A Hi-Fi Trip to Ipoh - Part 2 - ACOUSTIC SIGNATURE / EAR / AUDIO RESEARCH / WILSON AUDIO

Mr. Pung's place was our second stop on our Ipoh trip. He is a respected veteran in the Ipoh HiFi scene and has an extensive audiophile network there. Our one-day trip was organized via him, so we'd very much like to thank him for his time and effort. 

Pung's system was also located in a dedicated audio room. He had paid particular attention to acoustic treatment of his room lately. Just as many of us know, room acoustic could make or break a system's performance. In addition, Pung was also diligent in loudspeaker positioning, you could see markings on the floor of the various positions that he had tried.

The photos below demonstrate the extensive effort Pung put into treating his room. He did it with a myriad of absorbing (soft) and diffusing (hard and uneven) materials. Having a good mix of both is a correct approach as this would avoid the pitfall of having the sound skewing too much to one particular direction, for example a lot of absorptive material would give a quiet room but the sound could be dull as the high frequency is curtailed.   

The acoustic treatment was not all done in one go. He experimented with the quantity and placement over time. Sometime he would reverse what he did previously. That is definitely a good strategy that I'd also endorse. Flexibility is important for acoustic treatment as the treatment must be suitable for the character of that particular room and the system that is used in it. 

Our listening session borne out Pung's effort. The room had no discernable echo nor was it overly reverberant, both are things that mess up the sound when playing music. Neither were there boominess in the bass region nor over-brightness in the highs too.

Acoustic treatment on the ceiling, the front wall and the corners 

Acoustic treatment on the side wall's first reflection point and the rest of the wall 

Let's take a tour of Pung's system:

The source we listened to was exclusively analog, it was a Acoustic Signature turntable and arm, fitted with a ZYX cartridge. Pung told us he was waiting for his dCS digital stack to be delivered soon

EAR 324 phono pre-amplifier

Audio Research Reference 6 Preamplifier

Audio Research Reference 150 power amp

The Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy 7

The WATT

The Puppy

I think Audio Research and Wilson are a very good match. This was the second time that I heard this combination producing great sound, so I think this was not a fluke. This system avoided all the pitfalls of Wilson speakers when they were not well matched, where they would sound aggressive, sharp, hard and/or harsh. And it retained all the good traits of these Wilsons, sounding big, free with dynamics, and lightning fast with attack. In addition to the amp-speaker pairing. I believe Pung's effort in doing acoustic treatment also contributed substantially to this performance. 

That was not all, it was a balanced performance from top to bottom in terms of highs, mid, lows, and I wondered whether it was the LP frontend, that the tonal color was rather vivid, definitely not the dull or washed-out kind. All sorts of music replay was also imbued with a certain warmth, so the musicality of each recording came through very well. 

This was an enjoyable listening session. It goes to show that putting some tender loving care in the room treatment department, speaker positioning and smart equipment matching can pay huge dividends. Hats off to Pung!