Boazu with Majik140

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Patdel
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Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

The 140 can be a bit imprecise in the lower bass. How is the combo Boazu with 140. Can 140 be tamed by Boazu? :)

I've had 109 with active 6100 in a medium sized room with a rather lean bass.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Gammaboy »

I had a demo of my Naim Supernait 2 versus the Boazu on Majik 140's and preferred the Boazu. I ended up going with a Sagatun 1.3/ Tundra 2.2 on the 140's. My other system is active Isobariks with Naim 552/ 3x 250DR, not exactly a bass shy setup. I listen to both systems on weekends and do not recall ever thinking the Lejonklou combo with 140's was bass shy.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Charlie1 »

Not sure this helps much but Tundra 2.5 does fully control the slightly wayward 140 bass (with 2db cut and steel bases), where previous 2.2 version and Chakra 4200/D could not quite get there. Preamp was KK1/D. Never heard them with Boazu though.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

Thanks for the input!

Charlie when you used Tundra 2.2, which I suppose is more comparable to a recent Boazu's internal power amp, in which way did the bass disappoint?
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Charlie1 »

The 140 bass could sometimes sound slightly detached from the rest of the music and a bit diffuse at some frequencies. I can't say it ever bothered me much - I just appreciated the improvement when it came. With T2.5, the bass kept better time with the rest of the music and was a bit better controlled.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

And you are using 140's now :) or did you upgrade?

I've had 109's for a long time and they are mostly good. Occasionally they lack in bass. A lot of bass but imprecise is worse though!
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

Charlie1 wrote: 2021-03-10 09:16 The 140 bass could sometimes sound slightly detached from the rest of the music and a bit diffuse at some frequencies. I can't say it ever bothered me much - I just appreciated the improvement when it came. With T2.5, the bass kept better time with the rest of the music and was a bit better controlled.
I have no opportunity to listen to Majik 140. I have read both good and bad things about 140's. The bad thing are all about the bass it produces. The Boazu is an excellent amplifier. I borrowed the Boazu for a couple of days and I like it. More musical and less pushy in upper the mid range than 6100 (active even). The speakers used were 109's. But I sense from these answers that 140's is a bit difficult also with Boazu. Perhaps it's 140's that aren't that good bass wise. If one is used to 109's anyway.

So what good reasonable priced alternatives are there? Appreciate any input. Also non-Linn brands.

My source will be Akurate DS Kat. My old Akurate DS/0 is in Scotland right now for upgrade.

I'm still thinking that the pre in Akurate DS Kat is quit good and together with Tundra could be a good compromise to use with 140´s compared to the Boazu. I suppose I would trade a bit musical performance for better controlled bass. I'm really eager right now to get more bass then I've had with the 109's for ten years. Sometimes it's just to thin.


Charlie1: What gear are you using now?
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by lejonklou »

My thoughts on the Majik 109 vs 140 is that it's room dependent.

In most rooms, 109 is better. In those rooms 140 are often a bit boomy in the bass.

In some rooms, 140 is better and will make you say "I didn't know these speakers were so good". It's likely due to those rooms not becoming excited by the "sloppy peaks" of 140.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

Perhaps those sloppy peaks can be addressed by Linn space optimization? I tried it with my 109 but music was a bit worse than without and the bass level was lowered. I didn't experiment much though. Perhaps it's possible to neutralize the boominess of 140 without sacrificing the music.

Anyone tried it?
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Matteo »

Patdel wrote: 2021-03-13 20:34 Perhaps those sloppy peaks can be addressed by Linn space optimization? I tried it with my 109 but music was a bit worse than without and the bass level was lowered. I didn't experiment much though. Perhaps it's possible to neutralize the boominess of 140 without sacrificing the music.

Anyone tried it?
I did 300 or more optimizations with the 109s just to find out that with SO off is much better!
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by lejonklou »

Digital room correction is about money, not about music.

1. It's useless trying to modify the signal to compensate for the amplitude and decay variations that the room adds to the music. Because you can't.

2. When processing and modifying the music to counteract the effects of the room, you loose musicality by the processes themselves. Especially sensitive are digital signals (counter to common knowledge).

3. Our hearing is excellent at ignoring room imperfections. Unless you train it to search for such variations, which is what the room correction sales men want you to. If you instead focus entirely on the musical experience, all you will experience when adding the processing is detachment.

