hot_rod wrote:
... all of a sudden you hear levels of detail that you didn’t even realize you were missing. I can't get over how good these are even without break-in and fancier gear for source/amp etc.

This is so true, and I think you have a good approach to the upstream components.

A couple of questions for you:

First, are you using the hi res Tidal subscription? My understanding is that they stream CD quality. I don't have Tidal yet because I have a bazillion CDs and flac files, plus Berlin Philharmonic streaming. That's a lot of music to swallow, but I've been thinking about Tidal. My Oppo will stream it.

Second, what speaker cables are you using? I started with a very low end system with a Sony receiver, Radio Shack lamp cord speaker wire (no laughing please) and $250/pair Sony tower speakers. Now THAT'S low end! A friend got some Morrow Audio speaker cables (SP2s) and raved, so I got some SP3s just to one-up him. Wow! What a difference! I could hear the difference even with those cheap Sony speakers. I have continued upgrading my Morrows until I'm now using his Elites. (I did SP3 to SP7 to Elite.) There have been big improvements at every step. I know there are a lot of cables out there, but if you're running low end cables now, Morrow's entry level cables really aren't that expensive to try, and he has used cables at lower prices. My bet is that the TRefs will illuminate any change you make.

Charlie

I got a listen to them when Sandy demo'ed them at Listen Up in Denver. Sounded great. I was wondering what one of the songs was that he played, was foreign language and had pipe organ. the Trefs got low in that one.

Hi CRRobert,

I believe you're referring to the "Cantate Domino" album, a Swedish album by Oscars Motettkor. The song Sandy uses is "Christmas Song".

www.allmusic.com/album/cantate-domino-mw0000147147

It's very popular, so you should have no trouble finding one of the many releases of it.

charliehatch wrote: First, are you using the hi res Tidal subscription? My understanding is that they stream CD quality. I don't have Tidal yet because I have a bazillion CDs and flac files, plus Berlin Philharmonic streaming. That's a lot of music to swallow, but I've been thinking about Tidal. My Oppo will stream it.

Yes I was using the hi res Tidal subscription. The Yamaha MusicCast app I was controlling it with wouldn't show me the bit rate but it did say it was FLAC 44.1 and they only stream FLAC on their hi-res product ( the lower one is AAC per this link ). Honestly it sounded pretty close to the Spotify product which says it is playing PCM format to the yamaha. I tried to A/B it and they sounded really close. Spotify is usually 320 kbps as highest quality but the yamaha says it is reading it as PCM, I can't find anything on the internet about this as I thought PCM was lossless. Spotify was testing a higher res version so maybe it was getting fed to the Yamaha too now?

Despite being integrated with Tidal, the Yamaha app would not play back the Tidal MQA 'master' version of anything even though I chose an album available in masters, though I can see it in masters on my computer so could feed that via USB or get a BlueSound 2 module. Quite honestly the current FLAC/PCM quality on Tidal and Flac sounds great. I will say that the Spotify connect integration is better than Tidal --- for the yamaha you have to use Yamaha's app to search songs and make playlists etc as the Tidal app can't see the receiver, and Yamaha's app is quite terrible. But spotify's app is really great to use and it CAN see the receiver as a sound output, so unless I get a BLueSound my guess is I will drop Tidal and just keep using Spotify. Both have 30 day free trials so may as well give it a shot! Be sure you are getting the Hi-Fi trial on Tidal. I am interested in BlueSound for 1) Tidal hi res MQA and 2) integrating my flac collection into a nice interface with Tidal too (so both in one place) - Yamaha tries to do it but the app is terrible (loading spinning wheel on every menu change), and the BlueOS has better reviews.

charliehatch wrote: Second, what speaker cables are you using? I started with a very low end system with a Sony receiver, Radio Shack lamp cord speaker wire (no laughing please) and $250/pair Sony tower speakers. Now THAT'S low end! A friend got some Morrow Audio speaker cables (SP2s) and raved, so I got some SP3s just to one-up him. Wow! What a difference! I could hear the difference even with those cheap Sony speakers. I have continued upgrading my Morrows until I'm now using his Elites. (I did SP3 to SP7 to Elite.) There have been big improvements at every step. I know there are a lot of cables out there, but if you're running low end cables now, Morrow's entry level cables really aren't that expensive to try, and he has used cables at lower prices. My bet is that the TRefs will illuminate any change you make.

thanks for the recommendation on the Morrow cables. Right now I am using Monster speaker cables, labeled MCX-is (3m with banana pre-terminated). They are 10 years old and aren't bad for entry level, I think were roughly $70 for my length terminated (or $35 for a 30ft spool on Amazon now). I might look at upgrading to Morrows using their trade in program since I can send in the monster ones for a discount.

here are some images of the playback, note the file type shown under album art:
TIDAL:

SPOTIFY:

fbreynolds wrote: This is the output from Anthem Room Correction (ARC) on my Anthem MRX 1120 on the day the Reference speakers were installed. I don't understand the chart and I am not sure how well ARC measures frequencies below 20 Hz. However, it may give you a general idea of the response of a brand new Reference.

Looking at these graphs it looks like you mistakenly did not set the L/R mains to Full Range. If that is true, you need to start over.

Moderator wrote: Hi CRRobert,

I believe you're referring to the "Cantate Domino" album, a Swedish album by Oscars Motettkor. The song Sandy uses is "Christmas Song".

www.allmusic.com/album/cantate-domino-mw0000147147

It's very popular, so you should have no trouble finding one of the many releases of it.

Great, thanks, the song was Cantique de Noel (sung in Swedish).