captouch
Addicted Member
I posted this on another forum, but since there's a thread here on this, I thought I'd include it here as well. No affiliation with Parks Audio at all.
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I've had my Puffin for a little over 24hrs and probably put 3-4 hours on it of active listening.
I'm using this in the tape loop as a sound enhancer, not as a phono stage.
First thing I wanted to test was whether the A->D and D-> process had an effect on the sound by itself, so I set it flat (Line In, 0db gain, no EQ effects active at all) so the DSP wasn't doing anything. I used a well recorded LP (Music Matters: Kenny Burrell, Midnight Blue). At first, I thought I detected a <5% loss of some air/dimension, but after trying to test myself and see whether I could tell whether it was in the loop or out (using the tape monitor button to bring it in or take it out), I couldn't reliably tell, so that tells me it's essentially transparent to me sonically at moderate volumes.
The feature I was really curious about was the new Magic click/pop suppressor. It works really well! I tried one LP that is likely just dirty and has a lot of small crackles during the lead-in and first part of the first track, a first pressing of Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vanguard that has frequent clicks/pops of various size due to age, and a Monk LP that had some serious scratches across a couple of tracks.
For the light stuff, it takes it out almost entirely. For the heavier/severe stuff, it seems to take out some of it and what it doesn't take out, it suppresses in volume and harshness by 70-80+%. So you hear that it's there, but it's not bothersome. For an add-on feature not in the scope of the original feature set, it's actually really impressive.
I do feel that it has some small effect on the sound - like the processed result isn't quite as dynamic, with a slight veil/polishing of the edges. But if given the choice to hear a largely noise free slightly less dynamic version instead of a noisy/distracting more dynamic version, I'd choose the former for sure. For the really serious stuff, even though it doesn't take out everything, at some point you wonder whether you should play it anyway due to possible negative effects on your stylus. But if you're willing to play it, it will be much much more tolerable.
I also played with the Tilt and Air features for the purpose of livening up duller sounding records. The two I used were the Mofi SACD of the Pretenders S/T album, which has always been a disappointment to me. Very dead sounding at moderate volumes and seems like it's rolled off at the top. Not quite as bad, but also disappointing to me was the redbook CD of Norah Jones Day Breaks album. At first I used Tilt only at the +2 level, then played around with adding some additional high end with the Air set at +2.
It definitely livened both albums up and improved the sound. On Day Breaks, it went from vocals and percussion being buried in the mix to them being significantly more detailed and able to be appreciated for the subtleties in the performance.
My preamp is a Mac C35, which has a five-band EQ, as well as variable loudness. I like variable loudness a lot for adding some warmth/meat to thinner sounding recordings without having to tweak individual EQ bands. But you can't really go in the opposite direction with that and help dead recordings sound more lively. Using some combination of the higher frequency EQ knobs, I perhaps could have livened up the recordings similarly, but I'm not yet sure whether I could achieve the same result. Even if I could, it's easier to remember that a certain album requires a +2 Tilt to optimize vs remembering that I need to be at 2 o'clock on the 1500hz knob and 3 o'clock on the 10kHz knob.
I also have a couple of old CDs that have pre-emphasis, but the flags aren't in the typical places and I don't have a CD player that will detect and de-emphasize them properly, so they sound thin and tinny with over-emphasized high frequencies. I tried the custom EQ settings that Shannon Parks suggested and that definitely took away that effect. Likely because I'm used to hearing them so tinny/thin, the custom EQ actually made them sound a bit darker than I thought was ideal, but I backed off on the rolloff control and it didn't sound as dark.
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So I have to say I'm really impressed with this and feel it's well worth the price. For my particular situation (the vast majority of my music collection is in really good condition and is mastered reasonably well), I'm not inclined to use it as a phono stage. I already have two good choices for phono stages and by using the Puffin as a phono stage, I would give up the ability to use it for CDs and streaming (without switching wires around, which I don't want to do on a regular basis).
At some point, to satisfy our curiosity, a friend and I may try to use the Puffin as a phono stage and compare it to the others we have. Between us, we have a few options (Clearaudio Nano, Graham Slee Reflex M, a couple of Jasmine models), but we still have to figure out whether we can create a test configuration that enables us to switch phono stages in real time vs having to take out one and install another. And wait for this virus thing to blow over.
