Yesterday I had the pleasure of welcoming both Jay "jakewash" and Mark "doormat" to my home.
Jay stopped in to return my A1400 which he was demoing for the past month and Mark stopped by to check out the EP800's.
I will leave them to post any general comments / thoughts they may have. Jay did mention that he thought the Denon amp may be muffling the sound slightly on the highs compared to the Axiom amp. A short discussion resulted and it was decided a A / B comparison was warranted. Jay had to leave because of commitments and Mark and I decided to do the comparison.
We went to a 2 channel setup
We would listen to a number of tracks switching speaker connections during songs to try and hear any differences we could make out.
1) Sound levels dB's were different
Axiom was louder by about 2 dB
2) We could not really hear the muffling Jay was referring to
There may be a difference but the switching would need to be immediate to catch this difference if any
Conclusion
We decided a PROPER A / B would be needed since what we were doing wasn't accomplishing our intended goal. Flawed because of:
a) A proper switch is required to do the immediate amp switching. The switch would need to allow for level matching the 2 amps.
b) Same cabling connections. We were using XLR's off the Denon and RCA's off the Axiom
c) This is more of a question. How to properly detect any audible differences (REW ?)
If anyone has any guidelines for a proper A / B test let me know. I am going to find the switcher first.
That's it for now and the rambling
After the long weekend I hope Jay and Mark will give their impressions
Mel N.
I hope to hear from the sub demo king " Jay" on his impressions of the EP800
