05-Feb-2022, 13:28
I still have not got this thread up to date. In my last post I delighted in how I had at least moved this thread to a the current year, then what do you know, a new year came along. In this post I intend finally get this thread back to where I am now.
So my previous post took me to May 2021. This is when I first tried Focus Fidelity Filter Designer. I think the benefits to anyone from something like Focus Fidelity will be very much room and system dependant, and perhaps dependant of the preferences of the individual listener. But in this thread I can give my own view.
I have been on a bit of curious journey with my system. It started off with a D250 Expert powering the Blades. I was very happy indeed with this system. I later added a companion to have a D800, and added the Mutec MC3+USB, at the time fed by a microRendu. Straightforward upgrades, I was still very happy with the system, it just sounded a little better now.
Things became a little less straightforward for me once I moved to the 1000 Pro. When I first listened to a 1000 Pro it was in a straight back to back comparison test with a D800. This listening session left me with zero doubt that the 1000 Pro was the better amp. So I bought one.
This should have been another simple upgrade, add a better amp, get a better sound, enjoy the music more. In part, this was exactly what happened. Much of that improvement I heard in that first demo I now had at home, but it was not that simple. With some music I found something was niggling me with the sound. This was album or even track dependant, but somehow I had ended up with a definitively better system, but one that I sometimes seemed to enjoy less than when my old D800 was in charge of things. Not an ideal state of affairs.
In a way, this thread start here, a little time after the 1000 Pro was introduced into my system. I have a great system, but I am not 100% happy with it. So I add the SOtM kit, the Mutec REF10 and so on. Do things improve? Yes they do, but the niggles mentioned above remain, so I still have a system that with some music might disappoint a little, or perhaps annoy a little. Which is obviously not good.
Then I try Focus Fidelity Filter Designer. Once I had got used to this software and spent a little time experimenting with target curves etc. I then had a system that sounded better than ever. More than this though, the niggles mentioned above were eliminated. The end result of this is a system that I turn on and I can use to simply delight in the music, no more is this simple joy spoilt by niggling thoughts that something is not quite right with the system, this changes to enjoying the music. For me, this is a game changer.
I recall a while ago reading the tail of a motoring journalist who was driving a Ferrari across Europe as part of a magazine test. The car had a fault and was making a strange noise in the interior. Much of the article was about how annoying and distracting this noise was. So if something is wrong, no matter how small, it can go a long way to ruin something that otherwise should be quite magnificent.
So why was I pretty much happy with the D800 but had this niggle with the 1000 Pro? This question baffles me a little, but I can see some clues. Ignoring the normally troublesome bass side of things, with a fairly standard target curve set in Focus Fidelity, there is degree of correction made from about 5000 Hz, which maybe peaks at about 8000 to 10000 Hz, requiring maybe about -3dB of correction. (The exact amount of correction will vary depending on how the target curve is set)
So what we have here is the upper presence range to the treble area where stuff like sibilance might manifest on some recordings. It seams that my room is generating a bit of extra energy in this range, which on some recordings might be triggering my niggles. I also think that this frequency range is one area where the Pro is better than the Expert, the Pro to my ears has much greater clarity and resolution in the upper mids when compared to the Expert, this is something I observed in that very first demo of the 1000 Pro. So speculating here, it is almost as if this positive aspect of the Pro was somehow exacerbating an existing issue with my room. There is speculation here as to the reasons why, but what I can say for certain is that subjectively I am now enjoying the music far more than I was prior to having Focus Fidelity in play.
I guess when you are putting a system together you have hopes and dreams regarding how it will perform, and it is disappointing when it does not for some reason or another. I now feel that finally I have that system I had dreamed of. Not bad going when you consider that I bought the Blades over 8 year ago. Although in a way that is a positive, when I bought the Blades I was very pleased with them, but now I feel like I have a speaker upgrade, now I really have a pair of Blades working as they should.
Do I have any remaining niggles about the 1000 Pro? No, none. I'll probably keep it until it breaks.
