personal disagreement you may or may not have had in the past or in the present, or may be having or not having in any hypothetical future, with any list contributor, regardless of status.
Understandably, you hold that your products excell in quality and performance: the readers of these lines would rather be interested in knowing what makes them excell and how. Furthermore, I have reason to believe that 711 and the Chicago gang would be delighted to include a fine sample of your creativity in an upcoming shootout and report on these pages.
So, please take a big breath, raise your chin, and start back from the beginning. Regards, and very very marginally amused, Guido Dante Corona
|
PSCIALLI, you may want to relate to the thread your recent interesting experience with the Sony ModWright after you realized that your power cabling topology was. . . suboptimal. Thanks, Guido |
AVGURU, the new AIR CX-5 would be an interesting player to add to the mix.
A friend of mine heard it at CES and found it to be marvellous. If you could replace UX-1 with X-01 it may be a good idea, because X-01 has twice the DACs on its two channel outputs. |
DBLD, as AVGURU mentioned I did listen to the Bel Canto PL1-A in New York, together with the Burmester 001 and the Esoteric X-01. My detailed findings are posted at the following URL:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1090867688&openfrom&3&4#3
In a nutshell, the Bel Canto produced a huge but somewhat unstable soundstage with floating images in the three dimensions. Bass was extremely tight, transient coherence was excellent, and microdynamics was good, bbut not quite as good as in Esoteric X-01. Here appear to be a residual thinness in the midrange. You will find more detail at the URL listed above. |
Sorry folks, a general reminder to keep comments pure audiophilic in nature and to avoid postings concerning commercial transactions with manufacturers, or personal requeststs for transaction prioritazation. Thank you for your understanding. |
There is a new review of a modified DV50 with the Superclock 3 modification by Reference Mods. This is a new thread worth following.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?rdgtl&1106373263
Perhaps the owner can be persuaded to participate with his unit to the upcoming 'Grand CDP Listening Slaughter & Shootout Extravaganza". AVGURU, to you the honor of contacting the owner. |
TGUN5, I'm real proud of you! I will join you at the shootout in Chacago 'in spiritu'! |
AVGURU, PSCIALLI had a stock Denon 2200 for a brief spell and found it rather disappointing, even after upgrading the powerchord. He is now in audio Nirvana with his ModWrite Sony 999ES Platinum. |
Folks, please concentrate on the topic at hand and avoid metadiscussions on matters that are potentially unproductive and sociological controversial, such as the nature, chemical content, and social function of beverages. Thank you for your understanding and patience and for keeping the thread free of extraneous controversy. Your friendly neighbourhood Assistant Moderator |
Doc Luke, how many hours of break-in time have you logged on your APL up to now?
Happy tweaking!! Guido |
My apologies Doc Luke. Offense not intended. Happy modifying. |
TGUN5, you may be right. I have reread the paragraph in question in the soundstage review of X-01. Now I am totally confused. I suspect the filter discussion was lifted almost bodily from the Esoteric site, as it sounds somewhat stilted. I will call Esoteric on Monday or Tuesday and will ask them directly which filter technology is supplied with X-01. |
Lazarus28, deciding to prefer a player over another after a brief afternoon shootout is in fact somewhat less remarkable than deciding to purchase the same after an audition in a store. In the store it is only you and the consultant. In the shootout you are in a friendly audience with whom you can exchange views, and where noone has an obvious financial vested interest. Not a bad environment at all to make a decision. |
Lazarus28, Thank you for providing us with your certainties on the best way to enjoy this hobby. If I could share them, and perhaps extend them to the rest of my existance, my life would in fact be a lot simpler.
Alas no, I have to contend with uncertainty, limitations, opinions, half truths, contraddictions, and the rest of the miserable mess that make things just inperfect and routine. But thank you for trying to enlighten us. |
Thanks Lazarus! My last posting yesterday was more reflective of how my day was developing than anything else. Your method of choosing equipment would be the ideal one, and in the greatest majority of circumstances the most enjoyable one. I would opt for it in an eyeblink, except for. . . WAF! Sometimes I feel I am a 'closet audiophile'. Isn't that a horrible thing? |
Alex has posted a tidbit of tantalizing info on his APL-HIFI.com site
He has apparently commenced modifications of the Esoteric UX-1.
No further info is given at this point. Perhaps Alex could post here with some more info on this latest project. |
All, I have just requested and promptly obtained that my inappropriate post be removed by audiogon staff. Thank you for signalling the point of etiquette. |
Oops TVAD, I did not realize I had just made the grand discovery of 'brand old news.' Since then though, I discovered that Dan Wright appears to have completed his modified Denon 3910 and has an advertisement on Audiogon for it. The ad is only 9 days old. I hope this is not old news as well. Has anyone tried it and hopefully compared it to the latest mods from Alex? It is also unclear if the ModWright 3910 possesses a volume attenuator. |
I thought it worth while pointing the participants of this once thriving thread to a glowing review of the SONY MODWRIGHT 999ES, very recently published on Positive Feedback. Please see:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/modwright999ES.htm
The reviewer praises the ModWright 999ES unconditionally and without reserve nor hesitation, as having the very best sound of any source component ever made--regardless of digital or analog--ever. Good food for thought. |
