A further update on the LS 50s. Gary...aka gander on this forum.... drove up from Las Vegas today and brought along new stranded wire power cords and a digital cable and interconnects that are made of flexible carbon fiber with graphene with 100% cotton sheathing. I wasn’t expecting much improvement as his cables are pretty darn good already.
Due to my initial rack placement and other factors, I had thrown together various power cords including his
solid copper cords. The digital and ic that I was using were unshielded and made from very fine gauge
copper wire. The wires are resolving and musical as well.
The first thing we switched was just the digital and it was an obvious improvement in clarity and soundstaging. I was very, very surprised and recalled that ....iirc....Tom had recently mentioned he hadnt noticed much difference in digital cables. Well, this one might change his mind. We then added the carbon fiber ic’s and it was more of the same... just a very nice improvement in clarity and presentation. I asked Gary to help me move the rack a bit more away from the wall so I could put that 8 gauge solid copper power cord back on the McCormack amp and it produced great results. There is a wonderful synergy with the McCormack and this cord. The bass is much more pronounced, taut and full. Gary’s new stranded cord wasn’t a match for the solid copper in this application.
We also tried an amp he lent me, the Pass Aleph 30. This was a final pre-production unit. It was my first time with a solid state class A amp and just reminded me that I’d had a VAC 90 class A tube amp back around 1990. Anyway, we both enjoyed the sound a lot. It resolved slightly better than the McCormack and had a “darker” sound which I wasn’t used to. But I do believe it was a more natural sound. Leonard Cohen’s voice had an even more gutteral quality and the sound had a wonderfully organic quality. Now a 30 watt stereo amp with 84 db efficient speakers isn’t a great match as to spl’s
and it wouldn’t do justice to trying to crank it up playing the Stones or some ZZ Top. So Gary took it home, but did mention he has Pass 60 watt monos. It’s tempting for sure and I won’t take a loss on selling the McCormack.
And finally, that pesky Roon/Tidal streaming problem was back today. I was getting at least 30mb, so that wasn’t the issue. I will try and assign a static ip though with the help of a fellow AN member who volunteered his services a few days ago