[Closed] What music to test a hi-fi ?

BillMC is aurally challenged anyhow 🙂

Binatone will suffice....

oliverd1981 - Member
Of course if hi fi nerds had girlfriends they wouldn't be able to position their speaks optimally and the whole industry would be pointless

Makes we want to cry, my lovely Naim set-up stuck in a corner of the living room behind a sofa. It's like keeping a lion in a cage. When the family are away I let it out and chuck in some gazelles.

My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.

You're right about Les at Walrus TG. Harbeths were the compact 7s, just astounding for their size. I regret selling my 3/5a's I had the matching AB1's too. Sold them to a chap in Oz for less than 3/5a's go for on their own these days :roll:. Using Audio Physics now.

I'd be really interested to hear about how you got on, BillMC. Let us know.

Went to Frank Harvey's in Coventry. Very low key salesman (Kevin) who gave good advice, just wired the gear in and disappeared to the back of the room. I ended up with a Uniti, £400 power cable thrown in plus Kef XQ20s and Naim cables. With stands it came to nearly as much as a good bike. And as Merlinman says, your hearing doesn't get better with age, so my view, like everything else, is to enjoy it while you've got it. Money well spent. What?

Sounds like a result to me. Just out of interest, what did you take to demo on it?

mudshark - Member
My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.

My Naim system has survived three kids. Obviously it depends on the child but mine were warned of touching anything at an early age. Since then there have been no problems. At least with Naim stuff the speakers are out of the way against the wall.

It seems that there are many people who prefer listening to 'sound' rather than 'music'

The problem with taking special music is that you are doing it to listen to the equipment. But that is not what music is about. It's exactly the same as obsessing over high-end bike components instead of enjoying riding.

So here is a really easy answer:[b] take music that you will listen to when you get it home[/b]. Buy the kit that makes it sound best (to you). This will make you happy.

mudshark - Member
My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.

My B&W 705s have been damaged by my son 🙁

He squashed the black cone in the middle of the mid/bass drive units and also crumpled the metal tweeters.

Still gets me down now when I look at them. Luckily you can still listen to them, although I am sure they would sound better if they were fixed. My youngest has just turned 3 and I will get them sorted in the next year or two as they should all be past the destructive stage.

The part of my hifi that amazes me in terms of indestructibility is my Micromega Stage 6 CD player. If you search on the internet you will read the reviews from annoyed Stage 6 owners whose CDs keep playing up, but mine has performed really well given the rough handling it gets nowadays.

Better yet, take along your wife or girlfriend (bit probably not both...) as women, being disinterested, hear the big picture rather than us guys obsessing on some aspect, like the bass.

I listened to Van Morrison,Beethoven's 9th, JS Bach, Rolling Stones,all made me feel very emotional

I bought my 72/140/CDi setup about 15 years ago and it still sounds wonderful - never felt the need to upgrade any of it, but it did get put away for a bit when the nippers were tiny.

I just tested it with well-recorded versions of stuff I like - at the time it was things like Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, Dido's Lament, David Sylvian, and Kind of Blue. Kind of Blue was a totemic recording for me - I was first inspired to get into hi-fi by hearing the album on decent kit and noticing subtleties I'd never known were there. Not sure I gained much by hearing them, but didn't want to miss them once I knew 🙂

Same here. I looked after a friend's house who had a 10 year old Naim set up. I heard stuff on my favourite CDs for the first time and listening on other equipment since then has been a frustrating experience.

Pah - Quad 909 monoblocks for me, and a Tact 2.2x pre-amp.

However I also have a Music First TVC pre-amp, which is obviously passive but the transformer gives it more kick than a resistive pre-amp.

It sounds great with loads of detail and transparency, but it also seems to make poor sources, like DAB radio, sound better. This is important as the goal is to listen to music, not hifi, and most of my music discovery comes from listening to DAB radio recordings from the early hours of the morning.

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercial and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consomethinge professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far much more bitter, cynical sense of humour...In '87, Huey released this, "Fore," their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.

What was the power cable? Power line? Powerigel?

I only went as far as a "Graham's Hydra" at £70 or thereabouts, but difference it made illustrates how important it is to build from the power source, I thought.

Naim power line cable, £420. That made it an even more attractive deal.

Cables DO make a very significant difference.

Yeah I'll bite. Cables make almost no difference at all if their electrical properties are similar. Any perceived benefits are 100% placebo.

In double blind tests NOBODY has ever been able to establish a success rate of anything other than what you'd expect from chance. I used to buy into cables until I tried tricky speaker cables on dem. Between a very well respected amp (Lavardin IT) and some eletrostatics (Martin Logan) a system easily capable of showing any change there was absolutely no difference between a 1k cable and the 2 quid a meter (because it looks nice and some is on show) stuff I now use.

Naim especially ought to be ashamed of themselves, they sell the fact that all of their gear benefits greatly from additional power supplies, the sheer neck of suggesting that the last three feet of mains coming into these supplies would make a difference is almost beyond belief.

Also the dealer gave you 420 quids worth of mains, no, the dealer gave you a 20 quid mains lead priced at 420 quid.

Also Russ Andrews the snake oil king has been forced to amend all his ads and descriptions to add in the phrase "in our opinion" because the ASA took him to task over his nonsense.

