Going linear - The Luxman 507ux

The Luxman has about a week's worth of play time now, unfortunately I've also got a bit of a cold.

It's still got great dynamics, and impressive bass, but some of the air, transparency and detail, that cymbal brush sound, seems to have gone away, or quieted down.

Is this my cold? Maybe.


Best,
E

It’s all part of the break in process.  It will open up again.  

That’s not what I experienced. The 507’s sonic signature has been super even and nothing lost or really gained since day one. I, however, have had a few biological issues myself and currently fighting a sinus issue that is affecting my left ear, strangely, making for Bigtime muting and loss of treble extension. The equipment CAN’T change as much as we do unless something is seriously wrong with power grid or a component is in process of self destruction. The 507  is incredible and once your cold is over you will be all back to ‘normal’. Hang in there. 

The equipment CAN’T change as much as we do unless something is seriously wrong with power grid

That's true only if you assume everything that is audible has been measured. Or that the tests have been done to prove or disprove this.


I don't assume the first, and have never read of the latter.

As an engineer who relies on measurements, I know I hear things which change over time which I have no explanation for. I once left my gear off over a weekend, came back, turned it on, and thought, man, this sucks. 48 hours later the sound came back. No idea why. I replaced caps in a pair of Focal speakers and for about 72 hours heard weird surround effects. Tones and instruments appearing behind my head. No changes to room acoustics from when I heard that to when it ended. The latter case tells me there may have been very subtle HRTF (head related transfer function) issues coming up. If so, no standard measure of capacitors would have easily found it.


As for the Luxman, I do have a cold right now, so bad time to judge. :) 

Also, I kind of want to remind everyone, it's kind of a shame we don't see more invention of how to measure amps, caps and cables. Almost all the measurements I know of except Jitter predate the CD player. They were fine for their era, and not to be discounted, but we live in a world with computers, automated signal analyzers and cheap data capture. It is a real shame we haven't attempted to push the state of the art for discovery and measurement in audio.


Best,
E

Non audio pet peeve:  The remote.


The Luxman remote is early 1980s, and not in a good way. It's heavy, feels good in the hand, but horribly lacking in ergonomic features. Every button is the same size, kind of in random order, and no backlighting. I expect more from gear costing 1/10th of this. 

At the very least, shaped volume buttons, and a source selector. There are buttons that work for the disk spinners too, but not for the tone controls.


Of course, motorized tone controls would be expensive, and honestly, I'm a little in love with how good the tone controls are here, so I'd rather not mess with it, but in the dark with my older eyes, this is one difficult to use remote.


Best,
E