4. If your favorite artist was in your room right now, playing his or her instrument, would you prefer to have the sound processed to correct for the room? Of course you wouldn't.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Discodave »

Thank you for the rational! I've always had SO on so will try it without.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Patdel »

Sounds logical, Fredrik! Best not tamper with the musical information. The human brain is evidently very sensitive regarding sonical information. NASA and other are experimenting with sonification of scientific data. Another way to experience and interpret data then traditional visual graphs and diagrams.

My own brain isn't that reliable on Tune-dem unfortunately. Sometimes it's really easy sometimes I don't know at all. Only long-term listening makes me feel sure if something is better or worse. I also over the time experience pretty large variations in musical quality without changing anything. Mood I suppose :)
Last edited by Patdel on 2021-03-14 09:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Matteo »

SO2 has too many parameters (sliders) which may vary simultaneously

Devilish
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by sunbeamgls »

lejonklou wrote: 2021-03-13 21:33 Digital room correction is about money, not about music.

1. It's useless trying to modify the signal to compensate for the amplitude and decay variations that the room adds to the music. Because you can't.

2. When processing and modifying the music to counteract the effects of the room, you loose musicality by the processes themselves. Especially sensitive are digital signals (counter to common knowledge).

3. Our hearing is excellent at ignoring room imperfections. Unless you train it to search for such variations, which is what the room correction sales men want you to. If you instead focus entirely on the musical experience, all you will experience when adding the processing is detachment.

4. If your favorite artist was in your room right now, playing his or her instrument, would you prefer to have the sound processed to correct for the room? Of course you wouldn't.
And yet every recording on every format has been processed, compressed, altered, distorted, mixed and translated multiple times before it gets anywhere near the system.
Not sure why one more bit of processing is going to destroy the music compared to all the other stuff they've done to it, and about to be done to it next by the rest of the system and the distortion added by the room.

How many times have you heard an artist in a room that's so small that it suffers from room modes?

Badly set up SO will spoil the music. A bad set of room modes will spoil the music. We're always working with compromises - finding the compromise that does the least damage to the music is the key.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by sunbeamgls »

Matteo wrote: 2021-03-13 23:42 SO2 has too many parameters (sliders) which may vary simultaneously

Devilish
Only if you choose to vary them simultaneously, which is not the way to find out what's going on. Only one parameter should be adjusted at any one time.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by donuk »

I do think Sunbeamgls has a point.

Where does the music start??
My guitar has a phase switch, a notch filter and a couple of tone controls.
My amplifier has a reverb (actually mechanical), and numerous tone filters.

It is then usually miked up from a few feet away to go into the desk for recording onto had hard disk. All sorts of manipulation takes place there to get an end product that sounds, to the producer's ear, good.

Then, imagine it is made into an LP. The cutting process is a bit of a mystery to me, but one thing is for sure the "music" goes through a brutal tone control to effectively reduce surface noise (RIAA filter).

On playback the signal is picked up by the cartridge and fed into a preamplifier which will send it through another RIAA brutal filter roughly in reverse.

Then after the power amplifier if it drives "normal" speakers it will go through even more brutish tone controls at low impedance and relatively high currents by way of the crossover networks.

So in debating the use of of a couple of bass notch filters in the form of Sound Optimisation let's get the music's journey into perspective. It comes out very impure and has been since a string was plucked. Incidentally I only use SO for a slight treble cut in my room. Bass is fine.

A good honest tone control - or digital profile if you prefer - is to my mind, much better than the endless quest for the "correct" equipment - cables, mains leads, stands, hifi black boxes of all sorts and speakers - simply because of their apparent frequency response. To be clear, cables, mains leads, stands, hifi black boxes of all sorts and speakers should be selected for their musicality alone, not because the they do the job of quelling excessive bass or treble. Which is often the case - just read the forums.

I don't expect much agreement with my points, chaps, but it's what I think and have experienced. Your mileage may well vary! You may hate the idea of tone controls but they are used all the time.

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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Matteo »

sunbeamgls wrote: 2021-03-14 17:37
Matteo wrote: 2021-03-13 23:42 SO2 has too many parameters (sliders) which may vary simultaneously

Devilish
Only if you choose to vary them simultaneously, which is not the way to find out what's going on. Only one parameter should be adjusted at any one time.
I didn’t never vary them simultaneously
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Discodave »

To each their own. If that's what you prefer who cares what others think imo.

Interesting comments here folks - has made me think. Haven't had a chance to turn my SO off and compare but I certainly will. I have tried many of Frederik's suggestions and have always found them to be more enjoyable than the way I had them (and others suggestions from this forum for that matter).

