Steve Deckert
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I have like most, been struggling for years with recordings falling into two piles, those that sound good ('right") and those that sound lean or dry which is a polite way of saying recordings that sound bad.
I think as audiophiles, especially post 70's loudness-button-armed-receiver audiophiles, we think because we hear a group of our recordings sound good to great that anything else must be recorded like crap...
This is seldom true when you subtract frequency balance from the equation. Let me give you an example that is all too common and has repeated itself over the years more times than I can count.
You find CD's or stream music that growing up you loved and now for some reason because your an audiophile, it sounds like crap. Very frustrating since the music is so good, and you know it can sound good, because it did sound good. It just doesn't sound good today. What has changed? Bass and Treble controls, loudness button, HI and LO filters and large efficient speakers with real bass response.
I figured this out when I found myself frustrated for the 7000th time trying to listen to some Supertramp that I can still remember 40 years later how it sounded. I have the LP's and even they are not always immune to this deflation effect that ruins great music. The trigger was the ZROCK2 that I have refused to let myself listen to since I developed it, for reasons that should be obvious.
After being mercilessly teased for actually the past year and and half, and wanting to re-live a childhood experience of hearing Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac and similar greats from that era, I CAVED and hooked up the ZROCK2 and with it dialed into that sweet spot which is easy to find because it has the most highs and is located at around 3/4 on the magic dial.
Problem immediately solved.
Now that the recordings don't sound like someone has stolen your woofers, I can finally not only stand to listen to it, but enjoy it and muse at just how good the recordings actually are.
Ponder that for awhile. For those who don't like to think... take your music library as an example. Let's make it simple and say you only listen to CD's so that we can divide them into piles. One pile (the shortest) is your demo material to impress yourself and your friends. One pile is your good but not demo material pile that you can play for yourself only. And then there is the pile that sounds like crap to you even when no-one is looking.
Let's say these piles are A=50% B=30% C=20%, C is the demo pile. B is the pile that frustrates you, because it is full of music you love. With a ZROCK2, you will eliminate pile B as it will become added to pile C. Also, Pile A will shrink by at least 10% making your music library go from 20% to 60%. That is 3X the music. How long are we going to chase pile C without A ZROCK2? It's futile... I admit it.
I would say the ZROCK2 is the at least 10 times better than a subwoofer in the most conservative examples I can think of.
Also it becomes obvious why 90% of subwoofer users miss-use subwoofers by using them to fatten up the frequency balance of their main speakers instead of extend it.
As always once you get a ZROCK2 dialed in and spend an hour listening to your favorite music sound good, hitting the bypass switch is like being on a speedboat and running aground! Or let's see, it's like eating the best stake you ever had and then it turned into a cracker. Yea, that's a better analogy.
Anyway, the takeaway is that at least 50% of the recordings that I find frustrating because they must be recorded like crap, are actually recorded just fine, they simply have a different EQ.
As I ponder this reality once again as it stands directly in front of my face I realize that audiophiles really sabotaged themselves by making it a taboo to have tone controls, or loudness buttons. Music is voiced different today then it was up until 1968.
The real test of how good a ZROCK2 is for A) Imaging, B) Separation, C) Tone, D) Presense, E) Dynamics, F) HIT, G) Bass textures, H) Bass weight, I) Animation in no specific order, is to see how long you can listen to your music in bypass mode. Even much of your music that was in pile C if not all of it, will just sound even better. Turning off your ZROCK2 will be like stepping out of a hot shower into a cold bathroom with no towel.
Since someone scratched the case on this ZROCK2, I get to keep it for myself. Tonight is it's first run-in. So basically no burn-in. It was inserted into a well-seasoned system. Despite that this device made an instant improvement of such a great size that burn-in becomes insignificant in the grand scale of things.
Also this unit has been outfitted with standard beeswax caps and nothing else. It is being used with the 25th Anniversary amp, feeding it directly. Now we all know that's a bad thing... or is it? I'll be doing the anniversary mods to it soon and then I'll wonder how I loved it so much before. Still, if this is all the better it could get I would be 100% fine with it. It's just that damn good.
Steve
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