Adventures in Treble (?) Sensitivity -- or my Harbeths Conundrum

Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out!

 

Isolation pads arrived. I'm not worried about this teetering off at all.

 

Alright, I have come up with a cunning plan.


Unfortunately, the T+A Amp 8 is disqualified because according to the manual you can't have the balanced and RCA connections connected at the same time. (Also I can’t seem to find many reviews of it.)

So the first step in my plan is the surprise strategy of... downgrading!

I noticed, perhaps because it's been replaced by the new A5, that the Arcam SA10 can be gotten for about $350 on the used market now. When I listened to the JBL L82s at the JBL store, they were running on one of the SA models (I don't remember if it was the SA10, 20, or 30) and that at least sounded pretty good to me. The SA10 is known to have a warm and rich sound character. Previously I said I think the QC30 like something leaner and more aggressive, but that was purely from comparisons with the Aegir which just doesn't have enough power to make these things shine. And normally, "warm and rich" is the sound character I like. So the SA10 will allow me to see if the QC30s respond to that. Also it helps me break the idea that more expensive = better which I know intellectually is wrong but can't break the feeling of.

If the Arcam is great, either on its own or biamped with the Aegir, then I don't even think I need the MJ3 anymore--I don't listen to headphones so much since I moved and when I do I have the Pendant. It's possible, of course, that the MJ3 will sound better than the Pendant and I could actually sell that off and free myself of tubes. But I really like the Pendant. (I will at least be able to the try the MJ3 at CanJam next weekend.) So I could cancel the MJ3 order, save a bundle of money, and be happy forever.

Now, if the Arcam sound signature sounds good but I don't feel like the amp really delivers the goods, the move would probably be to keep the MJ3 order and get a second Aegir to hopefully get the extra dynamics and clarity the single Aegir is missing on the QC30.

If, on the other hand, the QC30 really seems like it wants more of that "hifi sound", then the next move would be pairing the MJ3 with the Galion A75. However, the A75 is backordered (though I put in my $1 reservation) and might not be available until April.

However, there's another idea: I could cancel the MJ3 and use the extra money to get instead a Hegel H120. (There are some people who say the H120 isn't as good as the H190, and paradoxically the H190 new is now cheaper than the H120 new (perhaps they're discontinuing it?) and on the used market the H190 is only a couple hundred dollars more, but I really don't need the extra power and the H120 will actually fit on my shelf while the H190 won't really.) Further, the Music Room sells used H120s with a 60-day return policy. This means I could get an H120, try it out, if it scratches my itches then I could cancel the MJ3 (or if it's arrived, return it or sell it, since it's hot enough it'll probably sell easily) and cancel the A75. Or if the aggressive treble of the H120 that New Record Day describes it too much for me, I return it and wait for the supposedly softer, smoother treble of the A75.

The disadvantage of this strategy is that beyond the Arcam I'm outlaying a lot of money and getting quite a few boxes and things in my apartment. I also have the inconvenience of having to return/sell off things. But the advantage is that I'd actually get to try all these different options and make an informed decision about what I want.

Or maybe the Arcam will make me happy. I really hope it does. I don't really need the best thing in the world, I just want something that's smooth and dynamic and fun to listen to that doesn't bother my ears.

 

Will have more to report, but right now to play and get some measurements I hooked up the old Edifier r1700bt speakers I had my closet. These are inexpensive (I think I paid $200) powered speakers.


Green is the Edifier, Harbeth is orange, QC30 is blue, normalized at 125 hz.

What's interesting here is how much brighter (and flatter) the Edifiers are. Also just how dark the QC30s are (at least in my room). Also while we see the same bass peak/room mode with the Edifiers in the bass, the trough at around 80 hz is smaller, as are the bumps that happen down in the 30hz range. I wonder how much this has to do with the Edifiers having smaller drivers and built-in DSP?

(The Edifiers do have tone controls but here they're in their default position. Note that this is just using the Aegir for the Harbeths and the QC30, not bi-amping.)

Edit: Goddamn it, forget all of this. The tweeter was unplugged. Stupid bi-wiring. New measurements incoming.

 

Alright here's the actual measurements with me not being a moron:

Green: Edifier, Gold: Harbeth (modded), Purple: QC30

You can see the QC30 treble is much more rational here, though the Edifier is still flatter. The QC30 for some reason now also has better response in the 80hz region--both the Edifier and new QC30 measurements were taken on the same day (today) so that might indicate there's something in the room that's changed helping there that wasn't there before.

