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SAM effects
#21
(12-Aug-2014, 02:10)Mka Wrote: My pair of Magico V2 came back from their SAM visit in Paris today. Devialet picked them up 2 Weeks ago and returned the via a company driver today. They really did do some effort to keep their 100 votes promise. For the interim period they gave me a pair of Athom GT1 special to listen.
I was suprised to hear the SQ from zhe Athom's with SAM. I compared them to my lomg term small speaker favorite Dynaudio Special 25 an they have won by far (I bought a pair for our bedroom now)

Coming back to my first 4h listening expirience with the V2. From a bass point of view it sound now like a V3, however it doesn't have the drawbacks the V3 had vo the V2 sounding less intimate and beeing les musical in the upper mids.

I could not detect any negative side effect. I wil give details over the weekend.

-----
D 800 driving Magico V2

Great outcome! Would be interested in hearing more about the Athoms too.

Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
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#22
Many people have posted the thought that SAM will have a more of an effect with small speakers than with large speakers. I have experienced SAM with both large and small speakers, and yes, with a quick listen this assumption would appear to be correct. Performing a quick SAM on / off test with bookshelf speakers, and with SAM the little bookshelf speakers sound like floor-standers. Doing the same with my KEF Blades, and the difference is much less. But I would offer an opposing view to the SAM gives more with small speakers view. SAM does give an improvement with the Blades, the bass is better and goes even deeper, drum sounds are more realistic, and some of the bass with electronic music and similar sometimes sounds ridiculously good. One of the reasons I chose Blades was the accuracy and purity of the bass, there are many other fine attributes of the Blades to be sure, but the shear accuracy of the bass was the clincher for me. I was a little worried that SAM would in some way spoil this aspect, but it has not, the Blades now sound even more like Blades. Plus the improvement goes beyond just bass performance, I have also noticed an improvement with stereo imagery, I was not looking out for or expecting this, but it is definitely there. Stereo imagery is not exactly a week point with the Blades either. The new Blade 2 is actually a smaller version of the Blades, with smaller bass drivers. With SAM and the original "full size" Blades I feel a bit like I have new Blades, but bigger better and with larger bass drivers. I know that some have found some negatives with large speaker experience of SAM. I cannot comment on other large speakers other than the Blades, and other peoples experiences may be very different. (although I did have a quick listen of the Sasha 2's with SAM, which sounded very competent indeed) My point is that for me and the Blades, SAM does offer a very significant improvement, and with no downsides that I have discovered so far. Now if SAM can make a £2k bookshelf speaker sound like a £4k floor-stander, then that's a big improvement, say £2k's worth of improvement. But if SAM can offer an improvement to 20k speakers, then how much is that worth? I'm running a 250 and thinking of going for the £8k upgrade of a slave. I don't think the slave will offer the same improvement as SAM, but if any improvement is there, then it might be worth the money. SAM cost me nothing, but I'm thinking that if I had to, I would have paid quite a lot of cash for it. So in terms of monetary equivalent, SAM could be considered as having a much bigger effect with the bigger speaker. It's made me happy at least!
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#23
(19-Aug-2014, 21:21)Confused Wrote: Many people have posted the thought that SAM will have a more of an effect with small speakers than with large speakers. I have experienced SAM with both large and small speakers, and yes, with a quick listen this assumption would appear to be correct. Performing a quick SAM on / off test with bookshelf speakers, and with SAM the little bookshelf speakers sound like floor-standers. Doing the same with my KEF Blades, and the difference is much less. But I would offer an opposing view to the SAM gives more with small speakers view. SAM does give an improvement with the Blades, the bass is better and goes even deeper, drum sounds are more realistic, and some of the bass with electronic music and similar sometimes sounds ridiculously good. One of the reasons I chose Blades was the accuracy and purity of the bass, there are many other fine attributes of the Blades to be sure, but the shear accuracy of the bass was the clincher for me. I was a little worried that SAM would in some way spoil this aspect, but it has not, the Blades now sound even more like Blades. Plus the improvement goes beyond just bass performance, I have also noticed an improvement with stereo imagery, I was not looking out for or expecting this, but it is definitely there. Stereo imagery is not exactly a week point with the Blades either. The new Blade 2 is actually a smaller version of the Blades, with smaller bass drivers. With SAM and the original "full size" Blades I feel a bit like I have new Blades, but bigger better and with larger bass drivers. I know that some have found some negatives with large speaker experience of SAM. I cannot comment on other large speakers other than the Blades, and other peoples experiences may be very different. (although I did have a quick listen of the Sasha 2's with SAM, which sounded very competent indeed) My point is that for me and the Blades, SAM does offer a very significant improvement, and with no downsides that I have discovered so far. Now if SAM can make a £2k bookshelf speaker sound like a £4k floor-stander, then that's a big improvement, say £2k's worth of improvement. But if SAM can offer an improvement to 20k speakers, then how much is that worth? I'm running a 250 and thinking of going for the £8k upgrade of a slave. I don't think the slave will offer the same improvement as SAM, but if any improvement is there, then it might be worth the money. SAM cost me nothing, but I'm thinking that if I had to, I would have paid quite a lot of cash for it. So in terms of monetary equivalent, SAM could be considered as having a much bigger effect with the bigger speaker. It's made me happy at least!

Great post! Smile

Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
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#24
Very interesting.

I've heard several glowing reports of the Blades without SAM. I can only think that SAM is capable of somehow wringing an extra few percent of performance out of what's already an outstanding bass performance.

As far as stereo imaging is concerned, might it be the case that SAM is correcting for very slight phase errors?

