Questions on powering a Lexicon MC-8 V2

AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
So now you two can year all the differences yielded by those specs? Nice.
Oh yeah. Depends on whom I’m talking to. Haha. :D

Sometimes I’m Superman, sometimes I’m just Clark. :D

In this thread, I’m Superman.

I can hear all kinds of things. No seriously. Not laughing here.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Gee and I thought it was just "audiophile" brand excitement.
 
C

CoryW

Audioholic
The Lexicon MC-8 should sound pretty good. It measures better than most AVRs: THD 0.026%, Crosstalk 90dB, SNR 120dB.


However, it’s no match for the State of the Art Yamaha CX-A5100: THD 0.008%, Crosstalk 94dB, SNR 131dB. :cool: :D

what does the Yamaha go for?
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
what does the Yamaha go for?
I haven’t checked eBay for one. But I love mine. Gene has/had the CX-A5100 also. Awesome sound quality. Awesome build. One of the most reliable brands. State of the Art measurements (Gene likes to say “SOTA”).
 
C

CoryW

Audioholic
Ok, um. Wow. Got my other amp today and all of my balanced interconnects, tore out all my equipment and rebuilt a Lexicon based 7.1 system up from the ground floor so to speak. Holy hell does my L4/L5 want to kill me. Morphine pump on high, color draining, neorustimulator on max, Scotty dammit I need impulse drive or were dead....

The M-8 is older, but it’s sound is absolutely refined. It passes up a $4k Pioneer flagship with ease. I’ve heard that changes in your receiver/amps won’t have much change on sound. If your running RBH T2/R stacks, you’ll notice. The low end quality is so striking. No wonder rich people buy this kind of stuff.
 
C

CoryW

Audioholic
Ok, um. Wow. Got my other amp today and all of my balanced interconnects, tore out all my equipment and rebuilt a Lexicon based 7.1 system up from the ground floor so to speak. Holy hell does my L4/L5 want to kill me. Morphine pump on high, color draining, neorustimulator on max, Scotty dammit I need impulse drive or were dead....

The M-8 is older, but it’s sound is absolutely refined. It passes up a $4k Pioneer flagship with ease. I’ve heard that changes in your receiver/amps won’t have much change on sound. If your running RBH T2/R stacks, you’ll notice. The low end quality is so striking. No wonder rich people buy this kind of stuff.
I went through the massive manual, went through a few more configuration, added two new amps to the mix, both are 500 watt into 4ohm. That’s a total of five high current powering my experiment. My input is lossless files played through a media tank that’s using a ESS Saber 9023 dac. It has an excellent two channel analog.

I read up in the Lexicon’s two channel bypass. So it was enabled, I selected Peter Hurford’s “Bach J.S. Organ Works” first track, the Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor.....then we wait

The sound produced was unlike anything I have ever heard. It had a quality with frequency delivery that allows you to easy focus on specific pipes, it was so strange. The deepest pedal notes had an amazing depth and weight to it, not over bearing...perfect balance. The clarity, phase, what ever you can call it. Was so real and present, I was sitting in the pews. It was shocking to hear, to feel. There were no speakers used, it was just an organ with tremendous reverb in the space.

Dan Dzuban from UltraHighEndReview stated:

The MC-8 is an exceptional analog preamp. Its superiority to my Parasound became clear nearly immediately; within just a few minutes of warm up, I could hear that this is no preamp to be trifled with. My system got an immediate bump up in clarity, along with more space between sounds, as well as a sense of "blacker" space between sounds. Good deal. But what that did was allow more phase information to come through in each recording. As sound emanated from instruments, I could better hear the individual radiation pattern of each sound, and how those individual patterns radiated throughout the soundstage. "Baby, Now that I Found You," from Alison Krauss' Now That I Found You: Collection (Rounder: 1995) is an excellent recording to show off this phenomenon. The recording contains lots of plucked, struck, strummed, and bowed instruments along with Krauss' voice and the voices of her background singers. There were lots of different sounds with lots of different textures, lots of different "bloom" and lots of different decay. I keep saying that I hate country music, but this song (and album) is simply a joy to listen to for anyone who really loves music. And the Lexicon made it sound even better.

If you have the opportunity and the amps to drive, you’ll never be the same.
 
