24-Nov-2018, 00:13
This thread has been bad for me :-)
A day or so before Arup started the thread I had a couple of friends over for the evening and part of the discussion concerned power conditioning (I was then using an Isotek Aquarius) and one of my friends strongly argued for power regeneration. Then I read Arup's first few posts in this thread. The next day I borrowed a PS Audio P5 (predecessor to the P12) from my dealer for a day and quickly ended up ordering a P12 which I received 5 days ago. So I'll add my comments to Arup's.
Arup said: "The system sounds "incredibly clean, extra-ordinarily homogenous and soooo real with explosive dynamic behaviour"". I'll second that with the exception of "explosive dynamic behaviour". I'm not saying Arup got that wrong but most of the music I play simply doesn't have explosive dynamics. I can't fault the dynamics I'm hearing, they sound very convincing, but I mostly listen to small group jazz and the music I listen to doesn't tend to deliver explosive dynamics. Rather than refer to that kind of dynamics, the thing I'd stress instead is how solid and natural the weight of low bass sounds, things like double bass and especially the lowest octave of a piano. Before the P12 my system got the tonal character of low bass right but I wasn't getting the weight and solidity of sound that those instruments have. Now I am, and it makes a big difference to recordings of pianos. I also really like what has happened with voices which now sound more natural and realistic also.
Where I will part company with Arup somewhat is in his comments about MultiWave. He likes it and I don't. Yes, I can hear the soundstage effects he hears but I also hear the image of individual instruments and voices broadening as well which makes a singer's mouth sound too wide to be natural and I also hear an unnatural character developing in the sound, a "papery" characteristic is the best way I can describe it if that makes any sense. Sine wave mode sounds natural and sweet, that starts to disappear when I shift to MultiWave and it disappears more as I increase the MultiWave setting. At a setting of 1 or 2 there were some things I liked in the result but I preferred Sine wave overall, when I increased the MultiWave setting to 3 or more I wasn't liking it any more. Given the nature of the effects we both hear on soundstage width and depth, I think that MultiWave is probably something that some people will like and some won't, in other words I think there's a strong element of personal preference involved in how a listener will react to it.
There are some differences in Arup and my setups which may also influence what we respectively hear. There are different amps and speakers, different rooms (acoustics will influence we both hear when it comes to soundstage). Looking at Arup's photos, I can see that his incoming THD figure is 4.2% to my 2.1% and we both get the same 0.1% THD out. He's drawing more power than I do (to be expected, bigger amp) and we do have different line voltages (230V here). The Improvement Meter photo shows a similar needle position to what I see a lot of the time though it moves around quite a bit. Also from a post elsewhere I understand Arup uses SAM and I don't. Given those differences, I think the fact that we both hear very similar things overall, even if we do have different opinions on the value of what we hear when it comes to MultiWave, says something.
A day or so before Arup started the thread I had a couple of friends over for the evening and part of the discussion concerned power conditioning (I was then using an Isotek Aquarius) and one of my friends strongly argued for power regeneration. Then I read Arup's first few posts in this thread. The next day I borrowed a PS Audio P5 (predecessor to the P12) from my dealer for a day and quickly ended up ordering a P12 which I received 5 days ago. So I'll add my comments to Arup's.
Arup said: "The system sounds "incredibly clean, extra-ordinarily homogenous and soooo real with explosive dynamic behaviour"". I'll second that with the exception of "explosive dynamic behaviour". I'm not saying Arup got that wrong but most of the music I play simply doesn't have explosive dynamics. I can't fault the dynamics I'm hearing, they sound very convincing, but I mostly listen to small group jazz and the music I listen to doesn't tend to deliver explosive dynamics. Rather than refer to that kind of dynamics, the thing I'd stress instead is how solid and natural the weight of low bass sounds, things like double bass and especially the lowest octave of a piano. Before the P12 my system got the tonal character of low bass right but I wasn't getting the weight and solidity of sound that those instruments have. Now I am, and it makes a big difference to recordings of pianos. I also really like what has happened with voices which now sound more natural and realistic also.
Where I will part company with Arup somewhat is in his comments about MultiWave. He likes it and I don't. Yes, I can hear the soundstage effects he hears but I also hear the image of individual instruments and voices broadening as well which makes a singer's mouth sound too wide to be natural and I also hear an unnatural character developing in the sound, a "papery" characteristic is the best way I can describe it if that makes any sense. Sine wave mode sounds natural and sweet, that starts to disappear when I shift to MultiWave and it disappears more as I increase the MultiWave setting. At a setting of 1 or 2 there were some things I liked in the result but I preferred Sine wave overall, when I increased the MultiWave setting to 3 or more I wasn't liking it any more. Given the nature of the effects we both hear on soundstage width and depth, I think that MultiWave is probably something that some people will like and some won't, in other words I think there's a strong element of personal preference involved in how a listener will react to it.
There are some differences in Arup and my setups which may also influence what we respectively hear. There are different amps and speakers, different rooms (acoustics will influence we both hear when it comes to soundstage). Looking at Arup's photos, I can see that his incoming THD figure is 4.2% to my 2.1% and we both get the same 0.1% THD out. He's drawing more power than I do (to be expected, bigger amp) and we do have different line voltages (230V here). The Improvement Meter photo shows a similar needle position to what I see a lot of the time though it moves around quite a bit. Also from a post elsewhere I understand Arup uses SAM and I don't. Given those differences, I think the fact that we both hear very similar things overall, even if we do have different opinions on the value of what we hear when it comes to MultiWave, says something.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