 

Positioning of speaker/port/mic for the measurement will affect your bass measurements (you’re changing the intensity of the room mode(s)). If you’ve ever tried measuring a subwoofer in room response, you can get big variations moving things a few inches.

 

That makes a lot of sense!

 

I think I might have dismissed this amp too hastily can you talk about the sound quality and why you like it please?

 

I feel like I’ve been a fool.

Let me explain.

So the Arcam SA10 arrived. And I hooked it up, switching away from the Aegir, and started listening to it and thought “this sounds oversmoothed”. But then as I listened some more I thought “this seems to be a lot gentler on my sensitivities than the Aegir was”.

I want to be careful what I say here, because I have a tendency to find something that helps a little bit and pop into this thread declaring I’ve fixed all my problems only to have them crop up again. Part of it is that it can take time for the headache feeling to build. The GaN1 was gentler on me than the Audiolab. Moving the speakers off the desk did help—though now I’m thinking this had less to do with desk resonance than it did with getting them farther away from the wall, fundamentally my gear seems to be less of a problem then my dumb room, and the room treatment seems to have been too little to make a meaningful difference. In fact one of the biggest improvements is when I open the door to the office on one side and the window on the other side and thereby actually get rid of the first reflections.

Anyway, where the Audiolab 8300A was harsh and stabby, the the Arcam seemed to go the other way entirely into smoothness land ending up sounding kind of plasticky to me.

And then CanJam happened.

On the first day, I went straight to the Mjolnir 3 at the Schiit booth knowing that I had it on order and now was my opportunity to “try before I buy”. And I thought it sounded marvelous (on the Yggdrasil MIB). And then I went and listened to all the other amp/dac stacks with my modded HD6XX before coming back to the Mjolnir 3 before I left for the day. And the second time I listened to it, it sounded fuzzy and harsh, the way the Piety had to me (I was one of the only people who never liked it) but not as bad.

This was very weird and I’m not sure I really understood what I was hearing. It didn’t really become clear to me until the next day when I listened to another round of solid state amps before finally ending up, tired, hungry, and headachey, at the LTA table in front of the Velo. There had been amp/dacs that sounded harsh, solid state up to the wazoo (including the Midgard which I was shocked by how much I didn’t like it, as well as the Benchmark stack which shocked me by how bad it sounded given the price). And there were amps that were overly soft, but had a glowy tube-like sense to them, including the Burson Voyager and the Aune S17 Pro. But I hadn’t listened to many tube amps because I was trying to find a solid state headamp/preamp that could take the place of the MJ3. And yet, this tube amp the Velo, had the bite and energy of the wazoo amps without ever sounding harsh, and simultaneously had the roundness, fullness, and “glow” of the soft amps, and made it all seem effortless. This is what tubes do that solid state can’t, at least not the solid state I was listening to. The closest I think was the Enleum AMP-23R (on the Benchmark DAC of all things), the Ferrum Oor/Wandla stack, and the HeadAmp GS-X Mini (on the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge 2, and sounding much better than the Mytek’s own headphone output). And the Mjolnir was trying to do this same trick of having cake and eating it too, but it was erring farther on the harsh side than I was comfortable with (but I can understand why people like it, because it does this effect MORE than those other amps—there really is no other amp that I listened to that sounded like it). (The “feedback” switch on the MJ3 seemed to tame the harshness some while making the presentation more dull, while the single-ended/push-pull switch didn’t do anything I could hear, which might have been the result of listening with open back headphones in a place where my watch kept warning me that the noise was at levels dangerous to my ears.)

And so I came back home, and I listened to the Arcam again, and then I listened to the A23+ for a while. And it didn’t sound oversmoothed to me. It had sounded oversmoothed because I was used to the Aegir, and the Aegir is doing this same trick of solid state “tube” bloom and texture and depth but doing it with more subtlety than the MJ3. (I LIKE the Aegir, let’s be clear.) But I feel like now, with my brain reframed, the Arcam sounded like a more “clear” solid state that was less irritating to my brain and more like what I actually want. But the real surprise was how while the Arcam now sounded good, the A23+ just sounded spectacular. It’s sound signature is much more like the Arcam than the Aegir, but the difference between the two is so clear, the A23+ brings so much more dynamic range, slam, depth, and soundstage. It just sounds more alive and real. Even just using the Arcam as a preamp for the A23+ feels like it makes the dynamic range contract (I compared this by plugging the Arcam into the Sys with the other channel coming straight from the DAC and then volume-matched, which was illustrative).

