On April 1, we had the pleasure of visiting Jason Victor Serinus, the contributing editor and show/equipment reviewer for Stereophile magazine. As expected, interest was high and some twenty people signed up to be there.
Jason’s nice home is near Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean north of where we live. It was a 140-mile roundtrip for me and was worth every minute of driving up there.
Jason has a very warm personality and was super inviting despite such a large group descending on his home. Better yet, he has three cute dogs that provided no end of companionship as we took turns in groups of ten to visit. I wish I remembered their names but old age has gotten to me and I do not. Here is a picture of the cuties though:
I know, I know, you didn’t come here to read about dogs and people. You wanted to know about the visit and audio experience. Here is a shot of Jason’s living room system which we did not listen to:
The listening room is a converted garage with custom acoustic treatment:
Nice to see the carpet on the floor. Side reflections are absorbed and a sliding door to the outside was left open on purpose. Opening like that act as perfect absorbers at all frequencies which likely helped remove some of the bass modes (more below). Speakers were wide apart as you see, typical of many Wilson installations I see, but unlike many did not leave me with the impression of them being too far apart. It created a wide presentation which was very appealing despite the rather modest dimensions of the listening room.
There were a lot of LPs in the room but the system was all digital which was just dandy with me.
Here is a picture with Jason in it. My apologies to him in advance for my wide angle lens stretching him width-wise.
We each rotated on seat after every music playback (sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the listening location). I was impressed by Jason saying the back row by the wall was boomy because indeed it was! This tells me that he has good ability to detect such frequency response issues and isolate them.
Just a few feet closer to the speakers though – where the main listening couch was – made a big difference both from removal of boominess and better overall imaging and experience. So when listening in the back row, I leaned forward which made a big difference but still not as good as the front row. So again, good optimization here in finding the best sweet spot.
Jason had a set of Audionet Max monoblock amplifiers for review. The last group listened to his Pass Labs XA200.8 first, and then the Audionet. We listened to Audionet first and then Pass Labs. More on this later.
The Wilson Alexia produced soundwaves in the room with the source often being SACDs on dCS Paganini transport.
The listening session started with classically well recorded Yello album, Toy with the track “Electrified II.”
https://www.shazam.com/track/313570697/electrified-ii#referrer=shz.am
This track had a very wide soundstage, taking good advantage of the larger distance between speakers. Resolution was excellent and overall, a very enjoyable track. Being a bit critical, the female vocal were a tad lispy. Listening to the same track on my system, the same trait is there so it is either in the recording or I am being overly sensitive to it. It is less noticeable on my system due to warmer sound and more live presentation. On the other hand my speakers are closer together so I do not get the expansive soundstage that Jason’s system has.
This is a reference quality album by the way so if you are at all into Yello music, you need to get it. I am streaming from Tidal.
The above was the only track I heard while in center seat. The rest were in less optimal listening positions.
We then listened to a wonderful classical album and track from our local Seattle Symphony Orchestra:
Gerard Schwarz, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring; Dumbarton Oaks
http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/stravinsky-the-rite-of-spring-dumbarton-oaks-mr0003792562
The track we listened to was Ritual Action of Ancestors download (24-bit/96 Khz). It starts out quiet but then gets quite dynamic. I really enjoyed this. The soft sounds are quite soft requiring near reference volume levels. And then the dynamics come and nearly bring the house down.
One of the members asked for Patricia Barber and Jason played her latest MoFi SACD Smash and the opening track, Code Cool:
Gosh, she has aged in that picture....
I had a pretty lousy seat by this time, sitting far right. Still the instrumental parts of this track are excellent. Patricia’s voice unfortunately sounded lispy to me to and the same trait exists yet again in my system (to smaller extent for the reasons mentioned previously).
Another member request was the track Opium by Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (Vol. 4) played from the CD. This was a fun track:
I was listening by the back wall by this time and at first this sounded rather flat to me. Leaning forward helped a lot restoring some of the resolution and fun dynamics.
At this time, we set out to do AB tests of the Pass Labs and Audionet amplifiers. We went back to some of the same tracks we had listened to (Patricia Barber and Seattle Symphony). Jason said that we were listening to the reverse order of the first group as I mentioned. And that this likely would result in different outcome than the other group. Informal voting was gathered with me the only dummy that could not ascertain differences that were obvious to others.
We then merged back with the other group and Jason asked them to vote on which amplifier they liked. They unanimously voted for the Audionet. Then he asked for comments from the second group and the majority voted for Pass Labs being better! Jason said this is what can happen when you only do A/B without returning to A, and, at the least, do A/B/A if not A/B/A/B/ etc…
Me? There is a simpler explanation. That is, when asked to evaluate a change, everyone pays more attention and all of a sudden new detail is heard that was not heard before. For the first group, the second iteration was the Audionet so that was thought to have better “sound.” For our group Pass Labs was the second amp we were asked to evaluate so more fidelity was heard in that outcome. As far as I am concerned, there was no audible difference but rather the psychology of how we listen. There certainly is no other logical explanation of two sets of audiophiles listening to the same system, walking away with opposite results. If there were audible differences between amps, it was lost in the slow switchover time (measured in minutes).
Jason said that his review of the Audionet Max monoblocks, which in his opinion sounds significantly different than the Pass Labs XA 200.8 monoblocks, will appear in the June issue of Stereophile.
So that is it. A wonderful afternoon was spent, new music explored, and enjoyable conversations was had. And let’s not forget the great hospitality by Jason. I am sincerely thankful to him and for the Pacific Northwest Audiophile Society for organizing this (and other great) events.
