Hello Everyone!
If you'll forgive my preaching to the choir: over the years I've read many posts extolling "Source First" -- but although I've consciously accepted this tenet, until this week I've never had a visceral, oh-my-goodness, personal experience to really drive it home. But now that that's happened, please let me join in the chorus! =)
Background:
In contrast to most folks here (for whom an LP12 and/or DS is de rigueur), I've a Unidisk SC as my best source (on indefinite loan from my father), and this SC has sat in a system that hasn't changed at all for several years. Recently, CDs and SACDs have begun misbehaving in this unit, so in March the SC was sent off for warranty work, returning this week with a new laser, updated software & firmware, and unspecified repairs to the power supply and "main Audio board" that seem to have involved 6 capacitors. And it performs night and day better than it ever has.
At this point my post sounds like every other "I installed X and now everything's SO much better!" account one can find on any forum -- but allow me to explain! The system the SC's connected to has been tweaked and modified a fair bit over time (it's the end product of a lot of enjoyable father-son audio experimentation) -- but for a variety of reasons, the experimentation stopped a while ago, and hence the system has sat literally unchanged for several years. Moreover, my own music collection has remained static over that time, and pretty much the CDs I owned 5 years ago are the CDs I have now. And the Unidisk SC repair process has put into effect about as rigorous a "Source First" experiment as one can hope to set up: the SC is hooked up (via the two TV-Outs) to a Kinos pre-amp, and when I reconnected the repaired unit, I was plugging the same cables into the same output sockets on the same chassis as before, with absolutely everything -- speaker positions, cable disorder, power cords, equipment rack, wife's childhood stuffed animals (there's a fuzzy red dragon sitting atop the right hand Ninka) -- absolutely everything exactly as it was before. And after turning the revamped unit on, I loaded CDs I've known well for many years.
And the result is a revelation.
Now, I was expecting some sort of improvement -- after all, the updated firmware alone should have changed the sound, and if my Unidisk needed repairs, no doubt its performance pre-warranty service was suffering. And sure enough I heard the sort of improvements that my father and I had often noted in the course of our system enhancements -- e.g., richer-sounding instruments, more easily-followed internal lines (I listen to a lot of complex Baroque and Renaissance polyphony), a greater sense of sitting in a large echoing hall. And to an extent I could even imagine I was having an easier time with Tune Dem (or at least, I could convince myself it was easier humming along with the internal melodies). All this I hoped for / expected, and all this was attained. But for the first time, there was something much more:
1) On a prosaic level, there was much that I could hear on the CDs that I had never heard before -- but this alone is a rather "common" improvement of the sort I've heard in the past. But what was new (to me!) was the effect of this improvement on my listening. To wit:
2) For the first time for me with any stereo system, I found myself thinking not "Wow. I can hear the violin trilling just before the cello cuts off...", but rather "Wow. Pamela Thorby is the most amazing recorder player. How does she do that?? Whoa!! How did she articulate that grace note? And what a beautiful supporting line on the violin -- Rachel Podger is every bit as good as Pamela; what I would have given to have heard the two of them live in concert when they were both young and playing together!!"
That is, for the first time, I've experienced what so many on this forum have talked about: at some point, a system is nice enough that you forget all about "audio" stuff, and you start to marvel at how good a top-level professional musician can really be.
3) And as almost a side note: in past years I've read posts talking about how source enhancements can seem to speed up or slow down music (I think Charlie1 might have been central to these discussions, but it's been a while). Well, I never fully appreciated those comments before, but now I do: I have one particularly complicated Baroque CD that I've always disliked (it was purchased on recommendation, but it's always sounded like fevered noise) -- and the tracks I most disliked are now much "faster" than before; basically, there's a lot going on in there, and now that I can hear it, there's so much energy that the music feels like it's racing along (much like a talented fiddler can play at a slow tempo while making a dance tune feel fast and sprightly). So what used to be fast-tempo noise is now "really fast" exciting music (i.e., I like the CD much better now!). Conversely, I have some other CDs (particularly with vocals) that used to sound slightly hurried, but now sail serenely along with a great deal of nuance and veiled emotion -- these CDs have "slowed down".
So bottom line, I now fully understand the fascination with "source first": all that's changed in my system is part of the source, and that change has resulted in real music. =) It's been a wonderful discovery!
Cheers,
- W
P.S. -- as this is all with a UniSC, I'm kind of wondering what you all must be used to with your LP12 and DS sources!
P.P.S. -- and on an equipment note: how can the newly-repaired SC be so much better than the SC was when new? (Again, the system & CDs haven't changed -- but there are literally (musical) things on those CDs now that I never heard before, even when the Unidisk was first burning in....)
Yet Another Praise of Source First =)
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