| An amazing listening session with the H290C [message #76347] |
Wed, 17 April 2013 22:54  |
Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA
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Illuminati (2nd Degree) |
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Had a lot of trouble working the new horn into my 4 Pis, partly because a Jelco SA-240 tone arm arrived and muddied the water at about the same time.
Initially, the H290C was bright sounding. I asked Wayne about it and he'd recently determined the DE-250 needed a shunt resistor, which I added. Without taking much time and wanting to hear my new tone arm, I committed the cardinal sin of making 2 changes simultaneously. Thinking something was amiss, I came across a post here that advised removing the C1 Capacitor from the 4 Pi crossover. Made it happen.
A lively system lost some luster. That sucked because it takes much more effort to solder caps back in than to snip them out.
Sunday morning I reinstalled the Obbligato .47s.
Today, after a suitable warm-up of the Caravaggio Phono Stage and DIY single-ended KT-88 (Gold Lion Kinkless Tetrodes Rule!!!) amp, I played the Markevich Tchaikowsky Second, "Little Russian" Symphony. Marvelous! Things hinted at during the period of changes became solid: improved image, instrument timbre and especially hearing portions of the score that are usually buried too deep in a recording but are important parts of the texture, none the less. There's more to that than simply hearing more detail, more than that hackneyed "I'm hearing my albums again for the first time", thing. I hear openness and clarity beyond even improved ambience; the recordings sound more "alive".
Next came the greatest favor you can do for your rig after a major change, the Chesky re-issue Sibelius Second Symphony, Barbirolli/Royal Phil. The music is jazzy, the recording by Wilkinson, superb and the orchestration creates kind of a "Guide To The Symphony Orchestra" in the imaginative ways Sibelius combines and utilises sections of instruments. There were goosebumps for the final 16 bars.
The H290C improves the 4 Pi.
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