Jason’s nice home is near Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean north of where we live. It was a 140-mile roundtrip for me and was worth every minute of driving up there.
Jason has a very warm personality and was super inviting despite such a large group descending on his home. Better yet, he has three cute dogs that provided no end of companionship as we took turns in groups of ten to visit. I wish I remembered their names but old age has gotten to me and I do not. Here is a picture of the cuties though:
I know, I know, you didn’t come here to read about dogs and people. You wanted to know about the visit and audio experience. Here is a shot of Jason’s living room system which we did not listen to:
The listening room is a converted garage with custom acoustic treatment:
Nice to see the carpet on the floor. Side reflections are absorbed and a sliding door to the outside was left open on purpose. Opening like that act as perfect absorbers at all frequencies which likely helped remove some of the bass modes (more below). Speakers were wide apart as you see, typical of many Wilson installations I see, but unlike many did not leave me with the impression of them being too far apart. It created a wide presentation which was very appealing despite the rather modest dimensions of the listening room.
There were a lot of LPs in the room but the system was all digital which was just dandy with me.
Here is a picture with Jason in it. My apologies to him in advance for my wide angle lens stretching him width-wise.
We each rotated on seat after every music playback (sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the listening location). I was impressed by Jason saying the back row by the wall was boomy because indeed it was! This tells me that he has good ability to detect such frequency response issues and isolate them.
Just a few feet closer to the speakers though – where the main listening couch was – made a big difference both from removal of boominess and better overall imaging and experience. So when listening in the back row, I leaned forward which made a big difference but still not as good as the front row. So again, good optimization here in finding the best sweet spot.
Jason had a set of Audionet Max monoblock amplifiers for review. The last group listened to his Pass Labs XA200.8 first, and then the Audionet. We listened to Audionet first and then Pass Labs. More on this later.
The Wilson Alexia produced soundwaves in the room with the source often being SACDs on dCS Paganini transport.
The listening session started with classically well recorded Yello album, Toy with the track “Electrified II.”
https://www.shazam.com/track/313570697/electrified-ii#referrer=shz.am
This track had a very wide soundstage, taking good advantage of the larger distance between speakers. Resolution was excellent and overall, a very enjoyable track. Being a bit critical, the female vocal were a tad lispy. Listening to the same track on my system, the same trait is there so it is either in the recording or I am being overly sensitive to it.
It is less noticeable on my system due to warmer sound and more live presentation. On the other hand my speakers are closer together so I do not get the expansive soundstage that Jason’s system has.This is a reference quality album by the way so if you are at all into Yello music, you need to get it. I am streaming from Tidal.
The above was the only track I heard while in center seat. The rest were in less optimal listening positions.
We then listened to a wonderful classical album and track from our local Seattle Symphony Orchestra:
Gerard Schwarz, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring; Dumbarton Oaks
http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/stravinsky-the-rite-of-spring-dumbarton-oaks-mr0003792562
The track we listened to was Ritual Action of Ancestors download (24-bit/96 Khz). It starts out quiet but then gets quite dynamic. I really enjoyed this. The soft sounds are quite soft requiring near reference volume levels. And then the dynamics come and nearly bring the house down.
One of the members asked for Patricia Barber and Jason played her latest MoFi SACD Smash and the opening track, Code Cool:
Gosh, she has aged in that picture....
I had a pretty lousy seat by this time, sitting far right. Still the instrumental parts of this track are excellent. Patricia’s voice unfortunately sounded lispy to me to and the same trait exists yet again in my system (to smaller extent for the reasons mentioned previously).
Another member request was the track Opium by Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (Vol. 4) played from the CD. This was a fun track:
I was listening by the back wall by this time and at first this sounded rather flat to me. Leaning forward helped a lot restoring some of the resolution and fun dynamics.
At this time, we set out to do AB tests of the Pass Labs and Audionet amplifiers. We went back to some of the same tracks we had listened to (Patricia Barber and Seattle Symphony). Jason said that we were listening to the reverse order of the first group as I mentioned. And that this likely would result in different outcome than the other group. Informal voting was gathered with me the only dummy that could not ascertain differences that were obvious to others
.We then merged back with the other group and Jason asked them to vote on which amplifier they liked. They unanimously voted for the Audionet. Then he asked for comments from the second group and the majority voted for Pass Labs being better! Jason said this is what can happen when you only do A/B without returning to A, and, at the least, do A/B/A if not A/B/A/B/ etc…
Me? There is a simpler explanation. That is, when asked to evaluate a change, everyone pays more attention and all of a sudden new detail is heard that was not heard before. For the first group, the second iteration was the Audionet so that was thought to have better “sound.” For our group Pass Labs was the second amp we were asked to evaluate so more fidelity was heard in that outcome. As far as I am concerned, there was no audible difference but rather the psychology of how we listen. There certainly is no other logical explanation of two sets of audiophiles listening to the same system, walking away with opposite results. If there were audible differences between amps, it was lost in the slow switchover time (measured in minutes).
Jason said that his review of the Audionet Max monoblocks, which in his opinion sounds significantly different than the Pass Labs XA 200.8 monoblocks, will appear in the June issue of Stereophile.
So that is it. A wonderful afternoon was spent, new music explored, and enjoyable conversations was had. And let’s not forget the great hospitality by Jason. I am sincerely thankful to him and for the Pacific Northwest Audiophile Society for organizing this (and other great) events.
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