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I added a Bellari se560 sonic exciter (a pre with tone controls) and it is hifi now. The soundstage became huge (especially tall), layers has gotten more apparent and all these go for the headphone amp as well. I would definitely give this a go if you own a smsl vmv a1. I also had the dac vmv d1se and tried its pre as well and it didn't benefit as much as it benefitted from bellari. What I like about both of them is that the mains cable they come with is very good. Although I use aftermarket cables with a more expensive system and I ( of course) tried all those aftermarket cables with vmv a1 and ended up sticking to the original ones. Long story short it definitely benefits from a good pre-amp.

Emmylou Harris 'Where Will I Be' - off Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois

BLA, BLA, BLA, BLA 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

What a stupid, dumb question. Stop making foolish videos and concentrate on how to make ones existing system sound best. Considering many if not all cd players have op-amps, upgrading them to a TI/Burr Brown op-amp will bring most cd players up to date, minus the 4x oversampling cd players, they're beyond help. Now make a proper video, not a lazy one like this one.

Another vote for Café Zimmerman. It felt to me as if they were caressing the music, whereas some of the others just felt far too hasty.

Hi Harley. We may actually be kindred spirits, or share some hi-fi oriented DNA. My late father was one of those enthusiasts who poured over specialist magazines on hi-fi amplifier and loudspeaker design. In my basement is a sand-damped homemade speaker cabinet encasing a single large Wharfdale speaker. He had assembled a one stereo and one mono power amplifier (valves), and I believe his stereo preamp was a kit from Lafayette Radio. My own speaker-building bug occurred in my teens. There was a British trained (by the BBC) CBC Montreal technician who had built a pair of speaker cabinets using plans that had originated with the BBC. Ultimately when I was nearing the completion of my MBA I acquired a pair of Harbeth loadspeakers to go with my Quad transistorized components: FM3 tuuner, 33 Control Unit, and 405 Current Dumping amplifier. The icing on the cake was an early 1980 Oracle Turntable -- and was a perfect deck for all the vinyl I would acquire in the 70s up until the disappearance of new LPs from the high street. I am leading to my point -- Like you, I played strings, guitar and violin, and later in my life I sang in choirs, and even in an underground staging of HMS in Riyadh. If there is a point to this, I believe I have excellent pitch and excellent hearing. Here is my point -- mono is for the most part easier on the ears. There is strain on one's brain when you record the same players with two or more mics, and using one mic with pan pots, isn't really stereo. It is simply one mic aimed at two speakers. Writing you from Canada...Terry

Good afternoon Harley. You seem to have completely forgotten the Thorens TD150 (the forerunner of the TD160) with the wonderfully funky TP13 tonearm. Mine cost me £45 in 1965. A couple of years later I purchased a deck called a Planet. The forerunner of the deck before Roy Gandy got involved. It came without an arm and I fitted am SME 3009. It had 3 sponsons connected to a centre Sub platter...hence the name. Roy Gandy, my mum used to play golf with his mum, has not evolved his designs 'in reality' since the oiginal Planar 3. If you really want to talk about a genuinely clever turntable designer then then check out Bill Firebeaugh...A TRULY innovative, and brilliant, turntable designer.

Of course MAKUA....

When you finally hear the amazing cadenza you realize why Bach didn't get the job--because he was lightyears ahead of the competition.

Dear Harley, after a busy day at work, there is nothing better than listening to these wonderful pieces of eternal music. Thank you for the way you manage to deal with topics in such a pleasant and interesting way, hearty congratulations! And to answer your question, I prefer Concerto Italiano! greetings from la bella Italia! ciao, Lorenzo

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Does this episode go against 'what are you listening to?' I prefer Yamaha. All manufacturers have a sound. For me like the way Yamaha reproduce the sound of vinyl and cd.

😂Selling Snake Oil again😊

Exodus is one of the greatest albums of all time

The music is Beautiful I so miss my youth,& orchestra,those were the days ❤

Just out of curiosity, with the sugden powered on , if you go to 9-10 o’clock on the volume with nothing playing, do you hear that hum and hiss as you mentioned? Thanks for the review! It’s awesome!

