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My exp. with Focal Sopra No.2 , Harbeth 40.2, Passlabs XA30.5 and Hypex NC400

Hello. Long time reader here.

I want to share my listening experiences since i bought my Sopra No.2’s last year. I think it may shed some light on people who suffered from brightness on their system. Please excuse my English as it is not my native language.

My other components are Primaluna Dialogue Premium Preamp and Gustard x20pro Dac with Singxer SU-1 via HQ-Player and Roon. Interconnects are DH Labs Silversonic and speaker cable is Kimber 8TC. My room is 45m2 and not treated. I would say my room has some echo and can sound harsh on higher volume levels. (I will deal with this later hopefully.)

I will try to keep it short below:

Sopra No.2’s with NC400’s:
Pros: Extreme clarity with huge sound stage , speed&timing , dynamism , attack , total control on bass , good instrument separation. NC400 allows all this without breaking a sweat.
Cons: Fatiguing after some time , especially with higher volume. Bright and forward on almost half of the music i listen to and neutral on the other half but never warm. (I listen to almost every kind of music though it’s mostly Jazz both with vocals and instrumental only.) Mids and low-mids(esp. on vocals) were not rich and full as i wished.

The fatiguing alone bugged me to change my speakers and my dealer sent me Harbeth 40.2’s to try at home.

Harbeth 40.2’s with NC400’s:
So compared to Sopra No.2’s it was less hi-fi and more of a live music experience with the midrange of Harbeth’s as we know it. Non-fatiguing , just slightly warm ,sweet sound and overall a wonderful match with the speaker and the amp. Believe it or not it was more than just a glimpse of when i listened to 40.2’s with Dan D’Agostino MOMENTUM LIFESTYLE AMPLIFIER. Last weekend we tried the NC400’s with my brothers SLH5’s and i think he is now considering selling his Naim setup which is 6 times more expensive then NC400’s :)

I wanted to keep Harbeth 40.2’s but we could not agree on price with the dealer so i kept my Sopra’s and decided to try a well regarded amp with it. That was Pass Labs XA30.5.

Sopra No.2’s with Pass Labs XA30.5 :
Brightness and fatiguing gone for good. You get the magical warm sound of Pass Labs , suddenly Sopra’s are different speakers now. The amp really has it’s own color as they say. Bass is less controlled and almost too slow compared to NC400’s. I was worried about 30w is not going to be enough for my room but i never miss 200w’s of NC400’s unless i listen to electronic dance music.

I am never selling my NC400’s as they will come handy when i want to listen instrumental tracks or EDM.
For example , Chuck Mangione - Children of Sanchez or Charles Lloyd & The Marvels - La llorona gives you goosebumps when listened through NC400’s while with XA30.5 they won’t impress you as much.
They are really more than their money’s worth but the XA30.5 is still a better match with Sopra No.2’s.

I guess i couldn't keep it short. Oh well..


tonediary
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,584 posts
 
Contuzzi we made those suggestions as some people don't have the money to invest in real high end acoustical solutions.

If you check our NY audio shows photos over the years you will see plenty of examples of the room treatment products we use and endorse.

https://www.facebook.com/audiodoctor1/photos/pcb.1632190780187462/1632198526853354/?type=3&theat...

As per acoustical training, bet you we got a lot more than you, trained with Toni Grimini and Russ Herschelman at Cedia. 

We build real movie theaters and design and fabricate our own room treatments. as mentioned earlier not everyone has the funds to do acoustics correctly.

Prof the power of suggestion works both way, the reality is we have spent about $40k and more on cabling for our rooms, do you honestly think we would spend the money if we couldn't hear the difference.

We did one demo were we changed one ethernet cable from a generic to a high end $200 one and the differences to both the client and ourselves was staggeringly obvious.

Most people don't want to spend the money us included, if we couldn't hear the difference nobody would purchase these products. 

Mass hypnosis it isn't  Over 30 years we have done numerous cable shoot outs and tests. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

nugat
38 posts
 
It would be nice if somebody could point to a scientific double blind test of cables.
prof
3,435 posts
 
the reality is we have spent about $40k and more on cabling for our rooms, do you honestly think we would spend the money
if we couldn’t hear the difference.

Yes.

Of course it’s possible for people to spend large amounts of money on imaginary benefits. How is it not obvious that the amount of money someone spends on something has nothing to do with the verity of the claims? All around the world, every day thousands, millions of people throw money at things driven by false beliefs.

Audiophiles are not excepted from this - in fact high end audio is rife with this kind of thing.

Most people don’t want to spend the money us included

Yes and that is why it matters all the more that the claims should be tested far more carefully! We all would rather not spend $6000 on a cable if a $40 cable will be just as accurate (or more) or audibly indistinguishable. But this can’t be determined with justified confidence using the usual audiophile methods of “put it in the system and do I think I hear a difference?”

That method ignores everything we know about human bias. And the strength of your conviction adds precisely nothing to the justification of your conclusions because...well....that’s how bias works. It can produce life-transforming experiences in people, even when there is nothing at work but the persons own imagination or altering perception.

And it’s also why it’s somewhat dispiriting to think many people will be led to spend thousands of dollars on cables, perhaps unnecessarily, because their high end dealers pronounce confidently on their worth based on poor testing methods.

Again, it’s not my claim that no high end cable can’t or doesn’t sound different or better than an average cable. I’m merely pointing out that most such beliefs have been derived from very poor methods.

But saying this in the typical high end audio forum is like being an atheist crashing a church revival. It’s never received well and it’s hard to bridge the two worlds.




shiner01
14 posts
 
I had similar results with my Nord Acoustics Hypex NC500 based amps paired with my Martin Logans.  When I first got them they were a significant upgrade from the older class D amps I had in before.  They were very controlled and detailed with a low noise floor, but I found them harsh at times and fatiguing at high volumes.  I upgraded again to the PS Audio BHK300s - not a fair fight, as these are much more expensive amps, but the hybrid tube/ss amps resolved the brightness and fatigue I was experiencing with the Hypex ones when paired with my electrostats, and I lost none of the detail (though my noise floor did go up).

The focal sopras were my 2nd-most favorite speakers when I was demoing last year, but the Martin Logan Expression 13As just imaged sooooo well when set up right, and now that they are paired with better amps, I'm very happy.  
emcdade
95 posts
 
Same experience I had with Ncore (NAD M22) and Sopra 2's.  They werent bright or harsh, just sterile and uninvolvimg.  The dealer even said "that's the best Class D I've heard in here" which was quite the indictment of previous class D because the Ncore were getting smoked by the class ab amps.

These speakers are just so sensitive to amplification.  The Pass amps are a great match and so was Perla Audio which is what I ended up going with.
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