When I first got my Transporter, I briefly reported my initial impressions. I've had it for about a month now, and thought I would report how I feel about it. These comparisons are between the analogue outputs of both Transporter and SB2, both connected directly to the power amps of a pair of ATC SCM100A active monitors.
The most obvious difference on the first day was that the Transporter's overall tonal balance was much richer and warmer than the Squeezebox. On the very first listen, it almost seemed "thick and veiled". This impression is now completely absent. I believe that the brain quickly adapts to overall gross frequency balance differences. No doubt if I were to listen to the Squeezebox now, it would sound too bright to start with. Another difference is that the bass has a better sense of authority on the Transporter. But I guess this might be a simple consequence of the warmer frequency balance. The most important difference is that timbral characteristics are much more clearly defined on the Transporter. There's a sense of "organic texture" to instruments that is missing on the Squeezebox. I think this could be due to the much "blacker" background - presumably a lower noise floor means that less of the low level detail needed for subtle timbral cues is masked. The interesting thing is that, although I now consider this to be the most musically significant difference, it was the last one that I noticed. I don't think this has emerged over time - rather that initially my brain was concentrating on the more obvious frequency balance differences, and only after that was assimilated were the subtler aspects able to show through. Probably a case of "brain burn-in" that's been discussed here in previous threads. -- cliveb Performers -> dozens of mixers and effects -> clipped/hypercompressed mastering -> you think a few extra ps of jitter matters? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31311 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
