Chris, I liked the NCore for precision, accuracy, merciless grip at all freqs. It doesn't have as violent transients as Spectron or Levinson 53, but still very impressive overall from the audiophile's "absolute sound" perspective. It seemed more musical than those other 2 technical marvels, while also simpler, smaller, lighter cheaper. It did not suffer Rick's older version DEQX pre/processor well, exaggerating the edginess of that pre. Sol thinks it sounded like OP2134 opamps characteristic buzz, he is pretty accurate guessing chips and transistor part numbers by ear. With my Buffalo DAC there was no edge with NCore, but a few people still felt a trace of class D sizzle form NCore, even with the Buffalo. Eric's DAC amp (original stereo Cherry) reminded me of a clean PP tube amp with massive balls. The adjective most frequently heard among the guys was fat or phat depending on who said it. Fat from those who prefer accuracy and did not like the richening the Cherry added. I thought it was phat because it added flesh to the tone, rounded the edges a little compared to NCore, and seemed to tip bass response up a couple dB. It had a darker, richer sound that I liked better than NCore on the Ewave and especially on the DTQWT, while the Ncore sounded better to me on the Polks (we didn't play that combo at the meet.) It is weird that the NCore sounded better to me on the Polks than the Cherry, because the general agreement was that the Polks sounded top heavy on all of the other amps. But the NCore made the bass sound so great on the Polks maybe that allowed me to focus less on the highs.
We only listened to Richard's NAD M2, only on the DTQWT, and only after most people had split, and the match was not great. The Cherry blew away the NCore and M2 on the easy load, high efficiency DTQWT speakers, perfect match. I'm not sure we analyzed that combo, but I was playing it at the very beginning when people were first arriving, and even my wife commented how great it sounded. She said what speakers are these? The ones I built last summer... Hmmm. Uh oh! Maybe I just needed a different amp instead of 2 more DIY speakers.
But Sol's newest version i30, with <1/10 power than Cherry, was pretty much in the same class as Cherry on those speakers. It was a very nice match. Unfortunately we discovered that too late with only me Sol and Giyan still around to hear it. Magic hour came too late! We'll remember it for next time.
There was so much that we didn't get to do, so it will be fun to reassemble these amps again in the near future for a rematch, with better (passive xo) speakers, more flexible schedules and less speaker swapping. Fortunately these amps all live in NC and everyone wants to do it again sometime. Shane and I are about to dive into SEOS builds this summer hopefully one of those will prove a worthy victim of class D abuse. Shane has a true monster speaker planned.
Gene was tired toward the end, but some rare premium Lee Morgan (Take Twelve album) stoked his coals for a few minutes, and Bill hung in there to the bitter end. We all enjoyed their visit, and hope their threats to come again come true.
I promised some CD copies but the CD-R blanks were not where they are supposed to be, so I will mail those out.
Gene, I didn't even know there was Hampton Inn in Holly Springs, glad you found it on your own. Pics coming...
