Re: Audio Catalogs, Accessories & Memorabilia
Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:39 am
Just a rejoinder on this newly installed tweak. I must say that the cause of this can be traced to my restlessness while my 'being-broken-in' ARC VS115 is morphing itself every 100 hours. While generally it is for the better, I wouldn't say that it is entirely in accordance with my personal taste. I had been doing a lot of small things throughout these times, cleaning plugs, re-positioning speakers, changing input tubes, cleaning tube pins, because I begin to hear some aberrations like sudden thinness in some recordings, and even 'honky-ness' on some. The amp is revealing something which my old amp did not. And while pondering on what else can be done to remove these undesirables, I thought of giving them spikes a shot when I spotted them again. One reason why I never bothered to try finding a way to spike these Maggies was because with the old amp, they sounded pleasant and musically satisfying on 'most' of the records I play. As the saying goes: "Don't fix it if it ain't broken". But alas, this new amp is a different animal. It's can be mean and ruthless, and it makes me crack my head thinking why some super records sound even better while the mediocre ones got worse. I'm missing the music here, I thought. I'm sure others have experienced this too and this is one of the 'imperfections' of audio. We can't have everything under one package and one room. Still, there is one more thing left for me as a last option, which is to go back to the KT88 tubes which my old amp had, then it would be a totally fair comparison between the 2. Right now, it's a waiting game for hitting the magical 600 hours. 200 hours to go. It's like community service in college but heck, this is still much more enjoyable.