I was sent some LS1 cable as that should be a better match for the speakers. Obviously they are 40 odd years old and in 1973 no-one was using hi-fi speaker cable it was just bell wire. So you have to consider back in the day that speakers would be voiced with that in mind.
Anyway the LS1 was an improvement, getting rid of the slightly thick, syrupy trait the system had with the LS5. But there was still a bit of midrange 'bloom' and a little bit of occlusion in the mids, a sleight veil that was keeping the sound a bit surpressed in that area.
I turned down the mid range level control one notch and this cured the bloom but the veiling was still there.
Was sent another cable that is supposedly custom designed to suit the Akais and might remove the veil, I was advised that this was brand new cable and would need to burn in.
Speaker cable burn in I am pretty sceptical about, I think I may have heard it before. That is the best I can do. So I ignored this advice and when the cable arrived yesterday got down straight away to some serious critical listening.
This was a much smaller difference than between the LS5 and LS1. Nevertheless the mid and top seemed a bit more open, maybe at the expense of a little mid-bass. Listening to Steely Dan 'Two Against Nature' and SRV's 'Couldn't Stand The Weather' I though there were some slight rough edges even on pretty smooth and accomplished modern recordings. The live radio studio recordings at the end of SRV sounded okay though.
But I wasn't that happy. Whilst this was not a bad sound it was not really what I am after. Ideally I want that high-end Japanese sound, where it is clean and sweet but also awesomely open and revealing. Some say that is too 'polite' a sound for them, it doesn't sound like 'live music' but that is my preference and this wasn't it. This was more a warm, organic sound but a bit too rough and ready for me. Not distorted as such but with a bit of roughness around notes.
By this point though I had decided that having the mids dialled back was no longer working, I was losing a little bit of body to the sound. So I set them back to nominal.
Fed up a bit I decided to play Jimmy Page 'Outrider'. This is an album I often turn to if I really want to see how smooth or otherwise the sound is. Mid 'Eighties digital recording, loud rock music, Jimmy Page producing - it ticks al the boxes and this album will sound dog rough on a system with any tendancy to distortion or hardness.
I really thought this recording would sound awful and that would be an end to it.
but it actually sounded pretty good, easy to listen to, dynamic, a bit of raunch still there but now it was raunch rather than roughness. As the album progressed it sounded better and better. Now I was confused, was this the speaker cable burning in as advised?
I decided to go the opposite way and play something super smooth, AKA Steely Dan's 'Aja' - pretty much a pinnicale of analogue recording perfection. If this sounds anything other than superbly lush then you have problems with your system. The slightest, tiniest rough edge? If it is there on this album then it shouldn't be.
It was super smooth and almost faultless.
Last record of the night had to be The Doors - 'LA Woman'. One of my faves of all time this one. not a remaster or anything, original CD release, this can sound very good or quite poor depending on the system. I'd played it the other night with the LS1 in place and whilst it had not sounded bad I'd noticed on the final track (Riders On The Storm) that there was a halo of distortion around the keyboard, which is over to the back left of the mix. There is actually a little bit of distortion on the record but the system had over emphasised it and it sounded quite bad.
Not this time in fact I don't think I have ever heard this better. The thunderstorm effects were spot on, the rain coming down all through the track, you didn't need to listen for it, it was just there. Solid positioning of the instruments too, drums were a little soft but a minor criticism since that was a drum kit in the right corner of my living room and that was Ray Manzarek's keyboard almost physically (but invisibly) in the back left with no distortion halo, just the natural slight distort that is on the recording.
I had to leave it there, I have neighbours and it was past 2300 hrs by this point.
Still not 100% sure what I heard would be repeatable, could have been the late hour, my relaxed mood etc - but I trust my instincts over that I think. Will be having another session tonight and will hopefully see then what is real and what is imagined