Davide
Senior Member
Hi everyone.
I wanted to share with you my recent experience with my HiFi system, consisting of the NHT C3 with two DIY Scan-Speak subwoofers, Hypex nCore amplifiers, and Motu Ultralite Mk5 DAC (with passive attenuators).
The SINAD of my system is sufficiently low, around -100dB, and as I assembled it I noticed the cleanliness of the sound compared to the more commercial and audiophile components I had before.
There will certainly be some of the aspects and parameters of my system that are not SOTA, but my budget is this so I aimed at the best price / performance ratio.
However, I can say that the sound of my system, even if corrected with Dirac Live with various target curve, has never got me excited.
Sometimes I found it so accurate to highlight the shortcomings of some tracks, making me almost crazy trying to figure out if it was a fault of my system or what...
To which I concluded that "Hi-Fi" in the truest sense of the word is just plain boring. You can turn down the distortion and noise and time domain problems as much as you want, but what's left isn't necessarily thrilling...
Then I decided to try with my ears the euphonic effect of the vintage style distortion and then I inquired about the appropriate plugins, ending up identifying the Saturn 2 of Fabfilter and the Trash 2 of iZotope.
They are basically the two best distortion engines on the market in terms of quality. There is no story about this.
However they are particularly complex, especially Trash2.
Saturn is far more user friendly and after some time tweaking I decided to just try out the existing presets.
I open the list ... I see a certain "The Tube", and I think, ok that's the right one.
I load it and I see that it has been programmed in a crazy way, 3 modulators that follow the envelope and a slider to set the entity of the character, each of them controlling like 10 different parameters.
I play at this point ..... WTF !!!!!!!!!!
It may be light years away from fidelity but how cool! Or rather, how warm! A very warm sound that is very reminiscent of vintage systems.
The guy who created the plugin is a genius, let me tell you. No other preset sounds like this.
My system has gotten hugely more enjoyable to listen to now. It's exciting finally. And all because of the distortion ...
So if you're not happy with your system, try a distortion plugin before spending any more money. Maybe that's all you want and you don't know it, like me.
I wanted to share with you my recent experience with my HiFi system, consisting of the NHT C3 with two DIY Scan-Speak subwoofers, Hypex nCore amplifiers, and Motu Ultralite Mk5 DAC (with passive attenuators).
The SINAD of my system is sufficiently low, around -100dB, and as I assembled it I noticed the cleanliness of the sound compared to the more commercial and audiophile components I had before.
There will certainly be some of the aspects and parameters of my system that are not SOTA, but my budget is this so I aimed at the best price / performance ratio.
However, I can say that the sound of my system, even if corrected with Dirac Live with various target curve, has never got me excited.
Sometimes I found it so accurate to highlight the shortcomings of some tracks, making me almost crazy trying to figure out if it was a fault of my system or what...
To which I concluded that "Hi-Fi" in the truest sense of the word is just plain boring. You can turn down the distortion and noise and time domain problems as much as you want, but what's left isn't necessarily thrilling...
Then I decided to try with my ears the euphonic effect of the vintage style distortion and then I inquired about the appropriate plugins, ending up identifying the Saturn 2 of Fabfilter and the Trash 2 of iZotope.
They are basically the two best distortion engines on the market in terms of quality. There is no story about this.
However they are particularly complex, especially Trash2.
Saturn is far more user friendly and after some time tweaking I decided to just try out the existing presets.
I open the list ... I see a certain "The Tube", and I think, ok that's the right one.
I load it and I see that it has been programmed in a crazy way, 3 modulators that follow the envelope and a slider to set the entity of the character, each of them controlling like 10 different parameters.
I play at this point ..... WTF !!!!!!!!!!
It may be light years away from fidelity but how cool! Or rather, how warm! A very warm sound that is very reminiscent of vintage systems.
The guy who created the plugin is a genius, let me tell you. No other preset sounds like this.
My system has gotten hugely more enjoyable to listen to now. It's exciting finally. And all because of the distortion ...
So if you're not happy with your system, try a distortion plugin before spending any more money. Maybe that's all you want and you don't know it, like me.
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