In response to will's phrase: "impressions from the cave man quite impressive. Interesting."
From BicycleJoe Reply #29
"From him I understood it is truly UNBELIEVABLE.
Impression were Impressive ? got it. I understand completely?
Personally my impressions of the caveman is he doesn't have much to add except meaningless adjectives. Where his first test he ran it through Bluetooth, his second time played an MP3.
.....
Remember the Zen DESIGN philosophy Steve likes to have parts left over when he does a design, NOT add TWO more chassis AND a longer signal path to his design."
I am with you, these recordings for system input, and recordings of the room sound, are a distraction. And for me the same with his style of presentation. But he has been one of the folks Thomas & Stereo uses to test gear Thomas is reviewing, Thomas apparently trusting his listening skills, experience and system/room. I get the impression Thomas is pretty real, and his using this guy's setup and discernment tends to point to some credibility for me. Also, the few I have seen, the hifi cave guy with Thomas, or Thomas conveying hifi cave guy's impressions to broaden our view beyond Thomas', his comments tended to make more sense in that context. So though I don't have much experience with this guy, I do imagine he is describing real things.
I get it though. This video assumes we know and trust his system/room, listening skills, and experience, without a lot of evidence from the video to support that trust.
Relative to your thoughts on Steve's purest design approach, as he is working on a new design, I completely get that simpler can be better.... that is, if all the parts, and wires, and design relatively purely convey the recording in its completeness, which Steve obviously strives for and gets. I also get from Steve that when "it" is not enough, it is not enough, and he reworks the design until is sounds right. And sometimes this can take more. Like his addition of some ZRock tech into the Sarah, or offering bypass mods (that are now sometimes built in to new designs). In these cases, more is more. Also he has his string of pre stages, many of which he seems to use himself much of the time, so again, more of the right things can be more for musical expression in a good system and room. Just saying the broader context is important to me in these deliberations.
Similarly, having played a lot with mods and cable making, I can't avoid how much part sounds effect design sounds. It is just really obvious once the right better part/wire replaces a little lesser quality ones. A lot of subtle masks and veils solved together can really add up if parts allow complete sound on their own, and if they all go together to compliment one another. Then I can get how as little as possible can be "better," but also, upgrading a bunch of parts done well can leave room for more extra good parts or cables while still having a purer signal presentation than stock.
I think simpler synergy can be even more important if parts are good but not quite as complete for purity of musical presentation... each part being a little less transparent and fast, adds up too. Clearly in this case, if we upgrade a bunch of those parts with musical discernment, that original design will be more pure, and allow more flexibility, while retaining musical transparency and speed... For example, even with Steve's really well conceived designs that use quite musical and transparent parts combinations, replacing some with a more transparent set of RCAs, well designed UPOCC internal signal cables, and a more complete sounding attenuator, quite notably increases transparency and musicality of the amp altogether... from the RCAs to tubes, letting more complete and complex information from the recording through. In this case, that could leave room for more parts, especially if they are really good wires or parts, and still be ahead of my stock amp in purity if done well.
I feel like I can say these things because I have done hundreds of experiments at this point with all the usual stuff we get into, and a steady stream of progressive modifications, including loads on my Decware. Also I have done many power, IC, speaker, digital, and power cable iterations. And I learn from what I have heard from seemingly countless comparisons of parts and wires while doing these pretty methodical modifications and explorations.
I got inspired by VyoKyong's ZMA modifications a long time ago, so started half-heartedly collecting parts on sale, and finally getting my nerve up to go inside the gear, started doing some experiments on my Torii MKIV in the fall of 2016. Power supply bypassing was a big 1st interest, in part because I had a lot of low value caps around I had tested in my speakers as bypasses on the tweeter caps. I loved the clarifying effects from the ones that worked best, more complexity and speed while being able to tune subtle beauty in tonally. So I wanted to see if the power supply would benefit similarly, and it did, being able to hear pretty close to the same cap characteristics in the power supply as on the tweeters or in the signal path.
Below is one of the first pics I took of the Torii IV modifications, not thinking to document earlier experiments until several months after getting going. Though there are some upgraded parts in this pic, it looks about like stock, but you have to imagine it without the Jupiter Copper coupling caps that replaced the Jupiter HTs, the HTs becoming power supply bypasses. Also, the bigger Mundorf Supremes (black) having replaced pretty good sounding, but not as good sounding 3.3 uF caps; and all the little bypass caps on top of the Mundorfs and the stock grey and black IC electrolytic caps. Anyway, I hope the stock "bones" can be imagined in this pic. And though I am not using most of these particular caps now, this was a remarkable upgrade at this point for this amp....
From this and later experiences, I learned that the power is really the heart of these amps, and the better the power is at making recordings resolved, transparent, and musically dynamic/immediate, the better the amp.
Based on all this, these Super Rectifiers, by appearances, also being a lot about power supply purification and enhancement, if done really well, I suspect they could potentially be pretty amazing "additions" to nice gear, as the cave guy said. To me, conceptually, some really good power supply and signal path work in these components could well enhance our power supply qualities, while introducing cool tubes to our overall sound for tuning to personal tastes...conceptually anyway.
To illustrate further how more can be more in the right context, the 2nd image below is a current version of the MKIV, now about six years into pretty steady, relatively methodical explorations. By now lots and lots of parts are upgraded, a number of values changed, and a load of bypasses are used about everywhere I could find that is relevant. To me, without doubt, in this case, way more is way better, the amp having many more parts than stock. A rough count gave me about 22 more parts on each channel, mostly small bypass caps. A fun trip so far, and clearly not about production the way I did it one or two parts at a time, but it sounds amazing. Needs some tuning from the last cap changes that I can hear now that they are all burned in, but close.
Just some views on purity of the musical presentation that suggest these Super Rectifiers could
potentially be beautiful "additions" with the right gear, power, and cables.
Sorry, I can't figure out how to make these pics fit right. Any tips?