I have had a very interesting weekend of listening now I have the CI board installed. Yesterday I loaded up the latest Beta 10 software and had some fun trying the various new features. UPnP worked OK, I tried this with JRiver, which immediately found "My Devialet" as a device. This worked OK as long as I avoided 24/176.4 material, but did suffer very occasional stuttering at the start of tracks, which then appeared to settle down. 99% of the time UPnP worked fine, and the 176.4 issue is something Devialet are aware of. AirPlay was good fun, I tried a couple of youtube music videos on my iPad and played some stuff from Amazon music. OK, this will never be the last word in ultimate sound quality but in a short trial it seemed to work exactly as it should, a nice feature.
I spent a lot of time Saturday using Roon integrated AIR, a case of getting a few hours running on the CI board before attempting a back to back comparison with the Mutec today (Sunday). Roon AIR appeared to be faultless in operation, not one stutter or glitch. I also tried good old fashioned AIR 3.0.4. This was interesting, AIR worked fine, perfectly in fact, until I tried it with HQPlayer. One thing I wanted to try was Roon / HQPlayer / AIR. For some reason this did not work correctly. I specifically wanted to try this with poly-sinc-xtr, which performs PCM to PCM upsampling. It played ok, but every 20 seconds or so there was a short drop out. My idea was to use HQPlayer as a constant in an AIR versus Mutec comparison, but this was not to be.
This morning I tried an exact re-run of the Roon AIR versus mR / Mutec test that I performed before the CI upgrade. In the previous test I took lots of notes, and without referring to the old notes I ran through the same playlist of tracks, taking some new notes this time.
To be honest, I am still thinking through the implications of what I have observed. At the margins, things keep changing. Consider that with the 'old' expert amp and AIR 2 it was quite easy to separate AIR and the Mutec via AES/EBU, with the Mutec being ahead with bass accuracy. This difference has now vanished. In terms of low-frequency accuracy and performance, I would say the mR / Mutec and Roon CI AIR are pretty much identical. Roon CI AIR can be very sharp and dynamic also, in some respects the gaps are narrowing to nothing. So far so positive. However, today was not quite the result I was expecting. With the CI in place, I would say the gap between the mR / Mutec and Roon AIR has widened. Yes, the bass accuracy and dynamics are a match, but with Roon CI AIR I was experiencing a little more treble emphasis, and this treble had a noticeable digital edge, with things like snare drums sounding slightly 'sandy' rather than crisp and raspy. This was not the biggest differentiator though, with the Mutec things sounded more natural, so more like music and less like reproduced music. Sound staging and ambiance that naturally flowed with the Mutec seemed diminished with Roon AIR, with the Mutec it was easier to listen to the music and forget you are listening to a hifi.
I have to conclude that the gap between Roon AIR and the mR / Mutec has widened. Doing a test like this three weeks after an identical test is a dangerous thing, as it relies on the notoriously unreliable aural memory, but that said, I was really enjoying listening with the mR / Mutec. Also, this makes me think of my experience last weekend. I had just got the Devialet back, it was set up, I had no time or inclination to play with new features or firmware. However, there was some time for listening, I was not doing critical listening or A/B testing, I was just happy to have the amp back, and to be listening to music. I did think then that everything was sounded good, maybe better than ever. Curiously, it made me think back to the old D800. The D800 did not have the level of detail, resolution and dynamics that the 1000Pro can muster, but it did have a kind of easy-going smoothness, a touch more forgiving perhaps. The way I would describe the CI equipped 1000Pro is that it has gained back some of that smoothness, but without losing the detail, resolution and dynamics. It just sounds a touch more realistic and musical. But this is with the mR / Mutec, with the Roon AIR all is much as it was I think. So if the gap between Roon AIR and mR/Mutec has widened, I think it is the case of AES/EBU getting better rather than the CI board hampering Roon AIR. Or to put this another way, I do not think the CI Board sounds significantly better than the old Duet board and AIR3, maybe the dynamics are are a touch better with CI, but also the digital edge in the upper frequencies is a touch more prominent. As an aside, some might argue that the CI board needs a few hours to bed in, mine had maybe 10 hours running before I tried the above.
