This is getting out of hand - flying to a different country to listen to a bloody hi-fi 
. So here's the report on the first Zerogain Anglo-Swiss Hi-fi Convention (following on from a pilot project under GH's auspices)
This weekend Lilolee, sideshowbob and I took up titian's generous invitation to visit him in beautiful Switzerland and spend a minute or two listening to his system - and he had a couple of LPs that might be worth listening to. So we rolled up at 7am friday am
at Luton airport for this completely lunatic expedition. And (Still) Tones joined us for Saturday afternoon.
When we eventually finished getting through the Zurich traffic jams and got to titian's lovely house in its stunning scenery what did we do - headed up to the attic and stayed there nearly all the weekend. (Ian did actually see a bit more scenery than Lee or me as he kept popping out every 5 minutes for another fag break - the mountains and lake did look gorgeous through the attic window though!)
Enough rambling already - what about the system. There's a page on this little music-maker - although there have been a few recent changes - here. The picture doesn't really give the feel of the environment particularly well - there's approximately equal spaces either side of that in the main picture with the sloping roof space (you can see one side behind the cables photo) - which gives the whole thing a nicely bohemian/den/student feel. There is now also Titian's computer desk between the speakers which can be pushed back towards the subs for social listening, or pulled back so he can listen while working/browsing etc.
And what does it sound like? Well, it's simply the best system I've ever heard - and so it should be - with a couple of possible provisos I'll come on to later (and certainly outclasses mine in nearly all areas). It really did wonders with anything it was given - mainly classical and jazz/jazz-rock but did a pretty good job on the bits of prog rock and straight rock we gave it too. The speaker system is probably the system's strongest point. The dispersion is wonderful - each instrument has body, spatial separation and precision almost anywhere in the room. You can even hear stereo separation when you're in line with the speakers in the left or right wings of the room. Of course things are best when you're in the sweet spot, but it's realy not that sensitive. The depth of field is also quite staggering - I thought mine was good, but it's nothing compared to titian's. Probably the only system I've heard with similar soundstaging is Merlin's (or when Merlin brought his TACT over to try out on the Wilson WATT/puppies I had for a few weeks). This may be partly due to the positioning of the huge subs - the large black box you can see in the corner behind the LH satellite is one, and you can just see a bit of the RH one at the edge of the main picture. There's also a wonderful sense of scale - quite possibly due to the combination of those speakers one inverted on top of the other. With this wonderful soundstage, on the right recording you really can shut your eyes and believe you are in a concert hall. We also put on a few organ pieces (natch
), and it was quite staggering. The subs do a lovely job of the bottom end, and the music just fills the room. Titian likes Shostakovich - so we did have to play his Passacaglia (although I suspect Ian and Lee didn't enjoy that as much as Titian), and the opening theme on the pedal section with its 19Hz bottom notes did come through beautifully.
Now all this was heard despite the system being is not particularly well at the moment. It's recently had a new low output cartridge, which has required a phono stage change, and Titian has a couple on eval. One of the two bits of that hifi thang we did was compare the Tom Evans Groove, which Titian had on when we got there and used for the first two days, with a Walker phono stage. Unfortunately the Walker has a bad hum on one channel, which is why it wasn't on earlier - but it took us about three notes for us all to realise that the Walker destroyed the Groove. The Groove is deliberately coloured to provide some euphonic musicality - but that was quite unnecessary and counter-productive in this system. The clarity of the Walker opened everything out and lifted that proverbial veil from the proceedings - despite that hum.
Early on we also noticed some quite serious distortions on one channel when the orchestra got 'a bit excited' (I wish to point out that it was not my idea to play Wagner for the first hour or two, but I didn't object - although I do think there are much better performances that what we used
). This is clearly down to one of the valve monos. It was ameliorated by a bit of extra isolation using the rather funky/lethal Walker spikes - but is clearly not right, and the amp probably needs a service (at least full checks of the biassing), which Titian's about to do.
My one reservation is the cleanliness of the top end (i.e. my litmus test of an orchestral violin section). As with nearly all systems I've heard there's a bit of blurring/clutter there - the only amps I've heard that don't are my Patriot and the f.o. Halcro - and possibly the BelCanto (and HenryT reckons the same about the Spectral). This was nagging at me most of the weekend. I think some of this is down to the dodgy monoblock, and things improved a lot when we switched it over to the cello side, giving the good one to the violins. I'm still not sure that that's the full story though. This morning I put on a quick burst of the Beethoven 5 we played yesterday on mine, and it was quite a bit cleaner here.
