I guess I should do a small update as well.
~175 hours on the ZMA
Brought it over to Palomino's house for the 3rd meeting of the Chicago Decware Audio Enthusiasts (or whatever the hell he called us LOL).
Last time I brought the amp over to Palomino's listening room, it only had 25 hours on it and Palomino's Rachel sounded scary good - the ZMA sounded better after an hour of warming up, and as he said "never looked back" from that point.
This time, the ZMA smoked his really excellent sounding Rachel right from the get go, no contest, not even in the same league. Listening to the Rachel by itself is awesome, but having an amp like the Mystery amp in the same room simply made the Rachel sound anemic.
We did a lot of A/B testing with the limited gear we have, and our notes were exactly the same all throughout - here are some highlights:
#1 My MG944 are *way better* than I realized. The room treatments that Palomino is constantly adding and adjusting in his room, plus his excellent sounding Rachel proved that. I'd say their only drawback is that they are a bit beamy and very room dependent - if the room isn't balanced, and your head isn't in a vice at the sweet spot, your imaging will be off. His room sounds so good, we were hearing imaging off by inches due to something in the room. (the room was that good and the sound that detailed!)
#2 I knew this already, but it still shocks me when you listen to a well treated room - the quality of sound in his his room, before/after room treatment, is on the same level as the difference between the Rachel and the Mystery amp - his room treatments were as big of an improvement to his *existing* gear, as dropping $4600 on the ZMA! Keep in mind, he's got less invested in his *whole setup* room treatments and all, than I paid for the ZMA alone! The room and room treatments are that good, and that important.
#3 The Mystery amp in a well treated room, is truly amazing. We both agreed, this was the first amp we've ever heard, that truly gets Piano right. We also heard guitars in recordings, that sounded *live*, like they were right there in the room with us. I've said this in almost every post about the ZMA, the dynamics and harmonics - this amp makes the music truly come alive.
#4 The PS Audio P10 power plant easily added 25% quality improvement to Palomino's setup. I completely agree with Steve now, that with the big caps on the ZMA, a Power Regenerator is *less* necessary, but on the Rachel it brought it up to another level. I still firmly believe the Power Regenerator makes an improvement to the ZMA, just not as drastic as what we heard with the Rachel. I can now see why you guys say these things are game changers. While we agreed that it was a 25% (huge!) improvement on the Rachel, I think it was more like a 5% improvement on the ZMA. But at this level of quality, every percent counts!
Side note: when I got home I put my little 2 watt Zen amp on the P10, and *wow*, that was like buying a new amp! It even sounded louder! Zero regrets on the expenditure of the P10 now - I'm very happy with it!
Lastly, the negative - part of our audio play date was to help me suss out the buzz issue I'm having between the Oppo and the ZMA - we easily recreated the issue, and basically ran through all the elimination tests I did at my house - I do have *two* different buzzes - #1 being the ICs picking up noise like antenna, which with proper equipment and cabling layout is minor and almost inaudible at the listening position (even in Palomino's small room). #2 The buzz between the Oppo and ZMA, it's there, no doubt about it - as soon as you plug in the ICs, BZZZZZZ, goes up and down with the volume control.
But, as soon as we plugged in the Rachel, it's *dead quiet*. All things being equal, only change was the Rachel, dead quiet. In fact, it was so quiet, I actually said "is it on?".
I'm in Peoria today for work, but there is a big storm rolling in - I'm going to call Steve and see if I can swing by tonight with the ZMA and Oppo and see if we can figure out what's going on. I *really* like the Oppo, it does just about everything I need it to, and I really can't afford to replace it. So I'm going to see what Steve can do to help out. Right now my worst fear is that there is something off about the Oppo's design that will be inherent in any Oppo I get - I don't want to get rid of it, so I'm hoping we find a solution. I *need* to get the dead quiet I heard coming from the Rachel.
Calling Steve now to setup an appointment.