To finally get this thread up to date I need to also cover the addition of the Zen Stream. This really needs a separate post, but enough to say now that it is very good and my SOtM kit has now been sold.
So my previous post took me to May 2021. This is when I first tried Focus Fidelity Filter Designer. I think the benefits to anyone from something like Focus Fidelity will be very much room and system dependant, and perhaps dependant of the preferences of the individual listener. But in this thread I can give my own view.
I have been on a bit of curious journey with my system. It started off with a D250 Expert powering the Blades. I was very happy indeed with this system. I later added a companion to have a D800, and added the Mutec MC3+USB, at the time fed by a microRendu. Straightforward upgrades, I was still very happy with the system, it just sounded a little better now.
Things became a little less straightforward for me once I moved to the 1000 Pro. When I first listened to a 1000 Pro it was in a straight back to back comparison test with a D800. This listening session left me with zero doubt that the 1000 Pro was the better amp. So I bought one.
This should have been another simple upgrade, add a better amp, get a better sound, enjoy the music more. In part, this was exactly what happened. Much of that improvement I heard in that first demo I now had at home, but it was not that simple. With some music I found something was niggling me with the sound. This was album or even track dependant, but somehow I had ended up with a definitively better system, but one that I sometimes seemed to enjoy less than when my old D800 was in charge of things. Not an ideal state of affairs.
In a way, this thread start here, a little time after the 1000 Pro was introduced into my system. I have a great system, but I am not 100% happy with it. So I add the SOtM kit, the Mutec REF10 and so on. Do things improve? Yes they do, but the niggles mentioned above remain, so I still have a system that with some music might disappoint a little, or perhaps annoy a little. Which is obviously not good.
Then I try Focus Fidelity Filter Designer. Once I had got used to this software and spent a little time experimenting with target curves etc. I then had a system that sounded better than ever. More than this though, the niggles mentioned above were eliminated. The end result of this is a system that I turn on and I can use to simply delight in the music, no more is this simple joy spoilt by niggling thoughts that something is not quite right with the system, this changes to enjoying the music. For me, this is a game changer.
I recall a while ago reading the tail of a motoring journalist who was driving a Ferrari across Europe as part of a magazine test. The car had a fault and was making a strange noise in the interior. Much of the article was about how annoying and distracting this noise was. So if something is wrong, no matter how small, it can go a long way to ruin something that otherwise should be quite magnificent.
So why was I pretty much happy with the D800 but had this niggle with the 1000 Pro? This question baffles me a little, but I can see some clues. Ignoring the normally troublesome bass side of things, with a fairly standard target curve set in Focus Fidelity, there is degree of correction made from about 5000 Hz, which maybe peaks at about 8000 to 10000 Hz, requiring maybe about -3dB of correction. (The exact amount of correction will vary depending on how the target curve is set)
So what we have here is the upper presence range to the treble area where stuff like sibilance might manifest on some recordings. It seams that my room is generating a bit of extra energy in this range, which on some recordings might be triggering my niggles. I also think that this frequency range is one area where the Pro is better than the Expert, the Pro to my ears has much greater clarity and resolution in the upper mids when compared to the Expert, this is something I observed in that very first demo of the 1000 Pro. So speculating here, it is almost as if this positive aspect of the Pro was somehow exacerbating an existing issue with my room. There is speculation here as to the reasons why, but what I can say for certain is that subjectively I am now enjoying the music far more than I was prior to having Focus Fidelity in play.
I guess when you are putting a system together you have hopes and dreams regarding how it will perform, and it is disappointing when it does not for some reason or another. I now feel that finally I have that system I had dreamed of. Not bad going when you consider that I bought the Blades over 8 year ago. Although in a way that is a positive, when I bought the Blades I was very pleased with them, but now I feel like I have a speaker upgrade, now I really have a pair of Blades working as they should.
Do I have any remaining niggles about the 1000 Pro? No, none. I'll probably keep it until it breaks.
To finally get this thread up to date I need to also cover the addition of the Zen Stream. This really needs a separate post, but enough to say now that it is very good and my SOtM kit has now been sold.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
