thank you to the team at PS Audio for creating the Sprout100
I thought I would never have a sound system that even came close to my old Sennheiser 580s and an analog amp I used a couple decades ago to study recordings while preparing for auditions. now almost 20 years later after letting the listening side slack while continuing to raise a couple of boys and playing my tuba at work every day I have recently gotten the bug to actively listen again.
the internets told me to get a Sprout and some Elac Unifi speakers along with the Elac sub. after all of the reviews I had very high expectations but what I lacked was perspective. my best listening experience up to this point outside of live events has been some Sennheiser 580 headphones from decades ago along with an analog headphone amp plugged into a CD player. I had set my “lofty” expectations too low.
I don’t buy into hyperbole even though I occasionally throw some out myself but I type this while listening to Mahler 2 streaming from Idagio set to FLAC plugged into the USB of this Sprout100. I am not listening to music. I am experiencing the emotion and journey of the performance. I never realized just how much distraction and lack of truth I was hearing through previous listenings on other setups. I realize this is “just” your entry level product but what you have done is democratize music.
wait…
I have to pause for a moment…
so THAT is what is going on during the low brass chorale on the fifth movement. so glad I also bought the subwoofer. I have worked on the tuba excerpt of that low brass chorale hundreds of times in practice rooms prepping for auditions and lessons. I honestly never before heard the contrasts and answers that came after.
thank you for creating the Sprout100. you have allowed this tuba player on a limited budget the opportunity to live recorded music in a way that approaches that of performing it live. it is not the same as sitting on the stage facing a well prepared and respected conductor, which is a rare bird also, but I am so much closer to the musical moments during the recording sessions than I ever have been.
Welcome to the Sprout Society. It’s everything you described and it plays amanzingly with a lot of different speakers. I got my first one within days of their release, and a second one the week after. It was such a great value and knew I had to have more that one room setup for them. One really has to break north of 1k to find any worthy competition. Believe me I tried and the Sprout won, twice.
Well, I hope @Paul and Scott are proud of themselves for wrecking my bedroom music setup.
I was listening to the Fantasia original soundtrack in the living room on my Sprout 100 playing on Roon through my non-optimized ELAC Debut B6 2.0s (the speakers are WAAAY too close together) and had to go do some work upstairs in the bedroom. So I transferred the stream to my paired Sonos Play:3s I have in there because they are bride-and-space friendly. And I get up there, and the same music is playing, and all I can think of is “where the hell did my MUSIC go??”
There is a lot of Danish stuff in PS audio … lol here it is Bluetooth
Bluetooth is named after the Danish king Harald Bluetooth (English: Harold Bluetooth), who is known to have initiated diplomatic negotiations which laid the groundwork for various parties to act and communicate together. The name was chosen to symbolize the protocol’s goal of getting one common WPAN communication standard.
hi - i’m glad the sprout100 is working out for you since i’m going to have the same system - minus the sub so that is good news to me - sprout should arrive today.
right now i’m using an mid - late 90s AVR from Sony pushing 240 watts @ 4 Ohms (not sure if it’s continuous or just max watts - don’t know much about the specs on paper) on the UB5 which i got over the weekend.
i’m a bit of a noobie on classical music - that is to say i listen to it with no regard to who or what i’m listening to - Which performance in particular of Mahler 2 were you listening to?
can’t remember which Mahler 2 it was. it was one of Idagio’s newer recommended recordings so I clicked it for a listen.
I have been streaming stuff from Tidal that I used to listen to as a kid and most of the time I am wondering if I am listening to the same recording. It just sounds so different with the muddiness missing. The separation in notes and voicings is a bit overwhelming on stuff I have listened to a hundred times previously. I feel like most of the opinions and impressions I had solidified all those years ago were lies. Today it was listening to Alex Van Halen on drums while playing the album 5150. He sounded much more human and mortal than the times I heard it before where it was a fast smear of notes. Now it is thousands of individual notes.
