Chester Acoustica Show March 2015: Kudos Titan T808 and Naim: Heavily Revised

A room to look forward to.  In the past 2 years Kudos have showcased their then new Super 20 and X3 models in this room and its often been the most enjoyable room at the show - often outperforming many of the more expensive systems, at least in musical terms, if not in absolute resolution.  Last year a turntable was in use, in addition to a Linn Klimax DS/1 for streaming.

This year was an all Naim streaming system fronted by an NDS with 555PS DR,552 pre-amp with Supercap and a 300 / 300PS DR power amp.  Files were being fed from a Naim NS01 server.  Chord cables in use, but not the Sarum tuned array in this case - Signature Reference cables for the speakers.

Kudos Titan T808

Naimness on Hutterness

Given such great sounds from Kudos in the past, we were looking forward to hearing their new top of the range efforts.  Mated with a pretty high end set of Naim black boxes would suggest that this system should produce good results.

REVISED NOTES, FOLLOWING REVISIT ON SUNDAY:

See below for the listening notes from Saturday, which were, quiet frankly, disappointing (Derek from Kudos has a different word for it, which I shalln't use on a family safe blog).  On Saturday there was talk about all the Naim electronics being straight out of the box.  Having expected a set of fully run-in electronics, Friday night had seen unpacking of brand new kit.  Now there are believers and non-believers when it comes to burn-in or run-in with electronics.  I tend to think that it is very manufacturer (and maybe even product) specific.  Cyrus claim it takes a few weeks for their amps to sound their best, and experience with my Naimist mate's system suggests that it could be even longer for Naim.  As Richard (the Naimist) is also the owner of a pair of Kudos Super 20s, it was decided, given the poor performance of the Kudos room on Saturday (see below) and the story about the Naim boxes, that we'd revisit on Sunday.

Well, a more clear example of the need for Naim electronics to settle in, I've never heard before.  On Sunday this was like a completely different system.  The flatness had gone, the dynamics are back. The music has life and it flows.  The system is kicking with out any aggressive edges (and yes, this is still Naim we're talking about), bass goes seriously deep but is gripped and controlled.  Sparkle is back with the (we find out today, Beryllium) tweeters and vocals are expressive and full of nuances.

We stay in the room for a while, go back to the Statement room, check out Arcam and the UnitQute 2 / Focal 905s, then head back to the Kudos Titan room.  We stay for a long time.  A Hugh Masakela song about diamond mining is absolutely stunning.  The emotion in the music being completely engrossing - dynamics, subtleties, detail, structure, rhythm, timing, layers upon layers and fantastic storytelling.

By far, this is the best I've ever heard anything being produced by a Naim system.  I could very much live with this system, and that's something I've never said about Naim.  I wonder if they will survive being partnered with Focal speakers all the time - they are doing their electronics a severe disservice. Congratulations to Kudos for the T808, and well worth a listen.

There must be something about isobaric loaded speakers.  Linn Akubarik and now T808s use this approach and feature high on my list of best listens.

SATURDAY NOTES:

And yet... This system just didn't grab the attention.  London Grammar was very clear, imaging excellent in width and depth whilst been stable, bass is reasonably deep but not subsonic, well controlled but not really kicking.  Previous Kudos speakers such as the Super 10 and Super 20 (I haven't heard the previous Titan T88) have been notable for the detail from their tweeters, combined with smoothness and sweetness, but here there is lots of detail, but not that sparkly and not so smooth.  The sound was all just kind of OK.  A shame.

I suggest to my Naimist buddy that it was due to the lack of KDS/1, as a wind up, which was met with the expected comtempt.  Later, in the corridor, we bump into a friend who had heard the T808s on the end of a Linn Klimax Exakt system a couple of weeks ago at the Bristol show, where they were performing very well, and much better than they are here in Chester.

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Chester Acoustica Show March 2015: Chord Cables

Here Chord were running step by step cable changes - climbing up the range of streaming network cables and interconnects.

System is:

Naim NDS streamer with 2x 555PS DR power supplies
Naim 252 or 282 pre-amp with Supercap
Naim 250 power amp
Focal Diablo speakers
Melco SSD NAS (with direct connection to the NDS - not using a network switch between the 2
Bennec mains unit
Chord cables (network and interconnects varied, speaker cables are Sarum tuned array throughout)
Quadraspire racks with the new phosphor bronze top shelf spikes

A track is played and the Diablos sound suprisingly good - I've heard these 3 or 4 times before with a variety of electronics and have not enjoyed them - to brittle, edgy etc.  Better sounding today on the first couple of tracks which are being fed music via a standard commodity ethernet cable sitting between the Melco and the NDS.

Focal Diablo with Chord Sarum Tuned Array cables

Naim streamer and pre-amp with the Melco SSD NAS drive.  Quadraspire rack using the new phosphor-bronze spikes

Next up is the removal of the commodity cable and in goes Chord's lowest cost C-Stream cable in its place.  It is worth noting (for the demo police) that the pre-amp was muted for this process, then un-muted.  The point here is that the volume control was not touched.  The C-Stream seems to give better control over the music, with more nuances as voices and instruments decay, imaging stabilises and the band sounds as though they've been practising a bit more.  There are no dissenters in the room.

Then incomes the next up the range, the Anthem and a similar improvement follows, and again with the Sarum.  I think the biggest changes comes from C-Stream to Anthem.