Of course, I could get a tube speaker amp. And it would sound amazing. But tube speaker amps tend to be either wildly underpowered or insanely expensive (or just subpar) and moreover the whole point is that I want something I can keep on my lower shelf where the kids won’t burn themselves (my toddler already burned his little hand on my Pendant when he was on my lap and leaped forward, brushing a tube—I’ve since resolved not to use it when he’s in the office) or break the tubes (the toddler also once, when the amp was on a lower shelf before I moved it up for this reason, grabbed a cold tube and bent the pins to the point where I had to get a new one) and where I wouldn’t have to worry about burning down my tubes or wanting to listen to something for only ten minutes or having something I could use with meetings or just when I don’t want to have to wait for the tube amp to warm up properly, and I don’t want the nervosa of always wondering if I have the best possible tubes and buying a horde of tubes because I have to try them all, and so on. Tubes are a pain in the ass. I need something more practical.

I think my plan to try the Hegel was doomed from the start now, because judging from reviews that seems to err on the aggressive, bright, clinical side and so I’m pretty sure I would find it harsh. I did find myself mooning over the Enleum Amp-23R, which is also a speaker amp, though one that might be a bit underpowered for the QC30s like the Aegir is, but it’s just too damn expensive. And there’s something about the Pendant feeding into the A23+ that’s just sounding right to me now. And I’m kind of kicking myself for not quitting while I was ahead before. This is so good. (I admit I also found myself mooning over the LTA Ultralinear amps, but no.)

I still need something for the living room and I could get another A23+, but I feel like the A23+ has kind of been overkill for the living room anyway. The living room is really mostly tv and films and when we play music there it’s hardly critical listening. I think something more modest is needed there. And it’s so big it sticks out awkwardly from the media center. Honestly, I’d move the Arcam in the living room and call it a day, except it doesn’t have a trigger and I don’t want an integrated for the kids to fiddle with the knob and buttons while we’re watching things. So what I did was order a relatively inexpensive Marantz MM7025 off Accessories 4 Less. I think that’ll do (and if it’s garbage, A4L offers returns). Of course, I’ll try the Marantz first in my office and see if it impresses me, maybe I’ll be surprised! I also ordered a GS-X Mini to take the place the Mjolnir 3 was going to, the balanced solid state headamp/pre that I can use when I don’t want to deal with tubes.

And that will be it. I’ll sell the Aegir (once the Marantz arrives and proves itself not shit) and ultimately the Arcam (though I might keep it around for a bit to play with). (Also I tried the Harbeths again and came to the conclusion that while they do still have magical properties, even besides the fact that they bother my ears more, I think I prefer the Q Concept 30s because they’re just better all-rounders. So I need to finally sell the P3ESRs too.) And I still have the Gallion TS A75 on backorder and I might just let that come and see how it fairs out of curiosity since I can return it if it doesn’t beat the A23+. But I think I’m basically done now. I have what I need. I still get sensitivity a bit, but I feel like I can manage it and if it gets too much I still have great headphones. (The T+A Amp 8 that was recommended here might also be good, but it seems like unobtanium as there isn’t a US-voltage version available on the used market currently and it’s out-of-production.) Sure the Velo does seem like a straightforward upgrade to the Pendant, but I don’t need an upgrade for the Pendant, the Pendant sounds amazing and I don’t need to pay all that money just for the relatively small improvement represented by the Velo. (I know this is probably audiophile heresy or something.)

I know, I know, endgame is a myth, but the desperation to find something that even worked I think is settled in my mind. It’d be nice if there was an event where I could try my own speakers out on two dozen speaker amps like I can do with my headphones, but obviously that’s not a thing that can possibly exist. And that’s okay.

 

I just gotta ask, what's your typical listening volume?

 

k. I use it to vertically bi-amp a Totem Tribe II as my HT center channel. So, center channel from processor, XLR (or RCA?) splitter into amp, then one channel powering the tweeter and the other the woofer.

