I too am back to Snowmass 3.0, better than Windom, in my system.
Yes, 1998. Well, rather than apples to oranges the Mobile Fidelity in comparison to the Columbia cd (mine is from 2015, in the one of the two Ellington Columbia Studio Album box sets) the comparison is more like McIntosh to Fuji, or two varieties of apples to one another. Thereās a touch of warmth to the MFSL not there with the Columbia, which honestly doesnāt need it. I think they may be using different tapes and different EQ choices; both are excellent listens. The MFSL is certainly not easy to afford these days.
And I sold the ORG SACD of āMonkās Dreamā when I got the MSFL. Just sounded a bit better on my system.
ā[K]nowing what it is youāre hearingā is a superb point, especially complexed with what one likes. What is ābetterā is subjective and often a moving target.
I find fascinating the group has such different impressions each time new firmware is introduced. āIt has more bass.ā āThere is more high end.ā āIt is louder.ā āIt is analogy.ā
Yet all that is actually different is less noise. I would expect everybody would like each update, unequivocally.
You are very smart to just accept what you like and to go with it
It is a First for me. Iāve never Reverted until now - even when I hated "Urine"
Apologies, Ted/PS - I went to school at the University of Michigan, and the Huron river runs through it, and we used to jokingly refer to it as āthe Urineā. It was in part a local pronunciation joke. Not a particularly dirty river, at least at the time.
I am afraid you totally lost me this time, BB.
A couple of comments [without any context or intent to respond to you directly because I really donāt have any confidence that I understood your comment (or @Elkās supplemental commentary)] .
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I am not talking about Windom making a recording sound any more like live music. The āfactā is, familiar recordings are yielding information I have never heard before. If I hear something that was always on the recording but I never noted it before, that makes me an āaudiophileā rather than a music lover? Pshaw, I say. Pshaw!
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I for one am not pressuring anyone to hear something they are not, in fact hearing. I have followed this thread pretty closely and, based on @lonsonās posts, I believe he was suffering from the heretofore unsolved mystery of bad or incomplete overwriteās of previous firmware. In my experience, the sonic differences between Snowmass 3.0 and Windom are not asymmetrical or tonal in nature. Meaning, I never experienced some sort of material shift in brightness or harshness and there is nothing about the overall presentation that is good in once respect and crappy in another. When I read about experiences to the contrary I, to paraphrase someone whose opinion I generally appreciate, become suspicious.
Cheers.
OTOH, no mystery to me. I find comparisons difficult in terms of intellectual honesty, for lack of a better term. More than once, for example, with new ādevice Aā in the system I might hear a ride cymbal waaay back in the soundstage (or pick your favorite audio ādetailā) that I never heard before and think āDamn, skippy! Never heard that beforeā Then I put ādevice Bā back in the system and, lo and behold, it was there all along. I just never paid attention. Straining to decide āwhatās bestā can be exhausting and can lead one into an analysis of trees instead of appreciating the forest.
I think the good reviewers take written notes and alternate between listening for details and just listening. Iām not that disciplined.
In that respect, Iām beginning to appreciate the challenge of this hobby in terms Heisenbergās Uncertainty Principle. IE: the more accurately we know one of the parameters, the less accurately we know the others. Every time the system is fired up, there are untold variables that can impact what we hear.
Like Beef, more and more of my choices come down to when I stop listening to āthingsā in the music and get sucked into the music itself.
Andā¦I have experienced this as well.
Thanks.
yeah, partof what makes this pursuit endlessly frustrating/fascinating.
Too bad they donāt still make it
- When I say ādeeply suspiciousā I mean that I am suspicious of my own reactions when I experience that sort of thing, not that I suspect you guys of anything nefarious.
When I talk about sounding like live music, that is perhaps misleading, as I certainly am not an āAbsolute Soundā sort of purist. I meant in the sense that when listening to live music (acoustic or amplified) you just tend not to focus on these sorts of things, unless youāre geeking out on (or hating on) the venueās sound system/mix engineer.
I grew up loving lots of music that has never been played live - only exists on multitrack recordings. So thanks for pointing that out. I still, nonetheless, scratch my head over hearing things I never heard before, wondering if that is how that particular thing is āsupposed toā sit in the Mix. Short of inviting the mix engineer of the album over, and asking, āIs this what you intended I hear at home?āā¦weāll never know.
2). Feel that. I certainly went through the former stage. My SD card was from PS, so I had no reason to doubt its veracity. Stillā¦the first week or so was Pain and Confusion, (āIs this Love, babyā¦or uhā¦just-aā¦Confusion?ā Up next on Spinning Nowā¦).
