Anouar Brahem - The astounding eyes of Rita

I don’t know the value of these posts but if nothing else it shows the journey I’ve done over a couple of years. About the only constant is the recordings that I use for my testing and comparison.
The recordings I’ve done with various tools can’t totally reproduce the sound I have in my quite regular listening/living room. These most resent recording are done with my phone and a Zoom AM7 USB microphone. I have used the Zoom application Handy Recorder in WAV 16 bit 48 kHz quality Compared to live listening the Zoom AM7 gives a bit ”tinny” sound I think!
My music setup has been altered as well 😊
Right now I’m streaming from a micro-PC with ROON ROCK installed. The signal is digitally transported by an AudioQuest Cinnamon USB cable to the Gustard X16 DAC. From the DAC the analogue signal goes via a pair of Chord Indigo Tuned Array cables to the Arcam AVR550.
The Arcam is set to put through Stereo Direct, so no involvement by the Arcam other than pre and power amplification. I’m not particulary impressed with the Arcam’s decoding abilities but the amplification is pretty good with its 1500 W transformer capacity. Since this is a surround receiver i use it in bi-amping mode with aproximately 90 W each to bass and fullrange, and these watts seem to be real. The bass signal goes via IXUS XHS553 4.2 mm silver/SP-OFC cables and fullrange via Van Den Hull M.C. CS 122 Hybrid.
The speakers are a pair of heavily modified Mordaunt-Short MS908. The tweeters are replaced with a pair of Dayton Audio AMT Mini-8 Air Motion Tweeters, the 10'' bass crossower is from Canton Plus C subwoofer and the fullrange crossover is a Monacor DN-200. The former dual 5.25 inch 200 – 3500 Hz midranges now is split and one plays 0 – 3500 Hz and the other plays 700 – 3500 Hz. The bass previously played up to 200 Hz alone but now plays up to 120 Hz together with one of the forward facing 5.25 inch speakers. Since the cavity for this smaller speaker is only about 2 litres it acts more like a mid-bass and complets the 10 inch woofer very well. The speakers are placed with their woofers pointing inwards with the intent to have the bass a bit more controled. The speakers are also toed in a couple of degrees and tilted slightly backwards.