I took advantage of a week end and drove to Vu Jade' Audio, a small operation, based in New Jersey that has been working on sonic perfection for many years in the process.
I met Pete, his wonderful wife Kathy, son Zach, business partner, designer/engineer Karl and two other hard-core audiophile friends Bob and Frank.
When I entered, I was rewarded with DIY and modified equipment everywhere in the room, I was slightly overwhelmed to say the least, but what happened next was the most interesting event I experienced.
Mind you, there was no room treatment, fancy cables, special racks or anything, just the equipment and basics to hook things together for sound.
At first, I thought to myself, you have to be kidding, sound in a room like this??
That's until the first few notes hit the older Vandersteen 5 speakers from a small, slightly modified Counterpoint amp, their Vu Jade' 6SN7 line stage preamp, an old Audiomeca CD player into their Vu Jade' DHT Dac.
After that first few minutes, I stared into the front wall, realizing this is like being in live concert hall, Bob, Frank and I stared at each other in silence, not knowing what to say, we just sat there.
Then, Pete said, "okay, let's change this Dacs power supply caps and lower the resistor voltage to the tubes and see what happens."
This is where I became the equipment swapper/hauler! Shut down, unplug, move this and that to the back room for Karl to work on, haul back into the listening room, place on shelf, plug and hit play, we did this for over 5 hours!
We evaluated each and every change, carefully listened for better or worse, or no change at all, it was laborious, but a very fun, interesting learning experience.
This was "only" a two-day regiment for myself, Pete and Karl have been doing this for years!
These two are really onto some very serious stuff here, the resulting sound was more real than I ever experienced.
Anyone interested in further info can contact them here:
https://www.vujadeaudio.com/
