I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve spent moving acoustical treatments, furniture, and the equipment, including the speakers, around in my listening room. Every move made a difference, some more than others. It’s the perfect hobby for exercising my pent-up OCD tendencies.
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RonP, good observation on the speaker placement. What I have now isn’t perfect. I do get a little better imaging when the speakers are out further and if they were a little closer together. Now that I have the BHK 600’s it might motivate me to entirely redo the setup to get the last 10% from the system.
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The sooner you take the Marantz out of the picture for 2 channel listening the better. The Marantz is only good for Multichannel Digital Home Theater sources. Today you can use the built in digital preamp in the X1 and go directly into the Amps. If you want to make a HT bypass more permanent you can get a XLR switcher. You can still weave in a BHK Pre after the fact. I used to have a Marantz AVR in my old setup. It sucked for 2ch analog. Today I run X1 > BHK Pre > BHK 300 with an XLR switcher for my HT bypass to my Lyngdorf AVR.
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tip, fully agree. I have the BHK Pre arriving tomorrow. I haven’t heard much difference between the BHK 300’s and the 600’s but I’m sure the limitation in my system is the Marantz. What do you think of your Lumin X1? I think it’s an incredible DAC. I have mine linked with fiber ethernet and Roon. The Roon integration is incredible. Hopefully PSAudio is paying attention and designing their Directstream to have similar functionality.
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By far your weakest link is the Marantz. I really like the X1. I’m using the standard Ethernet connection to my Synology NAS with my extensive HiRes library, Mimiserver Indexing and the Lumin App for Navigation. Never felt the need to go down the Roon path. I don’t use Tidal or Quboz, just the music that I have on site.
I tried my marantz avr as a preamp with my krell amp, it was unlistenable, you are in for a real treat when you get a good 2 channel preamp for sure.
I’ve spent a few days listening to the BHK Pre into the BHK 600 amps with the Marantz bypassed. As everyone likely suspected, it’s BHK Pre makes a huge difference. The sound is more detailed and alive than it was through the Marantz 2 channel analog bypass. Thanks everyone for the input and suggestions.
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What score did the BHK 600 get in the HiFi-News review? I get emails when a new issue comes out and see from the photo of the magazine front cover that the new issue includes a review of BHK 600.
How would the 300s compared to the 600s now with the BHK Pre in the loop?
The BHK Pre had a bigger impact upon my system than going from the 300’s to the 600’s. I do have a second system that has a set of 300s, but I haven’t done any comparison testing of the 300’s next to the 600’s with the BHK Pre in place.
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Asking again: what numerical percentage score did the BHK 600 get in HiFi News? Surely PSA knows and maybe forum folks have seen review also
I have Magzter and this is from clip of their 'crop and share" feature, so assuming I can crop and share lol, but if not feel free to delete.
Score is 87%.
No idea if this score is inline with cost and sound quality expectations or not. Those that follows hifi news amp reviews, I love to hear your thoughts. I see that Classes Delta Mono, which is $22k per pair got 89%, and Boulder 1160 got 88%
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87 is decent score. Not great. Not bad. Pretty average score for gear that considers itself hi end historically I’d say. I’d guess PSA were hoping for better.
Edit: I buy a few issues per year when I’m interested in a component. Over past couple years, here are some comparables (some more $$, some less):
Audio Research Ref 160 M: 90%
Constellation Centaur: 90%
Audio Research Ref 80S: 89%
Levinson 5805: 87%
Hegel H390: 86%
D’Agostino Progression Int: 85%
I respect that they are confident enough to give D’Ag an 85
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It’s not a magazine known for giving away mid-90s and above. If a Centaur gets a 90, then I’d say people should be very happy with anything above and 80.
As always, all these scores can tell you is how the amp performed in a particular system compared to other amps. Provided, of course, that the system was indeed identical and that at least some of the other amps were around for comparison. Which is unlikely I’d have thought.
I respect that mag a lot and if anyone will have a decent aural memory it might be them. However, until you hear it for yourself with familiar gear, how do you know?
It says something that scores less than 90 are taken as bad scores these days, especially because the article itself paints a very positive picture.
Scores below 83 or 84 are uncommon. Most scores are between 83 and 90. I’ve seen 95, probably seen a rare 80.
When FR30 got a 90, I was quick to say that was a good score, and really good for a debut speaker effort. 87 here is average, and I’m sure for a $32k flagship they’d hoped for better. But it’s certainly not a bad score. 87 is solid. I can only imagine how furious D’Agostino were at getting an 85. M700 (or was it Strata? i forget) got a lower score if I recall, but that’s a budget product.
If you are not familiar with HFN these numbers probably mean little. But when you’ve read dozens of issues and seen hundreds of scores, you get a sense of what is a good score at a price point and what isn’t.
At end of day it’s just one opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. But the consistent scale against which to compare is different from most magazines. It’s my favorite mag, but it isn’t gospel haha
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My 600’s run really warm, and they sit in free space. I would think in your racks that they would be really hot… 
Agree that positioning is not doing them any favors.
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New video review of the BHK 600’s on YouTube.
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As reviewed by Absolute Sound
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Reviews in stereo! 
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