When I calibrated my SO I simply put in all the room measurements and details and left it at that. It sounds like you guys are much more knowledgeable about parameters and things of that nature. Is this the case?
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by sunbeamgls »

Discodave wrote: 2021-03-14 20:57 To each their own. If that's what you prefer who cares what others think imo.

Interesting comments here folks - has made me think. Haven't had a chance to turn my SO off and compare but I certainly will. I have tried many of Frederik's suggestions and have always found them to be more enjoyable than the way I had them (and others suggestions from this forum for that matter).

When I calibrated my SO I simply put in all the room measurements and details and left it at that. It sounds like you guys are much more knowledgeable about parameters and things of that nature. Is this the case?
SO v1 (the one in Konfig) at default settings is, almost invariably, awful - it is too severe. Linn gives instructions on how to tune it once the default is calculated. But broadly speaking it consists of setting all but the lowest frequency cut to 0dB then adjusting the lowest cut by ear until you just start to hear some room boominess, then back off a touch. Leave that filter as is then do the same process with the next filter up the frequency range, repeat for all the frequencies identified by the calculation (usually between 3 and 5 but could be up to 10). As a rule of thumb, you'll find that you'll need to reduce the cuts at lower frequencies by 40-60% and the upper frequencies by smaller adjustments.

SO v2 (the online version) tends to be much better with the default settings but users still report improvements through small tweaks of the various sliders. I don't use SO v2 so I can't give any guidance on that, but again, Linn does produce some instructions on how to get the best out of it.

Of course, you should save your settings under different file descriptions as you go along so you can always undo your changes by going back to a saved version.

All the above should only be done after you've spent a good deal of time on making sure the speakers have been moved physically in the room to sound the most musical when SO is switched off.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Discodave »

Many thanks Sunbeamgls, very kind.

Yes, it's the default I use on Konfig. Wasn't aware at all of different versions - I just update when notified.

My speakers are in the best possible place using tunedem. Done using vinyl. As I care most about that.

Yes, I know about saving settings as my system has been in 3 different rooms over the last few years - yikes. Such a pain but sure.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by lejonklou »

Gentlemen,

I sense some confusion here regarding what is to be preserved when reproducing music in our homes.

It's very simple: We want to preserve the musical qualities of the phonogram that's available to us. We don't want to improve the phonogram, because it's not possible. We can search for phonograms that are more faithful to the master tape, but we can't improve the faithfulness of a given phonogram during the reproduction. This is true both in theory and, more importantly, in practice when the result is judged with the Tune Method.

Everything that happens before the master tape is made is part of the artistic process. You can argue whether the artistic choices were right or wrong and whether the manipulations were too aggressive, but they have nothing to do with manipulations in the reproduction of the phonogram. The master tape is the piece of art we are seeking to enjoy.

When judging the effect of a manipulation made by our HiFi system, for instance a tone control, there is only one question to ask: Does this make the music better or does it make the music worse? It's irrelevant how many other manipulations are being made, whether the phonogram has been taken apart, reassembled, beaten half to death, bandaged and sanitized. There is still only one question: Does this manipulation make it better or worse?
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by sunbeamgls »

lejonklou wrote: 2021-03-14 23:32 There is still only one question: Does this manipulation make it better or worse?
Indeed, as I said, we need to find the best compromise for the music as we are dealing with many compromises.

I wish the music (on whatever format) was a copy of what is on the master tape, but alas it has been put through a whole bunch more distorting processes before it gets to us.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by Whatsmynaim »

It's true. Our music has usually been through a lot before we get our hands on it, but would we really want to add yet another manipulation to that? In this case (donuk) perhaps move the speakers around à-la the tune method or try the classic, a big rug on the floor. It can help when speakers sounding too bright.
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Re: Boazu with Majik140

Post by sunbeamgls »

Whatsmynaim wrote: 2021-03-15 12:04 It's true. Our music has usually been through a lot before we get our hands on it, but would we really want to add yet another manipulation to that? In this case (donuk) perhaps move the speakers around à-la the tune method or try the classic, a big rug on the floor. It can help when speakers sounding too bright.
The room is adding a massive manipulation, that's why I refer to choosing the compromise that works best in each situation. We can't avoid compromises, just minimise them.

All the elements are manipulations. Some like the distortion added by some valves, that's a manipulation, as are different interpretations of the RIAA curve. Non-Katalyst vs Katalyst are different manipulations, most agree on which is most musical. And so it goes on. Choose the least worst manipulation that gives the most musical experience :)
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