Aavik U300 vs Dev D800

[GuillaumeB]

A fantastic day, thanks again to Stefan for being such an excellent host. 

Sadly my Melco N1Z was pretty much DOA. It would turn on but couldn't read the hard drives and kept giving error codes and restarting itself. It worked perfectly well at my house for a couple of days before going to Sweden so I fear I may have damaged it en route. Terribly frustrating as I'm sure you can imagine. 

Just a few random thoughts - I was very impressed by the Ansuz feet. I've tried using Stillpoints here in my own system and found the improvement to be minimal. But these Ansuz "pucks" are something else. A real transformation of the sound for the better, largely in the bass frequencies. We tried the Ceramic level Darkz and I'm now really tempted to order some for my system. I definitely recommend these.

Thanks to Mikeeo for supplying some exceptional cognac which you can see me drinking if you look closely enough at the pics above. Told you these were random thoughts.

I liked the Aavik a LOT but didn't think it sounded better than the Devialet 800, which is a relief I guess.

I was surprised at how much better the Auralic Aries sounded, it's clearly improved considerably since I last heard it. The Olive streamer (is it an amplifier too?!) sounded very good too and had a very nice touch screen interface. 

Jan's 4 chassis prototype streamer was awesome and was the reason for us listening to music up until midnight. It's a shame we weren't able to compare it to the Melco.

We played around with power cables and it was interesting how each power cord seemed to impart its own sound. The Bertram ones were excellent, possibly my favourites of the day. 

We had a session with the Raidho D1s which I thought had a wonderful midrange, possibly better in some respects to the Sasha2. However overall I preferred the Sasha2 which provided a more balanced, cohesive not to mention altogether more dynamic sound. 

Will try and post a few pictures later including a few drunken selfies. 

Guillaume