ProggRob
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I tasted something tonight I’ve never tasted. True audiophile, engaging, lifelike, moving sound like I’ve never heard in anyone’s home or at any audio show, ever. I'm talking about emotional involvement.
We are well into the 100+ hour mark on the Betsys. They are coming into their own, but I feel I need to unpack the experience for our dear Decware forum residents.
First, some details on the existing setup. The Betsys are just over 7’ apart edge-to-edge and 2.5’ from the front wall, and toed in to cross about 1.5’ in front of my ears. They are elevated about 2” in the front to fire upward. The Augie towers are set just inside and behind the speakers. I’ve settled on the tube compliment for the Decware SE84UFO2 with a cryo’d Valve Art 274B, stock 6N15P driver tubes and a Miniwatt Dario 7308 / E188CC input tube.
The speakers are leashed up with 5’ runs of Western Electric 16 ga tinned copper speaker cables, no connectors, and directly to the tabs on the back of the drivers.
Source is a Baetis Revolution II music server, High Fidelity Cable CT-1 Enhanced RCA digital cable into a Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC and balanced Triode Wire Labs Spirit Interconnects to the amp. Power cables are Triode Wire Labs 7+ into the amp, and Digital American Power Cable into the DAC. Power conditioning is a PI Audio UberBUSS. 6 GIK Bass Traps are present in the front and rear corners and in front of windows behind the speakers.
The system has been running most of the afternoon, getting warm and adding some hours to the speakers. The kids went down to bed around 7:30PM, so I came down for a listen.
The first hour and a half I settled in with a Roon playlist based off the Massive Attack ‘Mezzanine’ album. Artists included Massive Attack, Air, Saint Etienne, Bjork, Morcheeba, Zero 7, Portishead... these bands are primarily or exclusively electronic and bass heavy. All female vocals. Let me tell you, I feel like Randy is being over-cautious about selling the strengths of his speakers and their ability to handle this stuff. To my ears, with the Augies, there are ZERO shortcomings of this setup. It is not thin or light or lacking the necessary scale or weight, that I can detect. The system hits and fills the room with all of the emotion, groove and weight I imagine the music was produced with the intention of delivering. Female vocals soared and were engaging beyond my expectation for electronic artists. I could have listened to this playlist all night, but then I started thinking of checking out some old CDApS reference tracks and seeing how the Betsys were really coming along. So I queued up Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Now, here we have real instruments playing. Hopelessly Helping sounded more real than ever. I’ll get into soundstage dimensions, image placement and specificity, separation etc. in a minute. I’m talking about the meat and potatoes of the sound… timbre, tone, detail, transients, the layers of sound, the speed, the ability to hear the recording environment… I’m telling you, it was REAL. No kidding. Maybe I started low on the totem pole with Hawthornes, Tekton, etc. in terms of delivering realism and I’m just getting indoctrinated, but I’m completely blown away. Completely.
More tracks come from The Hollies, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Van Morrison, The Eagles. Totally loving it. Then Doctor My Eyes comes on by Jackson Browne. Doctor My Ears… Jesus Christ… pardon my French, but it was so emotionally engaging and perfect in that moment, there just aren’t that many moments in my audiophile career when I was completely overwhelmed. The pace and rhythm, the layers of instruments and their distinct roles so easily detected and enjoyed, the speed and attack of the music, the essence of the performance was in the room with me. I had stopped trying to evaluate everything and I connected. I knew I had to post something immediately.
I felt very proud of what I have assembled here, but then a strong sense of gratitude to Randy, Steve, Jason Stoddard, Mike Moffet, Pete Gryzbowski, Darrell Hawthorne, Dave Elledge, the guys in CDApS, those who contributed to every decision I’ve made, to everyone who designed or built or had anything to do with every piece of this emotional transportation device here in front of me, to my wife who tolerates it, everyone who dedicates their lives and spare time to bringing people experiences like this. Really, how lucky are we, to be able to spend our precious spare time in pursuit of this.
I’m sorry, but this is really what it is all about. You can spend your time trying to evaluate the frequency response chart on the Betsy drivers and picking holes in response or this and that, or judging their looks, but let me tell you, these things are the real deal. God Himself could come down and design the perfect speaker and you'd still find people that would argue with him, I mean seriously. For the money, forget about it. I could spend another $10k on improving my system and these speakers could handle all of it. Believe me, I could to it.
So backing up now on what can be improved. Well, there is quite a bit actually. And that is the scary part of it. When I think of the performance ceiling this rig has it just shocking to think about. I used to spend my days wondering how I can improve the sound, and I would genuinely worry about how I could pull it off without pissing off my wife or second mortgage. Now, I am genuinely excited about improving it. Why? Because it is so stupid good and enjoyable the way it is. And I’ve got nothing but time.
So as for what’s in the pipeline, besides spending hundreds of more hours of listening, are several fold. First, I need to get my Furutech GTX-D Rhodium outlet in the wall. There is a detectable grain in the sound which I know will dissipate with this. When I installed that thing back in Illinois, it replaced a really, really good outlet in the CRUZE First Audio Maestro outlet, and I thought the improvement was so good that I gushed about it over on Audio Circle in an almost embarrassing fashion. I mean, c’mon, an outlet. But here I’m coming from an el cheaperino outlet, and to be honest I can’t wait to hear the reduction in grain, smoother highs, even more detail (really??), and for the huge step-change in bass articulation. Already, I get goosebumps.
Then I have a whole slew of plans for room treatment. I sit along the back wall, and because the room is fairly shallow (11’ 4”) the speakers aren’t pulled out as far as I’d like, so I desperately need some diffusion behind and in front of me. I’ve sat in the room with Palomino and Lonely Raven too many times to know that I can’t ignore this. I’ve got lots of room side-to-side so side walls aren’t much of an issue (except that window…) I can’t build my own treatments so I’ll probably order some kit from PI Audio and GIK over the next year. The treatments should improve the image height (this is kind of an issue) as well as the separation and imagine placement/centering, which can stand to improve by several notches. Sometime the lines between instruments in complex passages can get blurry, midrange details are obscured, the outlet and treatments can help here, but also installing a dedicated circuit and earth ground and improved speaker resonance control. I plan to get some maple blocks underneath these at some point with some massive brass spikes, the whole nine yards. To be honest, I’ll probably spend more on spikes and platforms than the speakers cost in the first place. Yes, they are worth it. Maybe I'll start calling them the Besties instead of Betsys.
I'll get some pictures up in the next couple weeks. I'm having the room painted a nice hemlock green next week so I'll get moving when things be looking fly up in this piece.
There’s the update for the week. I want to emphasize that I don't take this level of praise lightly. My personality emphasizes more restraint than not. Praise is far too prevalent on the internet... but these speakers have changed my paradigm of what good sound is. Also, this is a true system effort; nothing acts in isolation, but still. Hopefully, I continue to gush more in the future despite that, ultimately, what's "new and exciting" can become "normal", as so many things do. Thanks to Randy and Steve for your products. Bravo!
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Betsys in Tigerwood (Read 46740 times)