Plenty of power, amazingly clear vocals. I've been watching a ridiculous amount of the TV show Supernatural on that system and Dean's and Sam's voices are clear and distinct with Dean being a bit more baritone to Sam's tenor.

The Totem is probably too bright for you. The Amp8 does a very good job controlling the woofer. I have some frequency response graphs somewhere I could share were I to find them.

Ergonomically, it gets a bit hot, is the perfect size for my use, has a trigger input and has XLR which I prefer.

It was a bit underpowered to run my L/R speakers, which are Philharmonic BMRs, maybe. The amp I replaced it with (Ayre integrated, 60W) works better on those. Difference between the two, specwise is T+A 80/120 W 8/4Ω and the Ayre is 60/120Ω so no idea why. The Ayre is clearer and a bit more dynamic.

A Vidar sounded better on the Phils, somewhat muddier than the Ayre.

The Amp 8 was superseded by the A 200, which is a much more powerful amp with a matching price point....

the T+A 200 series is quite a head turner.

If you like, I can certainly play something (in mono!) using the Totem and the T+A and report back - next week sometime...

 

Sell all the Chinese junk, sell the Harbeths, get ATC SCM 11 or SCM 12. They’re the same speaker more or less. Britfi done right. 300w per channel amp. Done.

 

Totally fair question! I actually listen at very low volumes. I put on the decibel meter app on my phone and was just listening to music and when held by my head it only got to about 55db, and when held directly next to the speaker it was at about 65 db. I'd be surprised if even when rocking out it got above 75db.

Does sound great. I'll put a saved search on Hifishark just to see if one shows up on the used market with a North American voltage, though I am feeling pretty good about the A23+ now. I do like how compact it is, though. The biggest problem with the A23+ is that it's hugenormous.

You're a little late to the party, I'm afraid, I've already replaced the Harbeths with the Q Acoustics Concept 30s. The main problem with ATC is that the nearest dealer where I could demo them seems to be in New Jersey which is... not close. Maybe I'll take a trip out there some day to satisfy my curiosity if nothing else, I have heard good things about them. What 300w amp would you recommend?

 

If you are like me, the ATC will bother your treble sensitivity. It did for me. They have an incisive upper mid/treble.

 

I had an original A52 and have a Zamp v??; Parasound makes good stuff.

I'm all about mini-systems

 

As promised here's a frequency response graph. Can't manipulate it as it's from Anthem ARC.

This is the Totem Tribe II vertically bi-amped by a T+A Amp 8

 

So the GSX Mini is harsh. I think at CanJam it sounded different because it was paired with the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge 2, which from its own headphone out sounded a bit oversmoothed and plasticky, and so the GSX Mini balanced it out. But on the Cyan 2 it just sounds harsh and grainy to me.

The Marantz on the other hand is more interesting. It sounds less refined than the A23+, less controlled, but also more lively and (for lack of a better term) rockin' while the A23+ is more mellow. The Marantz then is perfect for my living room and the JBL L85s and seem to get along with them really while, while they sound a little too aggressive in the treble for the QC30s for my taste. The only problem I have with the Marantz in the living room is that the trigger doesn't seem to work reliably. Sometimes it'll work, and sometimes it won't, and with the trigger plugged in the button to take it out of stand-by doesn't work either so I have to reach behind the amp, unplug the trigger, and then turn it on. The A23+ has a dial to change the sensitivity of the trigger while the Marantz doesn't. I might have to email Marantz and see if they have a solution for this, because it's pretty annoying. Otherwise, the living room is perfect and Marantz fits better in the media center and looks more aesthetic there to boot.

Considering my next moves with the preamp/headamp. Maybe the Aune S17 Pro which sounded smooth when I tried it and is relatively affordable (though again, DACs throw everything into question).

Edit: it's unfortunate because in every other way the GSX Mini is great. I actually found myself switching from the Pendant to the GSX Mini when listening to metal because it slams hard, and while it's much less smooth than my RebelAmp was it's better in every other way, especially in soundstage width and depth and dynamics.

 

Added a post in my Adventures in Downgrading thread about DACs and what I replaced the GS-X Mini with (yes, it's the S17 Pro). I still have the Galion A75 on backorder because I can't resist, I need to know if it sounds as good as Thomas says it does, but otherwise I'm done, and frankly if the A75 doesn't do it for me I won't be that sad because I've got this system sounding really great now.

Thanks again everyone for all your input!