I was sitting down listening to music one evening whilst browsing a cable that promised for the mere expenditure of £1,495 that these BNC cables could transform the sound coming from my Hugo DAC. With a bit too much wine in my bloodstream I nearly clicked “BUY ME” but then wondered about the duty that might be charged coming to Ireland from the UK and I hesitated (perhaps one of the few positives of Brexit?).
I then asked myself how many cables I remembered changing my mind about margarine and what upgrades really caused a difference.
The answer was obvious even with the wine.
I had always been a bit intrigued at the HRTF in ear measurement but presumed that this type of stuff was above my ability.
But maybe not, so I’ve set out to see if a relative neophyte could manage this.
So what will I need?
I have a MS Surface Pro so needed an external sound card.Thierry recommended a Behringer U-Control UCA 222 so I ordered this and the Soundman OKM I Classic A3 - , A3 power supply inclusive from Thomann for €161.
When I had these 2 it became apparent I also needed an RCA to 3mm adapter which Amazon dutifully supplied for £5.12.
First of I had to turn off all current DSP an aspect I might have easily forgotten and then it is similar to the room calibration in that first you have to calibrate the ear microphones and a quick iPhone Translate of the German manual told me that the coloured end of the earbuds were worn to the outside with red right blue left as expected. But when I hit the calibrate I was getting no reading. It is then suggested you hit the high gain which I did and was still getting no reading and I thought to myself - well I won’t put the expletives here.
A quick look through windows settings later and I found the culprit in that there is a microphone volume setting which was set to something like 37 and I opted to go all the way to 100 and then there was no issues with the normal gain calibration.
Then one does a balance reading with the ear mics close to each other on the chair and thirdly the measurement in ear in the listening position with head kep still.
I did the room measurements again also as I had bought a new burndy cable one of Naim’s idiosyncratic cables from a company called witch hat just before they folded - was actually very lucky to get in without being scalded - and this did seem to change the musical balance somewhat in that I had to reduce the crossover level of the sub slightly and certainly lyrics were a bit easier to make out.
Well I received the filters From Thierry on Friday evening.
He gives a link to a download page which you then save to your hard drive and add to roon as a convolution filter, remembering to add some head room management.
I’m not one for back and forward A vs B so am going to listen to the xtlak-HRTF filter over a period of days.
Initial impressions are of how the impetus is to turn up the volume. I have a 40 track playlist I’ve used since 2016 and there are considerably differences on volume on some of the tracks and when ones come in very loud there is very little desire (or need) to lower the volume.
As a previous customer / client one gets a reduction so the general filter and x-talk hurtful cost €99. So all in a spend of €270.
I had recently read a review in Stereophile of Focal Maestro Utopia Evo
Next up was “Slang” (16/44.1 FLAC, A440/Tidal), a Jaco Pastorius composition played by Brian Bromberg on both fretted and fretless basses. Though all multitracked parts play in more or less the same register, nothing sounded jumbled or crowded. It was easy to follow each bass line, even as they wrapped around each other.
Never mind 1k, it seems I might have saved myself 50k as this piece sounded exactly like described above.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, I need to let it bed in for a few days before I can fully hear and try and explain what’s different.
When I only owned 10 albums two of them were by David Bowie - Hunky Dory and Stage. In fact the first time I heard Ziggy Stardust was not the original but the live version - anyway who better to help me check out the new filter than David.
Like in my previous post I described the crosstalk filters giving an effect like remastering the music. Instruments can feel in a slightly different position and more fuller in the mix. Certainly this is very present with the HTRF filter but at no stage did any of the music jar as if he said to yourself “uh -that’s not right”.
What seems to be extra is best described as more control I suppose. It’s as if I had got a more powerful amplifier and it was controlling the speakers better. In pieces like Panic in Detroit where everything goes a bit mad in the last 60 seconds or so it is much more evident that individual instruments are still playing rather than the melange which it has previously appeared to me. Similarly the end of life on Mars feels much more coherent and together.
I also became much more aware of David’s voice, noticing the differences over the years obviously but also being aware when it was double tracked and being generally more appreciative that “yes he actually had quite a good voice”.
Voices were so clear and separated that for the first time ever I was prompted to check who was singing the backing vocals on Absolute Beginners as it was just that little bit more obvious what the female background vocalist was doing for the track.
It was Janet Armstrong and as only Roon can it tells me that I have one of her tracks on a wonderful Cherry Red compilation called Sharon Signs to Cherry Red.
Thanks for posting this, John. I was initially curious about these filters when I first contacted Thierry a couple of years ago but decided maybe it was a bit of a stretch for me! Your experience has allowed me to consider that maybe I could handle it. I appreciate the detailed trouble shooting you’ve written about as well.
As I’ve said on the Naim forum, using Thierry’s services has to be one of the most cost-effective things you can do for your system. Your thread over there was an impetus to me and to many to try HAF. Thanks to this thread I may well try out the HRTF filter in the future. Thanks!