Valve amps have low damping factors; properly designed GanFET amps can have very high damping factors and are the fastest. Plus they can handle large impedance swings which valves cannot.

Although your videos are not to bad I continue to get frustrated with the many videos I see about room acoustics and the approach to room treatment. First in previous videos you talk about the importance of speaker placement. I couldn’t agree more that speaker placement is critical and essential in getting good sound. I could talk a while about what you’re trying to achieve with speaker placement. It’s a process and takes time and patience. I also want to note YOU CANNOT find the optimal speaker placement with any acoustically treatment in the room. To often people blame poor room acoustics when in fact it is poor speaker placement. And once your speakers are placed correctly you will have addressed approx 90 percent of the rooms issues. If not even 100. I have found that with meticulous speaker placement I would need little to no room treatment. The concept that you want an acoustically dead or damped room is absolutely incorrect ! You want a live room but controlled. This cannot be achieved with heavy absorption period ! Absorption creates more problems than it helps. Not only are you creating live and dead areas with in the sound field absorption is not linear in its absorption coefficients. It creates comb filtering issues where it absorbs sound and certain frequency’s and reflects others. If anything defusers are a significantly more effective approach if it is needed. Yes room echos are a problem but you need to understand how this happens. Room echos are caused when you have two parallel reflective surfaces. Sound bounces back and forth between these two surfaces. To address this you “technically” only need to address one side of the reflective surface ! Now the only time and place I 😢are that approach of treating one side of two parallel surfaces is between the floor and ceiling. With floor treatment being the correct treatment. Other than that you either want to use defusion or very light acoustical material that slightly delays the sound wave but does not absorb it. This is ideal for only rear and or side wall reflections. But very careful choice of the material being used and its placement must be careful done. You want a live room with about 1 to 1.4 mil s delay time. This creates a more natural and acoustical dynamic and live listening space that is much more accurate and enjoyable to listen to music in.

Good chat if a bit misleading. Class A and single ended are not the same thing, and in order to meet the transient requirements in some music for an average listening level of 1 watt, you would need 1000watts. Furthermore even order distortion is largely due to valve action not amplifier class. Enjoyable videos nonetheless.

Fine recordings indeed, although I suppose I'll stick to those of Gustav Leonhardt (with the usual friends : Brüggen, Kuijkens, Bylsma) in 1976, or the recordings by Jordi Savall and Pierre Hantai (Concert des Nations and La Capella Reial de Catalunya). A correction though : the harpsichordist from Cafe Zimmerman is French indeed, but her name is Céline Frisch...

Karina Cannellakis has a new live performance on you-tube. She also has a really good finale of the 5th symphony. I tend to listen to live performance videos more now because the sound is excellent and you can learn a lot from what the conductor is doing and what instruments are playing. Alan Gilbert is another great conductor to watch.

That opening to the finale is the greatest joke in the whole of music. Joyous playfulness that somehow Beethoven passes off as "serious music" because he's Beethoven and that's how he rolls!

I am a huge Sugden Fan. I love that they are still hand made on a bench by people who have been there for 30 years. You get a lovely tag with the person's name who built your amp. I have The IA-4 in the basement on my second system. My main system consists of the Sugden MPA-4 mono blocks. I have they LA-4 pre amp as well. With 165 W of Pure ClassA at my finger tips, i now have reached my audio Nirvana.

Great review of a great album. Andy, 58 1/2.

In answer to your question, a resounding YES!

My favorite Brandenburgs version for many years has been the one played by AAM Berlin (1999) followed by MAK Goebel (1987), but I have to listen to Café Zimmerman's more because I also think it is excellent

I don't listen to music with my As you say ^ Partner ' It's my mates of wife I listene with A glass of wine. u said enough. Berlin Ok. We get it

Peccato che manchi un confronto con la registrazione del 1965 fatta da I Musici, ancora oggi la più godibile.

Who makes their tubes?

Revolution or gullible western consumers?