But this was sort of what we expected - it should be a very good system. The kids in the sweetshop effect though was from Titan's LP collection. The room is FULL of records (not seen in the website photos) - somewhere in excess of 7000 :yikes: . As Ian has said before (after his first visit) Titian has a jazz collection many would kill for, almost entirely by accident (one of the most often heard phrases was "what's this....who's is it....your's), and he really ought to be contributing to the 70s/80s cheesy pop/rock thread, with a collection of over 500 LPs of that! So we played a Big Tone memorial track - Deep Purple's "Child In Time". No Shpongle though!!!! And for me, with racks and racks of stuff to choose from I didn't know where to start, although I had about 30 CDs with me with music Titian didn't know - Titian's collection is much more mainstream than mine. This is an absolute Aladdin's cave for a classico - even my County Library didn't have this range of stuff - a bit light on the English Cow-pat school though! (Oh and nestling in the corner was a paltry CD collection - of about 500 discs)
One comment from Lee on the journey out was that it would be so nice to have the time to listen to full pieces rather than just snippets. So we did this - for about 12 hours each day :yikes: , but such was the range of stuff that in the last couple of hours we were rushing around with "got to play this" and "such a shame we've not got time for...."
We held off most baroque music until Tones' arrival, but when he pitched he brought a wonderful collection of comedy stuff - Spike Jones, Tom Lerher, I forget who doing Bach on the Moog - his straight stuff didn't get much of an outing. We just pointed him at the racks of Bach and Handel and let him drool!
I've said virtually nothing about the music we did play (we clearly got though a lot between about 11am and 1am each day) - suffice to say there was lots, and I have a long list of plinque to get (I was particularly impressed by the Molvaer, Archie Shepp and Sonny Rollins, and even Ian managed to suppress his modernist tendencies enough to think about getting some Benny Goodman - that 1938 Carnegie Hall concert really is fantastic). And I must get that :notworthy Ruggiero Ricci playing the Sarasate Carmen Fantasy (well, and almost anything else really) - probably the most breathtaking piece for me all weekend (I do have it by Sarah Chang and she's about two leagues behind).
As Cookiemonster has pointed out, these can be expensive though. The other hifi thang we did was compare Beethoven 5 on LP and CD (using the wonderfully OTT Metronome CDP - 3 boxes and a transport that's just as funky as any Clearaudio TT). Unfortunately for me, even I had to admit that the LP was clearly better - so ever since the three of them have been suggesting ways of me spending £££000s
I hate to think what Rita (Titian's wife) and her family (who live next door) think of us - spending such a beautiful weekend locked up in a hot attic with only brief exits for air - when we could have been sampling the (I am told) spectacular views from the mountains above. But we all enjoyed ourselves immensely - and the mountains will still be there next year - so I guess we're happy in our shared geekery.
I'm sure there's loads more to say, but thats probably (more than) enough, so I'll shut up with big thanks to Titian, Rita, Rosemary and Eddie (and the bruises delivered by little Lorenzo should fade soon
) - and now we need to start thinking about a return visit.
. So here's the report on the first Zerogain Anglo-Swiss Hi-fi Convention (following on from a pilot project under GH's auspices)This weekend Lilolee, sideshowbob and I took up titian's generous invitation to visit him in beautiful Switzerland and spend a minute or two listening to his system - and he had a couple of LPs that might be worth listening to. So we rolled up at 7am friday am
at Luton airport for this completely lunatic expedition. And (Still) Tones joined us for Saturday afternoon. When we eventually finished getting through the Zurich traffic jams and got to titian's lovely house in its stunning scenery what did we do - headed up to the attic and stayed there nearly all the weekend. (Ian did actually see a bit more scenery than Lee or me as he kept popping out every 5 minutes for another fag break - the mountains and lake did look gorgeous through the attic window though!)
Enough rambling already - what about the system. There's a page on this little music-maker - although there have been a few recent changes - here. The picture doesn't really give the feel of the environment particularly well - there's approximately equal spaces either side of that in the main picture with the sloping roof space (you can see one side behind the cables photo) - which gives the whole thing a nicely bohemian/den/student feel. There is now also Titian's computer desk between the speakers which can be pushed back towards the subs for social listening, or pulled back so he can listen while working/browsing etc.
And what does it sound like? Well, it's simply the best system I've ever heard - and so it should be - with a couple of possible provisos I'll come on to later (and certainly outclasses mine in nearly all areas). It really did wonders with anything it was given - mainly classical and jazz/jazz-rock but did a pretty good job on the bits of prog rock and straight rock we gave it too. The speaker system is probably the system's strongest point. The dispersion is wonderful - each instrument has body, spatial separation and precision almost anywhere in the room. You can even hear stereo separation when you're in line with the speakers in the left or right wings of the room. Of course things are best when you're in the sweet spot, but it's realy not that sensitive. The depth of field is also quite staggering - I thought mine was good, but it's nothing compared to titian's. Probably the only system I've heard with similar soundstaging is Merlin's (or when Merlin brought his TACT over to try out on the Wilson WATT/puppies I had for a few weeks). This may be partly due to the positioning of the huge subs - the large black box you can see in the corner behind the LH satellite is one, and you can just see a bit of the RH one at the edge of the main picture. There's also a wonderful sense of scale - quite possibly due to the combination of those speakers one inverted on top of the other. With this wonderful soundstage, on the right recording you really can shut your eyes and believe you are in a concert hall. We also put on a few organ pieces (natch
), and it was quite staggering. The subs do a lovely job of the bottom end, and the music just fills the room. Titian likes Shostakovich - so we did have to play his Passacaglia (although I suspect Ian and Lee didn't enjoy that as much as Titian), and the opening theme on the pedal section with its 19Hz bottom notes did come through beautifully.Now all this was heard despite the system being is not particularly well at the moment. It's recently had a new low output cartridge, which has required a phono stage change, and Titian has a couple on eval. One of the two bits of that hifi thang we did was compare the Tom Evans Groove, which Titian had on when we got there and used for the first two days, with a Walker phono stage. Unfortunately the Walker has a bad hum on one channel, which is why it wasn't on earlier - but it took us about three notes for us all to realise that the Walker destroyed the Groove. The Groove is deliberately coloured to provide some euphonic musicality - but that was quite unnecessary and counter-productive in this system. The clarity of the Walker opened everything out and lifted that proverbial veil from the proceedings - despite that hum.
