15-Oct-2019, 10:52
Pim.
Your query highlights one of the problems with personal reports. You said that an MIT SL Matrix USB cable sounds better than the Curious USB cable. My comparisons were made with the Curious USB cable so that may be a factor in my preference given that you indicate that you found the Curious cable edgy in comparison to the MIT cable and edginess was part of my problem with USB.
Another possible problem may lie in my musical preferences. I listen mostly to jazz and acoustic music rather than rock. I like a warmer, mellower, and more relaxed sound than a lot of the people in my audio club who prefer rock seem to prefer, and I also listen at noticeably lower levels than those people. My experience is that USB is brighter and slightly harder than ethernet. One example is that I find USB has tended to result in a tighter, more wiry sound from acoustic double bass with less emphasis on the wood tone which adds warmth and that overall highs are sweeter with ethernet. The thing is that I can't discount some influence of my preferred listening level on what I'm hearing because what the Fletcher Munson curves showing the variation in our hearing sensitivity to highs and lows at different listening levels shows that turning the volume up increases our perception of the highs and lows so my lower listening levels and age related decline in my high frequency hearing (I'm 72) may be masking some things which others perceive as edginess.
Another factor may be my speakers. I'm using Focal Sopra 2s which have a beryllium tweeter which I've seen some characterise as bright though I don't notice brightness from them in my system and room, even though the beryllium tweeter is certainly a bit brighter and more extended to my ears than the silk dome tweeters of my previous Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs which probably were fairly similar in some ways to your C1s though probably not quite as extended or sweet.
I think there's a number of factors involved in this sort of assessment and we tend to discuss them in terms of the electronics only but other factors like music taste, listening level, speaker choice and room and listening setup all have an influence on the overall tonal character of what we hear.
Your query highlights one of the problems with personal reports. You said that an MIT SL Matrix USB cable sounds better than the Curious USB cable. My comparisons were made with the Curious USB cable so that may be a factor in my preference given that you indicate that you found the Curious cable edgy in comparison to the MIT cable and edginess was part of my problem with USB.
Another possible problem may lie in my musical preferences. I listen mostly to jazz and acoustic music rather than rock. I like a warmer, mellower, and more relaxed sound than a lot of the people in my audio club who prefer rock seem to prefer, and I also listen at noticeably lower levels than those people. My experience is that USB is brighter and slightly harder than ethernet. One example is that I find USB has tended to result in a tighter, more wiry sound from acoustic double bass with less emphasis on the wood tone which adds warmth and that overall highs are sweeter with ethernet. The thing is that I can't discount some influence of my preferred listening level on what I'm hearing because what the Fletcher Munson curves showing the variation in our hearing sensitivity to highs and lows at different listening levels shows that turning the volume up increases our perception of the highs and lows so my lower listening levels and age related decline in my high frequency hearing (I'm 72) may be masking some things which others perceive as edginess.
Another factor may be my speakers. I'm using Focal Sopra 2s which have a beryllium tweeter which I've seen some characterise as bright though I don't notice brightness from them in my system and room, even though the beryllium tweeter is certainly a bit brighter and more extended to my ears than the silk dome tweeters of my previous Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs which probably were fairly similar in some ways to your C1s though probably not quite as extended or sweet.
I think there's a number of factors involved in this sort of assessment and we tend to discuss them in terms of the electronics only but other factors like music taste, listening level, speaker choice and room and listening setup all have an influence on the overall tonal character of what we hear.
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
