the previous spot has now become a cosy little corner

new spot for maggie (notice the lateral openness)

bored with my current sound, coupled with some feng shui factors, i have decided to switch the position of my system to the opposite corner of my living room.

i took less than 1 hour to shift the furnitures and 20 minutes to setup my system randomly. meaning, using my previous experience, i simply plonk the maggie on spots which i think will best suit them.

lo and behold, even without proper setup, the resultant sound is much more spacious, dimensional and layered than before! bear in mind that i don't have my curtains on the "new" wall, so the mids are slightly thinner than before but what dimensionality! i would gladly trade off the thinned mids with this panaromic soundstaging!

it suddenly dawns on me that even in an the previous spot (enclosures flanked by two walls measuring 13' wide, see the 1st photo) the maggie still need more lateral space to breathe! the current soundstage is beautifully layered and well spread out. soundstaging used to be my achilles' heel in my previous spot and i just gave less priority to this aspect, not knowing that my spot is the limiting factor.

to counter the thinned mids, i use what have now become my second-nature skills in speaker positioning - pushing the maggie forward and backward in minute movement (centimeter by centimeter), to test the tonal balance. the more i push the maggie closer to the back (bare) wall, the better the mids become, yet without sacrificing much on the layering and dimensionality. i didn't test the bass response cos it was 2am in the morning!

by the 2nd night (tonight), i have gotten a fairly great sound satisfying 80% of my demands, eventho' i still haven't done my ultimate speaker positioning steps. the mids are better now, altho' still lacking the palpability and thickness of the previous setup.

i am going to experiment with wooden racks for my monoblocks in the hope to add more meat and texture to the tonal balance.

this has been a revelation! not only has my feng shui improved (now my main door is no longer blocked by hifi), my hifi also acquires a new dimension! way to go!

having been away from home for the last 7 days (to celebrate CNY in hometown), the first thing i did when i returned home tonight is to power on my system to check that it is still working!

after chalking a healthy 250 hours of burning in, the ARC LS26 preamp sounds like a magician with a deft wand, that has simply transformed my already-decent system into something quite beyond reproach. one friend describes it as "a system that can cause teary eyes". yet another regards it as his long-term reference system. thank you all for your compliments.

for the newbies, seasoned audiophiles or sceptics alike, i would like to offer my advice - your hardware (and its synergy with the rest of the system) merely contributes 40% to the overall sonics you can derive from your system; your cables another 20%; your electricity/power another 20% and finally, the last frontier is room acoustics (which includes speaker positioning), which contributes another 20%. which is to say, even if you have the best hardware money can buy, without good cables, good electricity and good acoustics, your highest possible sonic score is only 40%. those who disagree, check with others who have seen the light.

as i am playing in my 13' X 24' living hall, i haven't quite achieved my last frontier yet. to have a dedicated room is my next goal/dream. i can either start buying lottery now or work extremely hard for the next 10 years. i will do both!

this is a new milestone, one that is very significant in my hifi journey. i have travelled so long, so far in search of this kind of sound, my kind of sound and i have got it now with flying colours.

my kind of sound is only to play my kind of music, which is delicate acoustic ballads (simple female vocals with an acoustic guitar), classical (both large and small scale), jazz and pop/rock but not sheffield lab drum, kondo drum or sister drum, or anything that requires the equivalent of a 12" woofer driven by a 400w solid-state monster amp. my kind of sound has to have very extended highs, very liquid and emotive mids, with a certain moisture, wetness, warmth, texture and tonal colour that only a top-notch tube amp can give, and lows that is not too slammy but tactile and elastic all the same. i don't need my system to frighten small children and harmless pets. i don't need my system to play loud rock music at 100db and above with pounding bass and lightning transients. i need my system to touch my heart and soothe my frailed nerves. i need my system to be airy, palpable and superbly transparent. i want my system to be extremely lively, vivacious and communicative. as i have compromised acoustics, i don't need my system to have first-class depth and width, soundstage layering and separation, tho' these are important attributes to me nonetheless. one can't have perfection when one doesn't have a dedicated room.

and my friend, achieving all your set targets within your set budget, that is the ultimate in high fidelity.

i now welcome myself to audio nirvana!