Early on we also noticed some quite serious distortions on one channel when the orchestra got 'a bit excited' (I wish to point out that it was not my idea to play Wagner for the first hour or two, but I didn't object - although I do think there are much better performances that what we used
). This is clearly down to one of the valve monos. It was ameliorated by a bit of extra isolation using the rather funky/lethal Walker spikes - but is clearly not right, and the amp probably needs a service (at least full checks of the biassing), which Titian's about to do.My one reservation is the cleanliness of the top end (i.e. my litmus test of an orchestral violin section). As with nearly all systems I've heard there's a bit of blurring/clutter there - the only amps I've heard that don't are my Patriot and the f.o. Halcro - and possibly the BelCanto (and HenryT reckons the same about the Spectral). This was nagging at me most of the weekend. I think some of this is down to the dodgy monoblock, and things improved a lot when we switched it over to the cello side, giving the good one to the violins. I'm still not sure that that's the full story though. This morning I put on a quick burst of the Beethoven 5 we played yesterday on mine, and it was quite a bit cleaner here.
But this was sort of what we expected - it should be a very good system. The kids in the sweetshop effect though was from Titan's LP collection. The room is FULL of records (not seen in the website photos) - somewhere in excess of 7000 :yikes: . As Ian has said before (after his first visit) Titian has a jazz collection many would kill for, almost entirely by accident (one of the most often heard phrases was "what's this....who's is it....your's), and he really ought to be contributing to the 70s/80s cheesy pop/rock thread, with a collection of over 500 LPs of that! So we played a Big Tone memorial track - Deep Purple's "Child In Time". No Shpongle though!!!! And for me, with racks and racks of stuff to choose from I didn't know where to start, although I had about 30 CDs with me with music Titian didn't know - Titian's collection is much more mainstream than mine. This is an absolute Aladdin's cave for a classico - even my County Library didn't have this range of stuff - a bit light on the English Cow-pat school though! (Oh and nestling in the corner was a paltry
CD collection - of about 500 discs)One comment from Lee on the journey out was that it would be so nice to have the time to listen to full pieces rather than just snippets. So we did this - for about 12 hours each day :yikes: , but such was the range of stuff that in the last couple of hours we were rushing around with "got to play this" and "such a shame we've not got time for...."
We held off most baroque music until Tones' arrival, but when he pitched he brought a wonderful collection of comedy stuff - Spike Jones, Tom Lerher, I forget who doing Bach on the Moog - his straight stuff didn't get much of an outing. We just pointed him at the racks of Bach and Handel and let him drool!
I've said virtually nothing about the music we did play (we clearly got though a lot between about 11am and 1am each day) - suffice to say there was lots, and I have a long list of plinque to get (I was particularly impressed by the Molvaer, Archie Shepp and Sonny Rollins, and even Ian managed to suppress his modernist tendencies enough to think about getting some Benny Goodman - that 1938 Carnegie Hall concert really is fantastic). And I must get that :notworthy Ruggiero Ricci playing the Sarasate Carmen Fantasy (well, and almost anything else really) - probably the most breathtaking piece for me all weekend (I do have it by Sarah Chang and she's about two leagues behind).
As Cookiemonster has pointed out, these can be expensive though. The other hifi thang we did was compare Beethoven 5 on LP and CD (using the wonderfully OTT Metronome CDP - 3 boxes and a transport that's just as funky as any Clearaudio TT). Unfortunately for me, even I had to admit that the LP was clearly better - so ever since the three of them have been suggesting ways of me spending £££000s
I hate to think what Rita (Titian's wife) and her family (who live next door) think of us - spending such a beautiful weekend locked up in a hot attic with only brief exits for air - when we could have been sampling the (I am told) spectacular views from the mountains above. But we all enjoyed ourselves immensely - and the mountains will still be there next year - so I guess we're happy in our shared geekery.
I'm sure there's loads more to say, but thats probably (more than) enough, so I'll shut up with big thanks to Titian, Rita, Rosemary and Eddie (and the bruises delivered by little Lorenzo should fade soon
) - and now we need to start thinking about a return visit.
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