Today marks a week of listening to the impressive Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers on the "Stokowski" Altec's as they've been getting some run-in time on them.
I've been getting about 6 to 8 hours of music-playing time on them a day over the last week, so I'm somewhere in the range of 42 to 56 hours of run-in time range total, so about halfway to the initial 100 hour run-in benchmark.
The Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers have a beguiling relaxed clarity about them that I find very appealing.
For example, on the Gillian Welch and David Rawlings LP The Harrow & The Harvest, you may have thought only Gillian was doing vocals, but in reality David is singing harmony very softly along with Gillian, and you won't hear that resolved in a lot of systems, but with Duelund-ized Altec's it is resolved quite easily.
The Harrow & The Harvest
Initially I was hearing a little roughness in the upper-midrange, which I suspected was due to the Duelund DCA16GA tinned-copper wiring in the crossover needing a little run-in time, as the DCA16GA can sound a little rough until it runs-in.
In listening to The Harrow & The Harvest just now, that little bit of upper-midrange roughness has diminished by a little more than half, so it appears my speculation about the DCA16GA was on target, and everything is smoothing out nicely as it runs-in.
I'm really impressed with the Duelund CAST tinned-copper components / crossovers rendering of the musical elements like timbre, tone color, melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, and dynamics.
In fact, particularly for melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, and dynamics, the Duelund CAST Sn-Cu components are really breaking new ground through the Altec's with how live-like the music sounds and feels, which gives the music a captivating and exhilarating feeling during listening sessions.
From a sonic perspective I'm impressed as well. As I mentioned earlier, there's a relaxed transparency, yet with high clarity, lots of natural sounding detail, and a really nice separation of instruments upon the soundstage, that makes for for any uncanny presentation that is really satisfying.
All this works together to make music sound natural and live-like, with a nice sense of spaciousness that reminds me of a well dialed-in reverb time at a recording venue.
The Duelund CAST Sn-Cu crossovers sound so good I haven't really thought much about trying different Duelund DCA tinned-copper wire gauges for wiring the low-frequency or high-frequency drivers (DCA20GA on the HF and DCA12GA on the LF?), or changing the speaker cables.
I'll revisit the wire topic after another week of run-in, which should put me pretty close to the 100 hour point.
If I have enough Duelund DCA12GA left, I'll replace the 600V DCA12GA that I'm using as speaker cables now (to get some time on them before I try making some power cords out of them) to hear what happens. Or maybe DCA16GA?
Duelund CAST Sn-Cu components for the Duelund-Altec Project.
Anyways, that's quick report after 1 week. Everything is going great with the Duelund-Altec Project's Duelund CAST Sn-Cu crossovers, and they're sounding mighty fine, so it's full steam ahead!
As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!