*****************************
I've had my Puffin for a little over 24hrs and probably put 3-4 hours on it of active listening.
I'm using this in the tape loop as a sound enhancer, not as a phono stage.
First thing I wanted to test was whether the A->D and D-> process had an effect on the sound by itself, so I set it flat (Line In, 0db gain, no EQ effects active at all) so the DSP wasn't doing anything. I used a well recorded LP (Music Matters: Kenny Burrell, Midnight Blue). At first, I thought I detected a <5% loss of some air/dimension, but after trying to test myself and see whether I could tell whether it was in the loop or out (using the tape monitor button to bring it in or take it out), I couldn't reliably tell, so that tells me it's essentially transparent to me sonically at moderate volumes.
The feature I was really curious about was the new Magic click/pop suppressor. It works really well! I tried one LP that is likely just dirty and has a lot of small crackles during the lead-in and first part of the first track, a first pressing of Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vanguard that has frequent clicks/pops of various size due to age, and a Monk LP that had some serious scratches across a couple of tracks.
For the light stuff, it takes it out almost entirely. For the heavier/severe stuff, it seems to take out some of it and what it doesn't take out, it suppresses in volume and harshness by 70-80+%. So you hear that it's there, but it's not bothersome. For an add-on feature not in the scope of the original feature set, it's actually really impressive.
I do feel that it has some small effect on the sound - like the processed result isn't quite as dynamic, with a slight veil/polishing of the edges. But if given the choice to hear a largely noise free slightly less dynamic version instead of a noisy/distracting more dynamic version, I'd choose the former for sure. For the really serious stuff, even though it doesn't take out everything, at some point you wonder whether you should play it anyway due to possible negative effects on your stylus. But if you're willing to play it, it will be much much more tolerable.
I also played with the Tilt and Air features for the purpose of livening up duller sounding records. The two I used were the Mofi SACD of the Pretenders S/T album, which has always been a disappointment to me. Very dead sounding at moderate volumes and seems like it's rolled off at the top. Not quite as bad, but also disappointing to me was the redbook CD of Norah Jones Day Breaks album. At first I used Tilt only at the +2 level, then played around with adding some additional high end with the Air set at +2.
It definitely livened both albums up and improved the sound. On Day Breaks, it went from vocals and percussion being buried in the mix to them being significantly more detailed and able to be appreciated for the subtleties in the performance.
My preamp is a Mac C35, which has a five-band EQ, as well as variable loudness. I like variable loudness a lot for adding some warmth/meat to thinner sounding recordings without having to tweak individual EQ bands. But you can't really go in the opposite direction with that and help dead recordings sound more lively. Using some combination of the higher frequency EQ knobs, I perhaps could have livened up the recordings similarly, but I'm not yet sure whether I could achieve the same result. Even if I could, it's easier to remember that a certain album requires a +2 Tilt to optimize vs remembering that I need to be at 2 o'clock on the 1500hz knob and 3 o'clock on the 10kHz knob.
I also have a couple of old CDs that have pre-emphasis, but the flags aren't in the typical places and I don't have a CD player that will detect and de-emphasize them properly, so they sound thin and tinny with over-emphasized high frequencies. I tried the custom EQ settings that Shannon Parks suggested and that definitely took away that effect. Likely because I'm used to hearing them so tinny/thin, the custom EQ actually made them sound a bit darker than I thought was ideal, but I backed off on the rolloff control and it didn't sound as dark.
**************************
So I have to say I'm really impressed with this and feel it's well worth the price. For my particular situation (the vast majority of my music collection is in really good condition and is mastered reasonably well), I'm not inclined to use it as a phono stage. I already have two good choices for phono stages and by using the Puffin as a phono stage, I would give up the ability to use it for CDs and streaming (without switching wires around, which I don't want to do on a regular basis).
At some point, to satisfy our curiosity, a friend and I may try to use the Puffin as a phono stage and compare it to the others we have. Between us, we have a few options (Clearaudio Nano, Graham Slee Reflex M, a couple of Jasmine models), but we still have to figure out whether we can create a test configuration that enables us to switch phono stages in real time vs having to take out one and install another. And wait for this virus thing to blow over.
