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You didn't even guess the animal. I'll give you another hint, the animal normally lives in Africa.

As for the speakers I'll say this much: active 4 way.

Too bad my best source is a cheap 8 year old dvd player. I'm working on that...

I thought pics would be cool so I might wait until everything is set up.

Zebrawood?

Jason

Yes, you win the Xmas cookie. Zeebrawood it is.

Zeebrawood sides and Curly Maple Baffles.

Looks pretty sweet, should be here within a few days.

Pic of Zeebrawood.

http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=711

I would call Steve, rather than guessing or taking guesses from us.

Does NOT sound as if this is as it should be.

Bummer!

[quote author=Lon  link=1166842424/0#9 date=1167397213]I would call Steve, rather than guessing or taking guesses from us.

Does NOT sound as if this is as it should be.

Bummer! [/quote]

Good advice

CSP2 Review By Parker

Well I’ve put a few hours on the CSP2 so I thought I would include a few of my initial impressions. Note that the problems I mentioned earlier were of no fault of the CSP2. I would guess that I have had the unit on with a signal going to it for about 5 hours total of which I have listened to it on headphones for at least one hour the other 4 hours I didn’t listen to the unit at all. Listening to bookshelf speaks and normal 2-channel set up was not done for more than 1 minute bc I only used to this to determine that the CSP2 was not the culprit of the previous problem.  

Input signal is coming from normal low-mid grade cd/dvd player (about 1 year old sony unit) only used original cds so far. RCA cables are very low-mid grade monster etc. Home has no power bumps or otherwise oddities in the electricity. Using the normal tubes that shipped with the unit.

I’ll start with the negative or so far the least desirable things I have noticed (these may be fixable but at this point I do not know). Prominent 60hz hum is clearly audible on quite passages and in between songs or when I hit pause. A general consumer would be unlikely to hear this but I believe I am a bit more trained on picking those types of things out. Note that I’ve never heard a hum this loud from any mid-high quality headphone amp or my current preamp (adcom 450) and I really doubt it is the power in my house making the hum since no other gear hums this loud when plugged into the same sockets. Tried using a 3 prong to 2 prong adapter to see if that changed anything but it yielded no help. Note the only other item pluged into this circuit was the cd player (note hum still there if cd player is turned off). If the hum could be eliminated this would be the cleanest pre amp with the lowest amount of hiss (note that for me hiss and hum are two different things) I have ever heard. The 60hz hum does not change with the volume and there is no audible hiss and it doesn’t change with volume either (I’m very very impressed by this).

Another issue that I would like to isolate is the CSP2 clipping at fairy low levels. I believe my cdplayer has a two-volt output, when I get past half volume the unit clips very hard. I wouldn’t normally listen to headphones this loud but if you compare the clipping point of the CSP2 and my Adcom unit I would say that the adcom is subjectively 4 times louder before clipping at the same level. I guess the clipping really isn’t a problem if it is out of the normal range I use but I read this thing can do over 30volts without distortion, I thought that meant it could do 30 volts without clipping (yet I don’t know where 30 volts would be on the factory trim pots and volume knob). Perhaps something is wrong with the unit, but other than that and the 60hz hum nothing is seems wrong.

The main negative for me so far is that the CSP2 is not compatible with my Linkwitz Lab Orion speakers, very big disappointment but there might be a remedy somewhere.

So now I have to decide if I will justify the cost of the CSP2 as a headphone amp or a future second room set up pre amp. The Orion’s are so amazing I have no thoughts at all about replacing them,

Okay so back to the CSP2. Build quality looks first rate, although this is my first piece of tube gear. Super smooth volume pot. Don’t like how the power cord sticks up out of the back, I wish it went out the back like a normal unit but I can see the reason it was built this way. Anyway the most important thing is how it sounds…

Headphones are Senn HD650’s w about 50hs on them (these are 300ohm). The first thing that I noticed about the sound is that it seemed less fatiguing than a normal headphone amp. I don’t necessarily mean this in terms of peaks in frequency response but it almost sounds like the csp2 has a cross feed. Normally when I listen to headphones I get this hyper isolated two channel that I find kind of obnoxious and distracting. Overall I like the sound of nice headphones but without a cross feed I find them fatiguing. The CSP2 makes the sounds seem like they are coming from directly inside my head rather than from the headphones placed outside of my head. For a moment I thought that the CSP2 might sound so good on headphones bc it didn’t have good channel separation (thus acted like a cross feed) I checked the unit isolating each output and this is certainty not the case. I don’t have measurement tools but I would estimate that the CSP2 has the highest degree of channel separation I have ever heard from a preamp or headphone amp. As far as imaging it usually takes a good 5 minutes for my brain to become used to listening to headphones; the vast majority of my listening is on a home two channel system. With headphones I just don’t get the front to back depth and front stage image as well as I do on a good two channel in a room. I don’t think this is a criticism of the CSP2 it’s just how headphones are compared to speakers in a room.  To it’s the credit the CSP2 created the most enjoyable headphone reproduction I have heard. To me headphones seem to have a great ability to sweep from side to side yet they have a bit of trouble making a center image. The CSP2 has a far better than average center image (perhaps it is not the CSP2 but it’s the headphones and my brain but for argument sake lets leave it at that). Typically this sweeping from side to side can sound a bit forced at times since each ear is so isolated, the CSP2 was less pronounced in this way but I didn’t sound rolled off or anything like that. One of the biggest things I noticed about the unit was that I seemed to hear not only the music sweeping from side to side but also up and down. Normally I don’t hear this on headphones but I do hear it on good recordings in a normal two channel home set up. This sliding up and down isn’t like a fader or anything like that, it just sounds like the instruments are separated by more space and they are on a different vertical plane. I am curious to try the CSP2 with an input from a Dolby headphone source. I’ve played around with dolby headphone a bit and I find it sounds far more like a real room than straight two channel playback, I’ll report back on this if I give it a try.

I’m also thinking about using the mono out to run a sub near my listening position to add a little physical bass, might prove interesting.