It's been a weird week plus. About two weeks ago a substantial loan that I made to a friend ten plus years ago when I was more flush than I am now. . . was unexpectedly paid back. I showed the check to my wife figuring she would have plans for it but she said "hey that's your money from before we came together I know there's something audio you would want to buy."
So I started pondering. Then two days later my PS Audio P10 just went dead. I thoguht it might be the fuse, but I didn't have a spare the right size (I had one I purchased that I thought was right in 6 x 30, but it's a 5 x 20 fuse.) I took the P10 out of the system and tried it on a different outlet and it powered up but wouldn't go through the initiation process. Dang I thought, this is going to be a pain to get repaired and I will hate being without it. So I decided: heck, the P15 is supposed to be better, maybe someone has a used one out there. I found a former PS Audio dealer (PS Audio has recently gone factory direct) with a price on a new one cheaper than anywhere and ordered one.
I put the Zen Line Conditioner in its place (digital only, not enough outlets to add the phono preamp and power supply for the turntable) and futzed around with tubes and "rode the gain" a lot and darned if the system didn't sound really good. Still, not the way it sounds with the P10. In the meantime I discovered that the PS Audio Ultimate Outlet that I was using was the power outage culprit--its fuse had blown. And I discovered that the SD card for the firmware for my P10 was not completely seated and the unit went past initiation into normal operation.
As I had a P15 on the way and the ZLC that I had been using in my headphone system in the main system all warmed up and dialed in, I put the P10 into my headphone system. HOLY COW did that show a marked improvement from the ZLC there! (Admittedly I can't "ride the gain" in this system--I know that would have narrowed the gap). So left the P10 there. . . on Thursday.
And then yesterday the P15 arrived. It's a very cool machine--very much like the P10 with functional differences and supposedly a better amplification process.
The P15 has been running for about 30 hours and is beginning to really sound fantastic. I'm really going to enjoy this as the electrical nerve center of my main system!
So I've been playing about with settings and tubes and gain and listening to recordings that really tell me how my system is doing, including:
Duke Ellington "Indigos"--a rich, spacious recording that I was enjoying on Impex gold cd. Truly a desert island disc for me. Jazz beauty distilled into a great listening session.
Helen Merrill "Brownie--Homage to Clifford Brown" on Gitanes CD. Wow, this is great music, great singing, some jaw-dropping engineering.
Another that I listened to a few times was "The Day the World Stood Still" by the Andrew Hill Jazzpar Octet+1. This is a very modern sounding recording with challenging music that rewards close attention.