the flying cable

the extent crazy audiophile goes to have clean and direct electricity


if there is one word to describe my progress in the last 5 days, i can choose from either one of these cliches - stupendous (again!), exhilarating, astounding, earth-shattering, OMG (oh my god), shocking, out-of-this-world, jaw-dropping and many other such superlatives. or, maybe even with all these adjectives combined, it can't come close to what i experienced tonight with little john as a guest listener. (it is 3am in the morning; little john has just left reluctantly).

getting the LS26 is only half of the story told; the tip of the iceberg if you will. what escalated the performance of my system to gargantuan proportion is the installation of a dedicated 3-phase electricity in my house.

readers of this blog would have remembered many moons ago, i bitched, complained, whined, practically made a big fuss about the constant poor quality of the electricity in my house. not even the respectable richard gray 600S can rescue this calamity. my house being located at the last chain of the terrace row, is the recipient of the most polluted electricity. as a result, my system performs erratically, especially during 7pm-10pm, the time when everyone comes back from work and utilises all sorts of electrical appliances. i have borne with this frustrating problem for as long as i could remember. many a times, i switched on the system, listened to it for 5 minutes, feel disgusted and switched it off immediately. i finally stopped sitting on my butt and actioned on it last year to rectify it once and for all. and the super efficient TNB took bloody 7 months to process my application and get it done finally, only today. and by the way, if you see the photos above, you will know that my 3-phase is done differently. i practically "fly" the cables from the pole (which TNB planted) infront of my house, directly into my switch board. it takes the word "dedicated supply" to a new level!

big deal, i hear you say. many houses have 3-phase what. hey, you haven't heard my system tonight. little john was practically sitting still all night long (all 3 hours) listening to the inhaling and exhaling and superb vocal gymnastics of le mon (HK audiophile singer) and the exquisite cai qin signing her lao ge. he was completely speechless and mesmerised, lost for words. for a moment, i thought he was exorcised, or demonised. it was a magical night/morning.

the sound has acquired an eerie sense of quietness (far beyond what the richard gray can do); the soundstage goes deep, deep, deep; the highs get to a stratospheric level never before attained; the midband becomes pristine, crystalline and spooky; the black becomes blacker; the air and ambience become thicker....give me all the superlatives please, please, please.

if ever there was a milestone achievement in my 20 years in hifi, this is it.

i fucking can't sleep now :-)

postscript: the morning after
i woke up at 9am and played my system again. the sound is still great! i suppose for last night's stupendous performance to repeat, i will have to play after midnight where the electricity is the purest/cleanest, 3-phase notwithstanding. i am bracing myself for many night of aural orgasms to follow. oohh...aahh....ooh...ahh... stay tuned :-)

once in a while, an audiophile experiences things which are so mind-blowing and life-changing that he is lost for words, and audio research LS26 to me, is such a colossal experience.

fresh from the box, the LS26 already kills the LS25MKII in refinement and delicacy, soundstaging and layering, image specificity and image depth, control and effortlessness. the LS25MKII was ruthlessly murdered and left bleeding in the alley, waiting to be sent to the morgue. such is the harsh reality of high-end audio. such is the advancement of pre-amp technology in a short span of 5 years.

i can't even begin to describe to you how astounding the improvements are. if LS26 is rated A+ (and REF3 A++), then LS25MKII can at most secure a B or B-. by contrast, the LS25MKII is rough, grainy, shallow, floaty, light-weight, flat and loose.

LS26 takes neutrality to a different level. this is truly the modern high-end sound. the midrange is very natural and it neutralizes the slightly golden yellowish and fruity tonal colour of my power amp's 6550 triode sound. the sense of palpability is eerie. the 3D imaging is awe-inspiring. image compaction takes place, as with all upgrading, and the vocalist's mouth is as sharp as a tiny dot.

granted, the extreme highs and lows are still not extended due to it not being burned-in. but after 300 hours' play, i can guarantee to myself that, like what belinda carlisle sings in her song (with minor apologies for altering its title) - heaven is THE ONLY PLACE on earth.

i digress. we audiophiles spend our life's savings repeatedly chasing the elusive audio nirvana, and cynics and lesser audiophiles often mock and sneer at us for being silly and non-sensical. and a lot of times, we can't even be bothered to explain to them why we spend a fortune on our system, because unless you own such a system and have the necessary listening skills, you would never understand the stupendous joy and immense satisfaction of indulging in this hobby.

these people have obviously not listened to the audio research LS26.