Thinking about trying some MIT's.

gmcman

With only about 15 hrs elapsed I listened again. I guess as expected, the highs are just slightly bright, the soundstage is smaller, but the bass seems to be more detailed and the vocals have a lot more energy. I put on some Dire Straits and the drumstick on the cymbal in Sultans of Swing had a ton of decay that was audible...used to be just a high pitched static-like sound, (with other cables), now it's quite pronounced.

The upper midrange and low treble have a lot of emphasis now, not grainy, but more forward, add in the well defined bass and that's what I think makes the vocals have more energy.

The vocals still emanate from the phantom center, but seems like the persons head is twice the size now, again..compared to previous cables.

The MIT Ref digital cable arrives today so I will compare the dacs, but I think the Marantz's Cirrus CS4398 will edge the B&K's AK4393 but will be interesting to see.

heiney9

Yep, they will be on a roller coaster of sound until they are nice and broken in, then it will be like "buttah"

H9

gmcman

mikeyb128 wrote: »

Maybe try the break In method MIT suggests in the provided paper work. I didn't do it this way, just played movies/music and observed. They definitely get better with time. But I agree with what you are saying, it is quite a noticeable change once installed.

Yes, I am trying to but can't play at normal volumes during the night, however being on vacation this week they will get some good burn time.

msg wrote: »

I remember almost not wanting to believe cables could make a difference, but during the first 24hrs/2 weeks evaluation process, I simply could not ignore what I was hearing. I don't want to say any more so as not to suggest characteristics for you to listen for and color your personal evaluation. I'm interested to hear your impressions as the burn-in period continues.

Just for shi$% and giggles, I put the MA3's back in. The soundstage basically collapsed compared to the S1's, it was 2 dimensional and didn't go much past the speakers except for some of the effects and the bass was uncontrolled, also the midbass and midrange details went away but the upper mids and highs were there, just the overall "richness" of the sound went away.

I stuck the S1's back and all was good again, it's hard to believe the difference just the IC's made but it's night and day.

So for now, the biggest change I see is the soundstage just flows beyond the speakers and it's very even, the instruments seem to float in front of me instead of imagining a picture of the instrument there. The bass is extremely detailed and it's not a muddled mess of bass anymore. Even though I can hear the instrument before and there was sufficient bass, now I can pretty much hear the string from beginning to end, and it's tight and clear...not a drone of bass noise....and the vocals are almost perfect.

This may be over-exaggerating a bit, but not by much...but it's as noticeable as removing the SDA cable from an inferior set of interconnects.

I can't wait for the speaker cables to get here...lol.