A Visit to Mike Lavigne's Home and Sound Galleries Media Server

[MoreWatts]

Just needed a turntable upgrade:

esoteric grandioso t1 turntable arrives, g1x master clock coming

The optional "master clock" mentioned is for the turntable, not for a DAC. The tt, no arm, starts at $80K.

~145 pounds (65 kg) including seperate power supply, not including master clock. I wonder what the total weight of his system is?

 

[HairyEars]

I think the biggest problem with his system is lack of equalization. Room modes severely distort the response and are seating position dependent. Of course he is anti-measurements and anti-digital processing so he is not going to go there.

Lack of EQ surely leaves a lot to be desired. But I believe his fundamental problem is inadequate room treatment. From my experience and reading, the extensive use of diffusers, that alcoved ceiling and absence of bass traps just don't cut it.

I won't be surprised, that in his case, form trumped function.

 

[egellings]

I managed to get a bonus visit on at the Pacific Northwest Society's Bob Carver meeting to hear a new server from Sound Galleries (http://soundgalleries.com/) at Mike Lavigne's home. I had been to Mike's home a few years ago but not recently so this was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Sound Galleries Media Server is a purpose built Windows 10 PC with every software and hardware tweak you can think of. It runs HQPlayer internally and to do that it has the latest Intel i7-7700K CPUs (as of this writing). They overclock it to 4.6 Ghz which pushes it beyond the nominal 91 watt maximum dissipation rating of the CPU. Custom passive cooling is used through a machined solid copper heatsink (painted black).

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HQPlayer resamples everything to high-rate DSD. This drove an Aqua Formula DAC (http://www.aquahifi.com/formula.html).
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Software stack is Roon and the server runs "headless." Boot time was fast and of course the machine was silent. Boot drive is SSD with custom power supply for it. There is also a custom linear (!) power supply for the computer.

Custom CPU clock with low jitter is also used.

The case work is beautiful and I am sure quite expensive.

Lots of software tweaks in place including a tool that performs static partitioning of Roon by giving it two dedicated cores and the rest of the cores to HQPlayer. Smart as that allows the CPU cache to stay "warm" in running the same application as opposed to constantly switching between Roon and HQPlayer. The tool shows the thread counts for each and I was surprised to see so many (60+?) threads for Roon.

The base motherboard is ASUS. DD4 memory is used by they have tested many brands to arrive at the ones they picked. And some aluminum provides additional shielding for better sound.

The company owner is Edward Hsu (EuroDriver on forums) whom I found super friendly, delightful to talk to, and very interested in learning and experimenting.

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He lives in Monaco but development is done through distributed team with the core in Holland (Netherlands).

Retail price is $16,000. Settle down! Yes it is expensive but for such a low-volume machine with so much customization, I think the price is fine. It would take a ton of effort to duplicate the same machine.

Hopefully, it had better not need to be repaired.

 

[board]

I think the biggest problem with his system is lack of equalization. Room modes severely distort the response and are seating position dependent. Of course he is anti-measurements and anti-digital processing so he is not going to go there.

I'm repeating myself from a few messages ago now in the hopes that you would see it

If I understood you correctly, your 4 out of 10 rating for the sound of Mike Lavigne's system was on the second row. What would you rate the sound like from 1 to 10 in the sweet spot (if your remember)?
On another topic, does anyone know if, and where, I can find (professional) measurements of Mike Lavigne's speakers?

 

[amirm]

If I understood you correctly, your 4 out of 10 rating for the sound of Mike Lavigne's system was on the second row. What would you rate the sound like from 1 to 10 in the sweet spot (if your remember)?

I don't remember so just have to leave you with what I originally wrote:

We were taking turns to sit in the rolling center chair. I got my chance after 15 minutes or so and boy did that transform the experience. There was a precise depth to the soundstage with pretty high isolation of instruments. Highs came back to life and bass become very supportive. I did not want to hog the chair too long and gave it up to others.

 

[board]

I don't remember so just have to leave you with what I originally wrote:

Okay, thanks. So if you have to make a rough estimate in hindsight the sound in the sweet spot was perhaps 8/10 or so?

 

[amirm]

Probably.

 

[board]

Probably.

Okay, great. That changes quite a lot (from 4/10) .
I also get the impression about Mike Lavigne's setup, as you mention, that it's very listening position dependent, as the speakers are toed in quite a lot and placed quite close to each other. The room is perhaps a bit too narrow for such big speakers.
It striks me as a bit odd that the room is done by an acoustician if it doesn't sound all that great,
Anyway, I'm not really saying anything that you haven't already said .

Last repetition from my previous message:
Are you (or anyone) else able to point me to measurements of Mike Lavigne's speakers?