Another conclusion is that with AES/EBU and the mR / Mutec sounding so good now and bettering CI, I have run out of excuses not to go for a Mutec REF10 and upgrade the mR. More expense!
I spent a lot of time Saturday using Roon integrated AIR, a case of getting a few hours running on the CI board before attempting a back to back comparison with the Mutec today (Sunday). Roon AIR appeared to be faultless in operation, not one stutter or glitch. I also tried good old fashioned AIR 3.0.4. This was interesting, AIR worked fine, perfectly in fact, until I tried it with HQPlayer. One thing I wanted to try was Roon / HQPlayer / AIR. For some reason this did not work correctly. I specifically wanted to try this with poly-sinc-xtr, which performs PCM to PCM upsampling. It played ok, but every 20 seconds or so there was a short drop out. My idea was to use HQPlayer as a constant in an AIR versus Mutec comparison, but this was not to be.
This morning I tried an exact re-run of the Roon AIR versus mR / Mutec test that I performed before the CI upgrade. In the previous test I took lots of notes, and without referring to the old notes I ran through the same playlist of tracks, taking some new notes this time.
To be honest, I am still thinking through the implications of what I have observed. At the margins, things keep changing. Consider that with the 'old' expert amp and AIR 2 it was quite easy to separate AIR and the Mutec via AES/EBU, with the Mutec being ahead with bass accuracy. This difference has now vanished. In terms of low-frequency accuracy and performance, I would say the mR / Mutec and Roon CI AIR are pretty much identical. Roon CI AIR can be very sharp and dynamic also, in some respects the gaps are narrowing to nothing. So far so positive. However, today was not quite the result I was expecting. With the CI in place, I would say the gap between the mR / Mutec and Roon AIR has widened. Yes, the bass accuracy and dynamics are a match, but with Roon CI AIR I was experiencing a little more treble emphasis, and this treble had a noticeable digital edge, with things like snare drums sounding slightly 'sandy' rather than crisp and raspy. This was not the biggest differentiator though, with the Mutec things sounded more natural, so more like music and less like reproduced music. Sound staging and ambiance that naturally flowed with the Mutec seemed diminished with Roon AIR, with the Mutec it was easier to listen to the music and forget you are listening to a hifi.
I have to conclude that the gap between Roon AIR and the mR / Mutec has widened. Doing a test like this three weeks after an identical test is a dangerous thing, as it relies on the notoriously unreliable aural memory, but that said, I was really enjoying listening with the mR / Mutec. Also, this makes me think of my experience last weekend. I had just got the Devialet back, it was set up, I had no time or inclination to play with new features or firmware. However, there was some time for listening, I was not doing critical listening or A/B testing, I was just happy to have the amp back, and to be listening to music. I did think then that everything was sounded good, maybe better than ever. Curiously, it made me think back to the old D800. The D800 did not have the level of detail, resolution and dynamics that the 1000Pro can muster, but it did have a kind of easy-going smoothness, a touch more forgiving perhaps. The way I would describe the CI equipped 1000Pro is that it has gained back some of that smoothness, but without losing the detail, resolution and dynamics. It just sounds a touch more realistic and musical. But this is with the mR / Mutec, with the Roon AIR all is much as it was I think. So if the gap between Roon AIR and mR/Mutec has widened, I think it is the case of AES/EBU getting better rather than the CI board hampering Roon AIR. Or to put this another way, I do not think the CI Board sounds significantly better than the old Duet board and AIR3, maybe the dynamics are are a touch better with CI, but also the digital edge in the upper frequencies is a touch more prominent. As an aside, some might argue that the CI board needs a few hours to bed in, mine had maybe 10 hours running before I tried the above.
Another conclusion is that with AES/EBU and the mR / Mutec sounding so good now and bettering CI, I have run out of excuses not to go for a Mutec REF10 and upgrade the mR. More expense!
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