Matt

Sonos Connect (W4S) > DSpeaker Antimode 2.0 > Sanders Magtech > Martin Logan Montis
Sonos Connect (W4S) > Devialet 200 > Vivid V1.5
Silver Phantoms (just the two)
London
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#25
Hi Matt - You may well be right regarding the phase errors, but to be honest, who knows!

In a way, you are also correct regarding a few extra percent of bass performance, with much of what I listen to this is about right. It's not the whole story though, I was listening to some music on random the other day, whilst sorting out some stuff in the house, and up popped a Dizzy Rascal track. (I may get thrown off this forum for even mentioning Dizzy Rascal)
It was not even one of his best (?) tracks, a faily bland number but then from nowhare appeared this kind of drop down tone bass effect that sounded utterly extrordinary, like it was wizzing between the speakers and flying around the room and at the same time sounded slightly surreal. Out of interest, I replayed the same bit with SAM off, and it sounded fairly ordinary, nothing special at all. Again with SAM, and there it was, quite extraordinary. So to make something ordinary sound extraordinary is more than a few percent, but then again, you might only get this on a few pecent of what you listen to, so it depends on how you look at it.
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#26
And, on the flip side, I found that SAM was a downgrade for my Magico Q1 speakers, so sometimes it's not better for small speakers!

(19-Aug-2014, 21:21)Confused Wrote: Many people have posted the thought that SAM will have a more of an effect with small speakers than with large speakers. I have experienced SAM with both large and small speakers, and yes, with a quick listen this assumption would appear to be correct. Performing a quick SAM on / off test with bookshelf speakers, and with SAM the little bookshelf speakers sound like floor-standers. Doing the same with my KEF Blades, and the difference is much less. But I would offer an opposing view to the SAM gives more with small speakers view. SAM does give an improvement with the Blades, the bass is better and goes even deeper, drum sounds are more realistic, and some of the bass with electronic music and similar sometimes sounds ridiculously good. One of the reasons I chose Blades was the accuracy and purity of the bass, there are many other fine attributes of the Blades to be sure, but the shear accuracy of the bass was the clincher for me. I was a little worried that SAM would in some way spoil this aspect, but it has not, the Blades now sound even more like Blades. Plus the improvement goes beyond just bass performance, I have also noticed an improvement with stereo imagery, I was not looking out for or expecting this, but it is definitely there. Stereo imagery is not exactly a week point with the Blades either. The new Blade 2 is actually a smaller version of the Blades, with smaller bass drivers. With SAM and the original "full size" Blades I feel a bit like I have new Blades, but bigger better and with larger bass drivers. I know that some have found some negatives with large speaker experience of SAM. I cannot comment on other large speakers other than the Blades, and other peoples experiences may be very different. (although I did have a quick listen of the Sasha 2's with SAM, which sounded very competent indeed) My point is that for me and the Blades, SAM does offer a very significant improvement, and with no downsides that I have discovered so far. Now if SAM can make a £2k bookshelf speaker sound like a £4k floor-stander, then that's a big improvement, say £2k's worth of improvement. But if SAM can offer an improvement to 20k speakers, then how much is that worth? I'm running a 250 and thinking of going for the £8k upgrade of a slave. I don't think the slave will offer the same improvement as SAM, but if any improvement is there, then it might be worth the money. SAM cost me nothing, but I'm thinking that if I had to, I would have paid quite a lot of cash for it. So in terms of monetary equivalent, SAM could be considered as having a much bigger effect with the bigger speaker. It's made me happy at least!
Devialet 1000 Pro Core Infinity, Magico M3, Nordost Frey 2 speaker cable, PS Audio P15 Power Plant, Shunyata Alpha EF AC cable, Mac Mini running ROON.
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#27
@flohmann - it has to be said, Magico Q1's are not exactly your average small speakers! Out of interest, what did you find was the SAM downside with the Q1's?
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#28
One little known effect of SAM is that with SAM selected in the Configurator, the high and low pass filters etc are then disabled. It looks like the Devialet's little brain can cope with SAM or filters, but not both together.
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#29
(11-Sep-2014, 22:29)Confused Wrote: One little known effect of SAM is that with SAM selected in the Configurator, the high and low pass filters etc are then disabled. It looks like the Devialet's little brain can cope with SAM or filters, but not both together.

That's interesting. So if using a SAM-enabled two-way speaker with a sub, you wouldn't be able to apply the high-pass filter to integrate the sub. Hmm ...

Sonos Connect (W4S) > DSpeaker Antimode 2.0 > Sanders Magtech > Martin Logan Montis
Sonos Connect (W4S) > Devialet 200 > Vivid V1.5
Silver Phantoms (just the two)
London
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#30
Indeed - this would limit options integrating a sub. I actually discovered this for a different reason. I had be loaned a Tom Evans Groove phono stage, which I tried with the Devialet. I noted that I was suffering some minor "environmental feedback", i.e. the bass cones were moving excessively at very, very low frequency. I noticed that this effect could be lessened by walking very gently to and from the turntable, which shows you how sensitive turntables are, and I have a concrete floor. I decided to set a high pass filter in the configurator, say at 10hz, to eliminate this issue. However, all the settings were "greyed out" in the GUI. Removing the SAM from the configurator, and the settings become available again. As a point of note, the cone movement issue is eliminated by the Devialet's own phono stage, which apparently includes a subsonic filter. Curiously, another way to eliminate the cone movement issue when using the Tom Evans phono stage was to crank the volume up! Why, because SAM kicks in and says "no" to what would be too larger cone movement.
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