Hello from Down Under, fellow audiophiles and freaks

Hi nightflier.

Thanks for the feeback on the Plinius. Well suffice to say the supplier who sold me the
Xindak Power amp no longer stock Plinius, so it is find of out of the picture now.

I have auditioned NAIM, and other brands in the shops I've been to here in WA. However
as all of you would know different shops have different listening environments, and different
combination of components. So what you'd experience at home could be anything
between 5% to 90% as true to your listening experience in the shop. Sadly to a certain
extent it is a hit and miss thing.

E-Stat, thankyou for the link, you absolutely rock. I'm seriously going to save that
link as my favourite - favourite. Well I'm glad Xindak made the list, but most of all, it
made my list, and within the next week or two I will be experiencing it in my own
home.

I will start a post in the HT section as per your suggestion.

Yeah the Xindak was right into my budget, and solved the inability to supply enough
juice to my Dynaudio Contour 1.8 Mark IIs.

Now, I will meet my dialemma IF I get the Cambridge Audio 840c because it has 2
inputs, is a DAC and upscales CDs/inputs to 24/384. Now I'm 99.9% know it performs
very well. No doubt about that. However I see someone sold theirs like 6 months later
because they found it rather fatiguing, and other people on here have said the same
thing.

I really don't want a fatiguing player. Then again I don't necessarily need to get a player
which will play SACD, as I have a PS3, and there's no way I'd get rid of that since
it plays all of my Blu Ray collection.

What about Perreaux? They are also from down-under.

Hello.

Perreaux sounds most stylish and worth a check, thanks nightflier.

Need to find out if there's any WA (Western Australian) shops that sell them.

I haven't visited the hifi shop circuit recently, time for another round.

I know there's more risk involved, but couldn't you build-up a relationship with one or two hi-fi shops in another major city and mail-order items so that you can audition them in your home? If you're a good customer, I'm sure they won't mind helping you find the equipment you want.

Hi nightflier.

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes I have been in touch with some reputable hifi stores
over the last year. Their recommendations are intelligable, and worth consideration.

You simply cannot beat auditioning the component yourself, than to simply take
somebody's word for it. I'm not saying nobody's word is word a damn, but... at least if
you don't like what you hear when you're auditioning something, you know it's because
you heard it.

:22:

I came home to two medium sized boxes, however the monoblocks were much heavier
than they look. That was a good sign :biggrin5:

The only way you could tell which was left from right is the colour of the small ring
around the unbalanced in, which the connector itself is gold :aureola:

However since I'm plugging 250 W DynAudio Contours (4OHMS) into a 400 W monoblock
amp, I cannot really put the volume to max, or anywhere close to that. No need to really.
The hardest part was rewiring everything in preperation to installing the Xindaks, I do
have many more cables than I can count, it was a huge time-consuming excercise.

I realised I have some more cables I'll need to buy because I simply do not have the
necessary length due to placement of the components. I'm forced to move my old
Yamaha receiver (now it is my pre amp), above my right monoblock. The left monoblock
is the opposite side of my cabinet, which has a slightly longer (and inferior quality) cable
connecting to my pre amp, than my right one. 1 m cannot cut it, so I must get 2 m
lengths, 2x of them, as I intend to keep them equal lengths, it is best to do that.

I will look around obviously however maybe I'm simply insane, to not try other brands
apart from Monster. To be honest I've been extremelly impressed with Monster cable,
particularly with the new HDMI and Optical cables.

Anyway, back to the Xindaks, finally connected it all up, and started listening to CDs
through my PS3 on my couch. Initially tested the higher volume settings, the amp
simply was pushing my speakers beyond their capability, perhaps for the first time
since they were ever built (as my Yamaha receiver could not push them). I knew I would
have to keep the volume beneath half.

I've tried Dire Straits, Sarah Brightman, some new age, ambient and chill out music so
far, and it took more than 1 hour before I realised significant improvement. The bass was
definately taken care of, must have at least twice as much now as I did before. I don't
like too much, so I turned the bass to minimum. I'm not normal, I simply do not like much
bass. What really blew my socks off was I was in another room and could hear the CD
so clearly, crisp, as if the walls in my house and doors did not exist. Never experienced
this clarity before.

I decided to take a short snooze, so I reduced my PS3 to the minimum volume setting,
and also turned down the volume on my receiver so low, but enough to still listen.
It was as if somebody removed coconuts away from my ears, could hear additional
instruments, parts of songs I would not of heard before today. Is it wrong that the lower
the volume is (lights off), the clarity, the accuracy of the music, the authenticity of
the source... is much better than having it quite loud ?

I don't know how many more hours I need to play before (IF it does happen), I notice
any more difference. I would be stoked if it will sound even better later, I'll let you know.
I can safely say, after 7 hours of listening, the fatigue factor simply does not exist.
I don't want to turn it off, I don't want to stop listening to music. It's unlikely the music
will stop playing until I go out tomorrow afternoon. (it is 3:02am now).

This is how a system should sound like... such a way where you can simply replay
a track, 20, 40, 60+ times in a row without experiencing any playback fatigue.