In retrospect, it was clearly wrong. AFAIK, I had not experienced that before with FW loads, but ya knowā¦now not so sure. And all during this first Week of Pain there were many whose opinion I respect saying variants of, āIt is just mo bettahā¦ā
Again, I want to emphasize that the difference between what Iām hearing now between the two FWās is not at all radical. Way less different than the difference between Huron and What came Before, but we werenāt all up in Tedās shizz about it to this degree at that point.
However, there is still something that still just doesnāt sit right for me Over Time, independent of the Details. This is the thing for me. It is about short-term āoohsā vs. long-term, āahhhā¦sā. It is more of a Gut reaction from a lifetime of playing and recording music. Iām fully willing to accept that there may still be something Wrong, that I ājust need to doā¦Xā and All Will Be Revealed. But man, Iāve done more noodling with this than anything in my life prior. Which seems not right in itself. None of the Happy WIndom users needed to change anything major AFAICT. And - as I said, kinda fried at this point. But - Fascinating and Head-Scratching.
Yup. When Iāve bothered to check, that is often the case. This is what Iām talking about with regard to listening to live music - we are in the moment, and the idea of going back in Time to hear a phrase or instrumentās sound again never occurs. It is All Now. That is what Iām looking for in my listening to recorded music.
Yeah. Too bad they donāt make a lot of things any longer. But with the internet they can be had.
Anyway, Iām glad I have mine.
My experience is that a bad load is completely obvious : it was muffled and my wife hated it too after 30 seconds.
But in my system (B&W 800 diamonds/ Plinius) the good load of Windom is amazing.
A giant leap over Snowmass.
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Another case of the crazy variation in individual experience. I would not have described my bad load as muffled, or particularly obvious.
Gotchaā¦and @hthallerās comment also made sense to me ā we need to be on guard against āfindingā things in the music that were always there but we never ālookedā for them before. I donāt want to belabor the point but suffice it to say there are details that I can hear on some DS firmware at a given volume with certain recordings that I cannot with another firmware version. To the extent your suspicions also have to do with being careful in this regard, I have to agree with you there as well.
I will also say this, which bears repeating, there is a big difference between the actual magnitude of differences each firmware instills in a system and the extent of the improvement or degradation that comes across in our descriptions of same (at least in my experience). I try to keep this in mind when I read otherās raves and criticisms. To date, NONE of the DS firmware updates have led me to exclaim, āits like I have a new set of speakersā, āthanks for the new DAC, Tedā or āthe new firmware is just unlistenable.ā FWIW/YMMV, etc.
Cheers.
10-4, Mark.
It was probably a Ā« good load Ā», then.
Sorry folks, but I have to bring this up again. Recently I was saying with Windom and all the tweaks, my digital is sounding closer to my vinyl. Yesterday, my brother came over and we did a comparison between the two formats. The vinyl sounded more opaque, but fuller. The digital sounded a little leaner, but more detailed. After my brother left, I was wondering why my vinyl sounded a bit dull. Well, I screwed up the setting on my phono stage. I somehow have it set to 100 ohm instead of 1000 ohm. The Benz cartilage needed 1000 ohm to sound right. It is a night and day change to the sound. More body, more natural texture, more visceral impact, more alive, more real. Incredible dynamics. Whoever say that digital is more dynamic have not heard good vinyl. The Esoteric E-02 phono is much better than people thinks. Iāve compared it to many including the Manley Steelhead, the Aesthetix Rhea Signature, the Mare Connoisseur, the Boulder 1008, and it outperforms them all. My Aurender N10 with DS sounds really exceptional, but still not to the level of my Esoteric phono system.
Iāve never had the opportunity to hear a decent vinyl setup, much less an exceptional one. Is there a Stellar equivalent in the vinyl world, sort of the DSJ of turntables that is really really good but doesnāt cost a fortune?
This is the best matching description of good vinyl sound (mastering differences ignored) I read here. Itās most strange that vinyl sounds more dynamic and especially with more impact, although the theoretical (and sometimes also practically recorded or cut) dynamic range is smaller. When comparing uncompressed recordings, dynamic behavior simply sounds as one would expect it from digital. My guess is, that itās due to the more sophisticated preamplification of the signal, but not sure.
The main other characteristics Iād add are a more of resolution even compared to hires, still a bit more open, natural top end and a more relaxed timing. But except of those characteristics you mentioned and except of the timing differences, this is only obvious in a direct comparison. And to get the ambiance and 3D imaging soundstage of the DS/Windom, it needs a really great and expensive table. Nothing you get for a 6k package. And digital delivers without occasional inner groove distortion and sibliance of s-sounds 
But back to Windom and the DS.
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