Did you see this Stereophile Show Report?

"Given that my assigned "territory" for CES included new cables, power products, and accessories, I was able to indulge in a few of the big system rooms on the Venetian's 34th and 35th floors. These are the systems that many of the sightseers who came to CES for other reasons came up to marvel at. As did I.

I'm so glad that Venture of Belgium and Singapore has a new line of cabling, because it gave me an excuse to hear Reference Recordings' "Pie Jesu" from the Rutter Requiem as I've never heard it before. I was blown away by the huge dynamics, room fixture-shaking bass, mind-boggling clarity of the massed voices, and sheer beauty of the sound. Gorgeous.

The cabling, initially manufactured as internal wiring for the Venture Grand Reference Ultimate Mk.II loudspeakers ($98,000/pair), is not cheap. The Grand Reference Diamond interconnect runs $12,000/1m pair, and is, as best as I can decipher my notes, a microwave cable with a coaxial design. The balanced version ($15,000/pair) runs four lines rather than two. There is even a Grand Reference power cable ($15,000/1.8m). The bottom of Venture's line is the Black Reference III, whose RCA interconnects are $4000/1m pair.

The rest of this system, some of which appears in this photo with Venture's Hong Kong (Didi) Njoo, included Venture's V200A monoblocks ($120,000/pair) and VP100L preamplifier ($36,400). The digital front end at the time I listened was a Windows 7 laptop playing XXHighend software player in hog mode ($99), feeding the Phasure NOS1 USB upsampling DAC ($4500). The DAC upsamples to 24/768k). "

Nick
In Mani's signature
Frank

Mani
Yes, it is a bit of a monster (and I suspect at a monster price), and hard to hide, but not as big as I had imagined! I understand there are even bigger Caselabs cases?

Your system looks great. I see one of the advantages of having an open baffle design is that their radiation pattern allows you to position closer to side walls without degrading the sound. Less imposing on the living environment as well.

The Suaermanns are somewhat bigger than I imagined for what is a relatively low powered mono amp - which is good of course.

Cheers
Frank

Mani

Le Monster - CaseLabs W8, Asus x79, Intel i7 3960X is certainly a huge machine.
No wonder you can't have it in the lounge!
Nevertheless it must look very impressive. Any pictures for us?

Cheers
Frank

Severed
"I usually end up liking one way better than another... just why I say, check out each of your rips.  Very few times I don't have a preference."

I totally agree. I even adjust for absolute phase on my Ipod (wav)/FiioE11 headamp/Etymotic headphones, when I am out walking!!! (The Fiio has a gain button which changes absolute polarity - and I adjust volume to suit). Somewhat excessive I know - but for me it has to be right.

Frank

PeterSt
Automatic detection of correct absolute phase/polarity would be a first anywhere.

Do you really think it is possible when in many cases individual instruments in multi-microphone recordings can be out of absolute phase with each other? That is why choosing which absolute phase setting suits many multi-microphone recordings, might be individual listener preference. However, with simply/well miked recordings auto detection could be fantastic!

Then you have the issue of overall system absolute phase, so you might need an auto reversal option (for all recordings) to suit the system absolute phase structure as well as the recording? Am I making sense?

Frank

Severed
The Stealth looks really fantastic. I see it got great reviews/feedback also.
The reason I asked about your speakers is that usually for someone to be consistently senstive to/able to identify absolute phase their speakers are usually also phase coherent/aligned, that is, starting with all drivers being connected with the same absolute polarity. Do you know if this was a design choice for the Stealths?
Cheers
Frank

Agree with you whole heartedly. Option for absolute phase inversion is a must for me, and has been for over thirty years.
May I please ask what speakers you have Severed?
Thanks
Frank

Great Idea, but it shouldn't it be used to record/assign the best "Absolute Phase/Polarity" setting for each track rather than the preferred volume setting?

Frank

Thanks for your help. Some great options for me to buy and try.

Is there a record store you can recommend that I can find and buy any of these CDs online?

Peter (and others)

I have a NZ Dutch friend who is making his annual vacation to The Netherlands in a month's time.
I would like to buy him a couple of CDs (I'll rip them on arrival) and have them as a present for him before he leaves.

He is originally from Friesland. So perhaps (1) A Frisian artist or about Friesland and (2) a dutch artist (singing in dutch of course) , something from the last 20 years.
I think his tastes will be mostly pop and folk.

Suggestions please (along with URL for ordering) would be most appreciated.

Frank

Peter

I haven't got my head around why you would want/need 24 cores. Can you explain again why 24 cores would be better than 8 or 12?

By the way some of the other Xeon processors have ECC Memory Support (three channels of ECC DDR3 memory, resulting in up to 25.6 GB/sec memory bandwidth). Is this a useful feature?

Thanks
Frank

Does it sounds like an Intel Sandy Bridge i7-2600 series processor is included?

Peter

You said, "I took some serious time to get myself a new "PC". So, for people orienting on a new one, maybe wait a little"

Whenever you are silent for a few days we know you are deep into something new!

Waiting with interest!

Frank

I would be interested to hear what Scoobius and Mani (when you have had a chance to listen) say about bass through the NOS1 now that XXHE 4-1 is here.

Frank