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LA Audio Show 2017: Day 3

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amirm

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I next went to Synergistic research. This is one of my favorite suites due to excellent systems they put together and great music such as:

Over The Rainbow / What A Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. https://shz.am/t237724


The Magico S7 speakers here sounded superb.
 
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Magico S7 speakers. Synergistic.

Nobody's Perfect by Madonna. https://shz.am/t217904

Superb.

Funny thing happened here. I was taking notes on the music played and so was not paying attention to what the presenter was saying about what he had changed. That caused me to hear no difference at all between before/after!
 
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Magico S7, Synergistic.

Billie Jean by The Civil Wars. https://shz.am/t78580679


One of my favorite artists (now disbanded) and one of their best songs. Alas the CD sounds awful. And this system did not manage to make it any better than mine.
 
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How do you like their sound overall?

As for amp, my choice would be some kind of high power class D.

Since I set them up in new room they sound quite good. Obviously they don't go very deep. With ceramic drivers partnered with an AMT tweeter I'd describe them as "fast sounding" speakers.

Bought them from dartTZeel Switzerland a few years ago, ideally they should be partnered with a dartTZeel amplifier. Not within my audio budget!

Drove them initially with a pair of nCore monoblocks I built, sterile & lifeless sound. Sold nCore's, installed a ShengYa A17CS integrated hybrid amp (150W, 22Kg), much better SQ. My theory is that nCore's can't deliver enough current to speakers.

In new room the ShengYa is too big for the rack, using an old Onkyo A5-VL class D amp. Beats the nCores but haven't got the power to play loud.

PS: Amir, thanks for excellent reporting as always, a joy to read! DS
 
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Magnepan

1. Kyrie (Vidala-Babuala) by José Carreras & Domingo Cura & Jorge Padin & Coral Salvé De Laredo & Sociedad Coral De Bilbao.. https://shz.am/t5879838

Biased to the center channel again but nice otherwise.
 
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McIntosh:

Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo by Bela Fleck And The Flecktones. https://shz.am/t10242659

This tracks brings back memories of when I was at Microsoft. Warner Music sent me this track and a few others to encode in WMA audio codec in order to evaluate its fidelity against competing codecs (circa 1999). We did well. :)

Anyway, it sounded OK on the Mac system.
 

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Biased to the center channel again but nice otherwise.

Was the center too loud? Not time-aligned?

Or what?

Having a center (three channel) is supposed to make everything more better isn't it?

At least, that's what I've been told...
 
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Was the center too loud? Not time-aligned?
Well for one thing they "reviewer seat" that they were kind enough to have me sit in was right in front of it so unless they compensated for that, the center channel would be louder.

But that was not the perception I got. It seemed the processor that was creating the center channel was quite aggressive in steering a lot of the stereo mix into that channel.
 

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Hi Amirn,

I have just found your site and registered. Thanks so much for all the hard work and the reviews. I love what I see and will be going through the music selections that you have so kindly taken the time to list. This is by far the best show report I have seen and it is not biased !!!!!!!!! you are very honest and I can not say that about many out there.

Thanks again
Stuart in South Africa
 
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