My LSA has arrived it now does volume control for my Esoteric X-03 into a pair of tube Acoustat servo amps on my Acoustat X speakers.
Previously I was using the line inputs of my Manley Steelhead into the Acoustats.
The walwart is plugged into a Hydra 8,which is connected by a Shunyata Annaconda power cord into a FIM recptacle on a dedicated 20 amp line.The Acoustats are on another 20 amp line using more Annacondas into a Furutech GDX-gold receptacle.
The esoteric has an Annaconda digtal power cord going direct into the FIM 's other receptacle.
The LSA sits on 3 roller blocks atop the hydra and is plugged into one of the Hydra's digital recptacles.
Sorry about the long winded preamble, but if Iam doing something amiss in my set up, please advise me so that I can correct the error of my ways.
Now to my intial impressions.
After only a couple hours of listening,it's easy to hear the increased amount of detail.
The issue of volume seems to vary from cd to cd , something I hadn't noticed when I listened to cd prior to the LSPA.
I tend to listen at more modest levels,so the volume control is the lower side of 9, but this is not a problem, I'll take added detail retrieval as the trade-off.
There seems to be some extra lower bass punch on some cd's that I didn't notice before, and on some other cd's I felt there wasn't as much.
That's strange.
My intial take is that the Lightspeeed doesn't homogenize the sound as much as it was before, but not to discredit the Steelhead in any way.It's just that the differences between cds are more noticeable than before, or maybe it's my imagination?
Also, I had two wal warts to experiment, one had variable plugs and voltage settings, the other was fixed.
The fixed walwart was the more robust, the other a bit more edgy, zippy, depending on the cd this could be a mixed blessing.I stuck with the fixed version.
This leads me to speculate on how sensitive the Lightspeed is to what it's power by.
I run it into the digital receptacle of the Hydra 8, but will try one of the analog receptacles.
I too wonder about what battery power would sound like after my initial runs with the two different wall warts.
I've just read George's reccommendation,a bit late as I just sent him my take on the unit before coming to this thread.
Am I happy with the Lightspeed?
Definitely yes,for the money it is great,and the single input isn't a drawback,there's better isolation between sources this way(one reason why I wanted the cd player out of the Steelhead)maybe just a minor inconvenience,as is the lack of remote volume is for others.
Personally I'll take it as it's served up,all the better for the sonics.
I look forward as the hours pass, to judge whether the sound improves , but so far I am very pleased.
