20-Aug-2016, 13:26
OK, I am revisiting this thread because quite by accident, I have discovered something.....
Over a year ago I wrote this:
'Anyway, this weekend has been the first time that I have been able to do any extensive listening. Yesterday, I found that with many tracks SAM 2 with the Blades sounded utterly dreadful. Now having winged that nobody had responded to this thread, I have noted that this forum's very own Rufus and Guillaume have mentioned over on the 8.1.2 thread that SAM 2 appears to be far more subtle than the original SAM. Well this differs massively from my own experience, where I was running "original" SAM at 100% and now with SAM 2 some music sounds terrible. The issue being extremely over prominent very low bass. And I mean the lowest bass, but stacks and stacks of it. Yesterday I experimented a bit with SAM %, but having been used to being happy at SAM 100%, I was finding some music still sounded quite wrong with SAM reduced to 50%. At this point I got a but grumpy, and sent a fairly long, fairly informative feedback wise, but slightly grumpy query to Devialet asking why SAM 2 was so bad vs SAM 1'
Since then I have been using SAM, usually somewhere between 20% and 40%. Last year when I was first pondering the SAM V2 issues I set up a little playlist, so if I happened to be playing a track that I found to be particularly problematic with SAM V2, I shoved it into the playlist. Last weekend I just wanted to play some random tracks, and for no particular reason selected the playlist of SAM V2 problematic tunes. The thing is, they all seamed to sound quite good. Ummm. What has changed? Well one thing has changed, I was listening via the microRendu & Mutec MC3+USB With a chunk of free time this morning I tried a little experiment, SAM wound back up to 100% I played the tracks again via AIR3 / JRiver WASAPI. I made some notes re the bass for each track, here are some examples of the words used 'horrific', 'Rumble', 'unnatural', you get the idea, all was not good with some of the bass. I then played again via Roon / mR / Mutec. OK, for some tracks there was too much bass, with this material SAM could still do with winding back a bit, but the thing is, everything sounded OK, nothing odd or unnatural, maybe a tad too much bass but it did all sound good. The bass was natural, clear no rumble or overhang, all good. So after all, it looks like SAM V2 with the Blades is working just fine, exactly as it should, only with AIR / WASAPI the source signal was not up to the level of performance that the rest of the system can deliver. A definite bits are not bits moment! I have been singing the praises of the Mutec recently, I guess from subjective listening, but this was a real eye opener!
Over a year ago I wrote this:
'Anyway, this weekend has been the first time that I have been able to do any extensive listening. Yesterday, I found that with many tracks SAM 2 with the Blades sounded utterly dreadful. Now having winged that nobody had responded to this thread, I have noted that this forum's very own Rufus and Guillaume have mentioned over on the 8.1.2 thread that SAM 2 appears to be far more subtle than the original SAM. Well this differs massively from my own experience, where I was running "original" SAM at 100% and now with SAM 2 some music sounds terrible. The issue being extremely over prominent very low bass. And I mean the lowest bass, but stacks and stacks of it. Yesterday I experimented a bit with SAM %, but having been used to being happy at SAM 100%, I was finding some music still sounded quite wrong with SAM reduced to 50%. At this point I got a but grumpy, and sent a fairly long, fairly informative feedback wise, but slightly grumpy query to Devialet asking why SAM 2 was so bad vs SAM 1'
Since then I have been using SAM, usually somewhere between 20% and 40%. Last year when I was first pondering the SAM V2 issues I set up a little playlist, so if I happened to be playing a track that I found to be particularly problematic with SAM V2, I shoved it into the playlist. Last weekend I just wanted to play some random tracks, and for no particular reason selected the playlist of SAM V2 problematic tunes. The thing is, they all seamed to sound quite good. Ummm. What has changed? Well one thing has changed, I was listening via the microRendu & Mutec MC3+USB With a chunk of free time this morning I tried a little experiment, SAM wound back up to 100% I played the tracks again via AIR3 / JRiver WASAPI. I made some notes re the bass for each track, here are some examples of the words used 'horrific', 'Rumble', 'unnatural', you get the idea, all was not good with some of the bass. I then played again via Roon / mR / Mutec. OK, for some tracks there was too much bass, with this material SAM could still do with winding back a bit, but the thing is, everything sounded OK, nothing odd or unnatural, maybe a tad too much bass but it did all sound good. The bass was natural, clear no rumble or overhang, all good. So after all, it looks like SAM V2 with the Blades is working just fine, exactly as it should, only with AIR / WASAPI the source signal was not up to the level of performance that the rest of the system can deliver. A definite bits are not bits moment! I have been singing the praises of the Mutec recently, I guess from subjective listening, but this was a real eye opener!
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