There's some discussion with our room host being disarmingly honest about what's going on.  Its all about rejecting interference which Chord thinks gets into the DAC (probably the clock) and messes stuff up (technical terms!).  They use shielding, but this is not actually connected to any grounding at either end of the cable.  They talk about dialectric properties and the speed and machining quality of the cable extrusion processes.  The smoother the surface of each strand of cable is said to improve flow.  But, and this was the most interesting bit for me, they really don't know what's going on.  They try stuff and decide which sounds better.  Some of it they think they understand the science, but much of it they don't.  They just listen - even to different brands of solder in the plugs.  Its a bit disarming, but there are a good few people in the room that hear the differences, just like last year.  Might have to take this stuff home for a try in the Musings system.

Similar effects with the interconnects, with the new as yet un-named top of the range cable using machined Teflon plug outers and Talon diaelectric.  Apparently Teflon causes frequency dependent phase shifts (dunno, could be true I suppose) but Talon doesn't and that's why its used in military systems that use radar arrays to track incoming missiles where phase shifts would be highly undesirable.  Not sure that £3.8k can ever be said to be good value for a pair of cables though.

But still there were tracks where the Diablos were edgy, brittle and unpleasant to listen to.

First listen to Troy Campbell's song Killing Time In Texas - really enjoyed that, will be investing further.

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Chester Show 2014 - Chord

 

Here we heard some cable comparisons, at prices in the stratosphere.  And yes, the upgrade from 3rd from best to 2nd best to the Sarum arrays was there to be heard.  But I still can't get my head around a pair of speaker cables that cost £2500.  Its difficult to justify and the changes weren't of the magnitude that a good Naim power supply can bring, or an upgrade from a mid-range DAC to a top-end DAC.

 

And now for the controversial bit.  Chord are now making Ethernet cables.  Except they're not.  They claim they make streaming system cables - by focussing on the "downstream" flow of bits of data with the "upstream" being untouched as its just about control instructions, not the music.  How you can differentiate is beyond me, but I'm not a network engineer, nor am I a cable engineer, just passing along the explanation from the man from Chord.

 

Anyway, using a Naim NDX into what I think was  SuperNait and then along to Kudos Super 10 speakers, the only thing to be changed in the comparison was the Ethernet cable.  The volume control was not touched, the track was the same track, the NAS and network components (router and switch) were not changed.  The NAS was connected to the switch by a Chord Sarum Tuned Array streaming cable, then the 3m or so length between the switch and the NDX was swapped from £ patch cable to ££ Chord C-Stream and then to ££££££ Chord Sarum Tuned Array streaming cable.

 

Here I am, probably one of the most likely people to say that this will make no difference to the music at all.  And pretty determined to be very very sceptical about any demo.  But there it was, all looking above board and also very distinctly audible (going both ways by the way - up and down the cost spectrum).  I treated reports of differences being heard with a great deal of caution and I expect you to be doing exactly that.  Most impressive of the demos was a Jake Bugg track that sounds like its recorded using some really cheap equipment in a bathroom (it might be that they intended for it to sound like that?) but it really was virtually impossible to listen to, so harsh and gritty it is.  With the Chord Sarum, it became easier to listen to for a little longer, with Jake's voice easier to hear and the instrumentation being more distinct too.  Its still an awful recording, but we managed to listen to about a minute of it rather than 10 seconds!  It was still very rough.

The cable was then swapped back and the track became horrible again. I often find going back in a change is more telling because there's always the risk that familiarity with the music means you're more likely to start hearing subtleties missed in first hearings.  Of course, if the apparent improvement in sound was purely down to familiarity then it would seem to get better again when listening one more time on putting the system back as it was. 

As for the so called 'expectation bias', well, if it exists then my expectations that there would be ababsolutely no change at all would've been borne out. But weren't. 

There were about 6 others I

in the room, all of whom thought they could hear a difference. 

I'm stumped to explain it, and the man from Chord was very apologetic for the ridiculous pricing, but there it is.  Very surprising.  I don't think the differences remotely reflect the price of the cable (£1,600 for 1m!) but it is very interesting that an effect can be heard.  It'll be great to find someone who can work out what's going on here and can reproduce the same cable effect for a tenner or so.  Will need to give the C-stream a try at home, to see if the effect can be replicated in a more independent context with different networking components, and to compare direct cabling to just the last bit of cable from mains over Ethernet.

 

I didn't think I'd ever be typing a report like this, but there it is. Bizarre.

Chester Show 2014 - Kudos, Naim, Bauer and Linn

 

Well, yet again, Kudos provided an excellent sounding system.  Whilst not in the league of the Classe / B&W system in terms of scale and detail retrieval, it was equally musical and very much a room you'd want to sit and spend some time in.

Sources were Bauer DPS turntable / Naim Aro arm / Dynvector XV1 or a Linn KDS/1 into a SuperNait amp and the not yet released Kudos X3 floorstanders.

We listened to Blues Company's Dark Day on the streamer and London Grammar's Hey Now on the turntable.  Both tracks were utterly compelling to listen to and fully enjoyable in all the usual hifi terms, but also on the basis of a musical performance worth paying attention to.  You may know that my local Naimist has the Kudos Super 20 speakers and they're a decent listen, and these X3s are clearly from the same stable and are effectively a baby Super 20 in the way they sound and perform.

Available from July 2014 they're just under £2200 a pair.  Note that the speaker cables feeding them (Chord Sarum Array) were about twice the price of the speakers themselves...