M Code

M Code

Audioholic General
The MC-8 V2 has significant DSP resources.. My personal preference when playing a Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 is to switch ON Logic 7. Logic 7 overlays the native 5.1 stream and makes an audible difference especially for Music. Dr.Greissinger, inventor of Logic 7 was a very creative musician and DSP engineer....

Just my $0.02... ;)
 
C

CoryW

Audioholic
The MC-8 V2 has significant DSP resources.. My personal preference when playing a Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 is to switch ON Logic 7. Logic 7 overlays the native 5.1 stream and makes an audible difference especially for Music. Dr.Greissinger, inventor of Logic 7 was a very creative musician and DSP engineer....

Just my $0.02... ;)
I just tried this, and it sounds wonderful. I have never cared much for mult channel music. This will change it. Can’t wait to play this week.
 
M Code

M Code

Audioholic General
I just tried this, and it sounds wonderful. I have never cared much for mult channel music. This will change it. Can’t wait to play this week.
IMHO...
Logic 7 was superb in its day.. When overlaying a 5.1 surround stream with Logic 7 U have (3) options; Music, Cinema and Game. To my ears the improvement was significant especially for Music. Also U may want to try Logic 7 Music 5.1 with a 2-channel stereo PCM stream.
Many years back we worked closely with Dr.Greissinger on Logic 7 options mainly used by Harman 12V OE automotive for their Toyota/Lexus proprietary surround modes..

Just my $0.02... ;)
 
C

CoryW

Audioholic
IMHO...
Logic 7 was superb in its day.. When overlaying a 5.1 surround stream with Logic 7 U have (3) options; Music, Cinema and Game. To my ears the improvement was significant especially for Music. Also U may want to try Logic 7 Music 5.1 with a 2-channel stereo PCM stream.
Many years back we worked closely with Dr.Greissinger on Logic 7 options mainly used by Harman 12V OE automotive for their Toyota/Lexus proprietary surround modes..

Just my $0.02... ;)
Been playing with the L7 thx to your reply. Holy crap is this the best sound I’ve ever heard in my 45 years in audio. I believe much credit goes to my RBH reference T2 stacks with three reference 661. As it turns out, they are incredibly revealing to any weaknesses is the system from component to recording. I’m not using crazy expensive amps. I have an analogue source with a very high quality analogue output. I’ll play with that all afternoon. Thx.
 

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AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
IMHO...
Logic 7 was superb in its day.. When overlaying a 5.1 surround stream with Logic 7 U have (3) options; Music, Cinema and Game. To my ears the improvement was significant especially for Music. Also U may want to try Logic 7 Music 5.1 with a 2-channel stereo PCM stream.
Many years back we worked closely with Dr.Greissinger on Logic 7 options mainly used by Harman 12V OE automotive for their Toyota/Lexus proprietary surround modes..

Just my $0.02... ;)
I remember Logic 7. It was pretty alright.

But I think DSU and DTS NeuralX are much better sound quality.
 
M Code

M Code

Audioholic General
I remember Logic 7. It was pretty alright.

But I think DSU and DTS NeuralX are much better sound quality.
IMHO...
I find the playback of music through various surround modes including Dolby Atmos up-mixer doesn't seem to have the proper spacialness and channel balance...To my ears I prefer some of the earlier DTS music surround content, including certain material that was never released to the market. Some years back we did a lot of trade-show-demos-marketing presentations for DTS, and they had exclusive access to some incredible masters from Universal which DTS did some some surround remixes of. Note that these unique surround remixes cannot be distributed due to copyright issues, but I am fortunate to have copies of many of these unique and whenever I play one I continue to be amazed about how good they sound.... :cool:

Just my $0.02... ;)
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
IMHO...
I find the playback of music through various surround modes including Dolby Atmos up-mixer doesn't seem to have the proper spacialness and channel balance...To my ears I prefer some of the earlier DTS music surround content, including certain material that was never released to the market. Some years back we did a lot of trade-show-demos-marketing presentations for DTS, and they had exclusive access to some incredible masters from Universal which DTS did some some surround remixes of. Note that these unique surround remixes cannot be distributed due to copyright issues, but I am fortunate to have copies of many of these unique and whenever I play one I continue to be amazed about how good they sound.... :cool:

Just my $0.02... ;)
Does that speak to the DTS crew's remixing skills or the codec (or sound mode upmixer) itself, tho?
 
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