DAC's do make a difference I admit that freely. I think though that too much fuss, to the point of being obessive compulsive at times. There is deminishing returns at some point. At what point does the return on investment in DAC deminish? $300, $1200, $2500, $5000, $7000 where is the line in the sand where you get 95% of what can be had? If the DAC is the most important thing which I think is a true statement how much DAC do you need? I really enjoyed your A-B-X blind testing!

Very interesting chat, thanks! Both speakers employ technology to shape the output and outcome - the Pearl Acoustics approach is to apply technology to the design of the driver and the box while the BBC applied technology to the driver, crossover and the box. Both approaches work and have the advantages and disadvantages.

First I absolutely enjoy your video's always great content. I like how balanced your video's tend to be and your open mindset to let the chips fall where they may! Onkyo makes a very affordable CD player the 7030 for $299 it has been in production for some time now. Mine is older and uses a Wolfson DAC but I think the latest one uses AKM. When I bought it I bought it back in 2017 to keep by my bed to listen to guided meditation CD with headphones. Now it is part of my system. I got tired of purchasing used Sony Discman portables that would fail after a year of use.

Great video. I love my Sugden A21 from 1969. I was so amazed at the quality of sound through my Tannoy Berkley speakers. They match so well.

I play mine straight out of an SMSL SU-10 with no preamp and that works just great.

I just got one of these and the biggest surprise was how good the bass is.

👌 Thank you, Harley.

Good lord, I was not expecting this thing to perform as well as it is. Great recommendation, thank you sir.

Really enjoyed this video, thanks Harley. I have Trevor Pinnock's English Concert version which I must have had for 20 years and it still sounds great to my ears. The Café Zimmerman does sound wonderful, but sadly doesn't seem to be available on CD.

So the best musical impressions were obtained using acoustic equipment costing cents and pennies. Absolutely true....

Brilliant stuff. Thoroughly enjoyed it and .. never knew the Rega story. I'll look upon Rega in a whole new light !. Just one technical note ... Even £1k to £2k hand held spl meters struggle to measure below 30 - 35 dB. Up in the land of multi thousand pound (B & K or Gras) £10k - £20k will get you "close" to the "0" dB accepted limit of human hearing, so I'd imagine the app & smartphone combination is actually measuring it's own noise below about 35. If I'm wrong, and their self induced noise is around 20 dB ... let me know. So many of us want noise measuring capability down to 20 (or even less) without massive cost.

Oh! quin problema, em quedaria diverses versions; sigui pel fraseig, l'acústica, el sentit del detall o el respecte al conjunt...Gràcies per aquesta nova proposta.

A Brandenburg concertos recording you might enjoy- Paillard Chamber Orchestra. with Jean - Pierre Rampal on flute . one of my Brandenburg favs .

I would buy the SPL elector IF i had the $€£ simply because it's made in a factory about four hours drive from my house by very tidy germans .😂 Seriously things made IN germany tend to exhibit high build quality ,,,,so ?

Thank you so much, made me smile and put a spring in my step 😊

Like Glen Gould said : playing Bach Bradenburg Concerto No 5 it’s not about the finality, it’s about the happiness of being…

I couldn't wait for your favourite to end., it was painfully dreadful. I liked the first one you played, Concerto Italiano.

The issue with the Topping remotes is not the remote unit it is the IR receiver in the unit. This is poor design by Topping. My initial approach was to try a quality remote with learning ability which made no difference. The effective, solution was to remove the highly reflective glass from the Topping which is screen printed on the internal surface and has only a tiny clear spot in front of the IR sensor (this limits the angle from which IR can reach the sensor). I carefully cut a new panel from a DVD case and fitted this in place of the factory part. Problem solved. I can now point the remote in any direction, even bouncing off the walls, perfect. Not particularly elegant but when warranty expires I will remove the screen printing around the sensor area of the original glass panel. I really have no idea why Topping has not addressed this easy to rectify design flaw. I think a larger clear area in front of the sensor should be the cure although the DVD case is also way less reflective than the original glass screen. A very long 2mm hex key is the only tool required to do this modification. The original glass window is not glued in place and this procedure is totally reversible.

Can we visit this listening room?

This is just a superb video. Great information, well explained, good pace. Just marvelous. Thanks!