Love the Uniti, good choice..

Chris Rea's All Night Long from the 12CD box set Blue Guitars.

The intro to the longer Voodoo Chile track from Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland.

If the system handles the opening notes of those two at a significant volume then it is going to be ok.

15 years ago I lived in a flat and the mains electricity was a bit strange.

I remember buying an Arcam Alpha 9 amp, but I had to take it back because I could hear the washing machine through the speakers when the amp was on, so I bought an Audiolab 8000S amp and that was quieter.

After about a year I bought a Kimber 8TC power cable and that made a big difference.

My mate was a sparky and used to scoff at me, but I know what I heard.

A while ago I bought an ex-MOD power filter from fleabay. If there is ever a nuclear strike my hifi will be protected from any EMP that comes along the mains 🙂

Uniti is a lovely choice. And even better with a powerline, despite what other say it makes a difference, worth the money is another question all together!

BTW I have a Naim setup.

It is not a good reflection on an amp if a power coord makes a difference - surely any crap should be filtered out by the time it has passed through all the capacitors, etc.

I was surprised to find that Love Shack by the B52s is generally regarded as one of the best produced pop music records of all time and as such offers a good baseline for testing equipment - dynamic range, clarity etc etc, if you will be listening to pop on it that is.

joolsburger - Member
Yeah I'll bite.

I wasn't fishing. You're wrong.

input of your choice into quad 303 amplification with Castle Severn speakers.. all routed through the best cables you can aquire will blow the Naim stuff into the weeds IMO..

+1 for the Kruder and Dorfmeister sessions..

A decent recording and a decent vinyl pressing of some classic vocal Jazz will help if you're into that sort of thing..

input of your choice into quad 303 amplification with Castle Severn speakers.. all routed through the best cables you can aquire will blow the Naim stuff into the weeds IMO..

An ipod?

He squashed the black cone in the middle of the mid/bass drive units and also crumpled the metal tweeters.

Still gets me down now when I look at them. Luckily you can still listen to them, although I am sure they would sound better if they were fixed.

Actually I've measured damaged drive units and the difference was not measureable!

Everything in its right place from the Radiohead album Kid A

that will tell you all you need to know.

I'm pretty sure I am not wrong however it's my choice to prefer scientific proof (in the form of extensive double blind tests) to anecdote and hearsay, I simply do not "do" cables. Once again extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence which is simply not forthcoming.

However if you feel it works for you who am I to tell you how to spend your money. As yet even the apparently golden eared reviewers aren't able to prove their case so I'm happy with standard kettle leads and the cheapest decent copper cable I could find.

joolsburger - still not getting a reaction?

cynic-al - Member
Actually I've measured damaged drive units and the difference was not measureable!

That's reassuring to know.

I must admit I have never listened to a Naim system, but I have read about the fan base and how it can polarise opinions.

Then again I can't think of any of my friends/family who are into hifi so the only decent set ups I have heard have been at a dealers.

but I have read about the fan base and how it can polarise opinions.

So true! On the Naim forums once, I saw a thread claiming the Naim branded USB stick sounded the best - until a moderator piped up and said it was just a generic branded promo stick! Made me chuckle, I choose Naim because I love the sound of my setup, but you have to take everythign with a pinch of salt on audiophile forums as the brand loyalty can be astounding!

Also a thread for amusement is "Which sounds best, Mac or PC!" - of there are always tears!! It's a PC btw.

£400 power cable?

*s*****

Hint: look what studios use - bog standard "kettle lead" but with a shed load of power smoothing kit the other end.

Removing transients and maintaining a consistent power supply is so much more worth spending money on.

I'm not saying that interconnects don't make a difference but when you have 240V zapping down a cable it's far less relevant!

joolsburger - I would like to be like you but, depressingly, I have found my solid state power amps can be influenced by speaker cables, to a much greater extent than where DBTs would be required 🙁

With certain speaker loads they don't like 4mm finely stranded cables. With Nordost flatline they are sharper and brighter.

It seems that you can influence the sound of a SS amp with cables much more than most 'sane' people would like. I think cable manufacturers exploit this - and I think it is worth trying different topologies of cheapish cables to see if they make any difference.

It is certainly not sensible to spend buckets on cables though.

Van Damme do some decent, cheap, cables and you can keep of selection of different types to try in the garage.

I found my tube amps, which use output transformers, don't seem to suffer.

TurnerGuy - Member
A while ago I bought an ex-MOD power filter from fleabay. If there is ever a nuclear strike my hifi will be protected from any EMP that comes along the mains

Interesting that you should mention ex-MOD stuff from ebay as my speaker cable is the cable they used to put in their jets and it sounds great and not bulky like some modern cables.

I'm really not going for a reaction but this is one of my pet peeves. I sold hifi for about a year in the very early 90's and it became apparent that the primary driver of cable sales was the enhanced margins and large sales incentives we were on.

I do not suggest that you would notice the difference between some Goertz speaker cables and some multistrand as they have such differing electrical properties. For example it's highly likely the Goertz would blow your output stage if it was a naim, exposure or other amp with no Zobel network.

Anyway as you can see I am geeking out so I must stop now.