Hi everyone, happy Friday!!!
So in my planning stage of setting up my audio system, one of the goals was to have flexibility and convenient options to “tune” my system.
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The purchase of Hqplayer alone has given me over 40 plus different digital filter options (not that I can reliably tell all of them apart) along with various other dithering, noise shaping, modulator options. I have now pretty much narrowed down to one specific setting and playing all digital tracks in DSD format but I am still left with about 8-10 digital filters, each of them place different focuses to space, timbre, transient and with different frequent roll off, length and steepness and could be more suitable to different genre of music (jazz, pop/rock, classical, old bad recordings…..)
Onto my DAC, even though I have eliminated all the options related to PCM playback, I am still left with a number of options that actually makes a difference to the sound. The DAC comes with three analog output modes – solid state, a tube mode and a hybrid mode. Solid state mode apparently is the cleanest, most detailed, neutral sounding mode, with the hybrid mode open things up a bit and add a touch of smoothness to the sound while the tube mode sounds a bit more tubey compared to the hybrid mode. On top of the analog stage, it also comes with a DSD 1024 remaster mode that as much as I do not know how it possibly can change the sound, I had a few audiophile buddies came over and listen to music, I turned on the mode on the fly without telling them and they would be able to immediately tell the sound went a touch softer, vocal more relaxed and pushed back a bit.
My Freya+ preamp also comes with three modes – a passive preamp mode that is meant to be the most transparent mode of the three; a solid state mode that just sounds solid state and a tube buffer mode using a quad set of 6sn7 tubes. Once you start rolling in tubes, you open up a whole new world of how sound can be tweaked.
Now that I have substantially completed my set up, I am finding myself overwhelmed with too many options/flexibility that can tweak the sound in my system. A complete solid state set up, or perhaps turning on the tube mode of the DAC and leaving the Freya in solid state (which I have not yet tried), or rolling in tubes in the Freya and play with solid state vs tube mode of the DAC or any combination of it. I am constantly having 40-50 different ways to tweak the sound that perhaps I don’t need that much flexibility. Its taken me months and I still can’t quite figure out a simple set it and forget it config.
Not sure if some of you also felt the same way.
