WHAT...THE.... F&*@K...
what the hell happened to my system?!?! I just could NOT believe my ears. With the firmware 2003 on board, it was VERY CLEAR that there the beta firmware that my GG came with was holding it back. WAYYYYY BACK.
I have only heard this magnitude of improvement in my system maybe 2-3 times in my audiophile career. Most of them involved MAJOR changes like completely different speaker types, a vastly different room. The Big 7 did not do this when it first arrived. With the new firmware on board, I was in disbelief at what was coming out of my system. I thought I knew what it could do, but I was completely mistaken. My mouth just hung open with EVERY. SINGLE. TRACK.
To be clear, I do not think that this improvement was because of the 2003 firmware. It was because the 2001/beta firmware was just broken, and this was how this GG should be.
I basically sat there listening to track after track after track, not being able to drag myself away even to use the restroom or to eat. After 7 hours I realized I hadn't had lunch or dinner and was ravenous.
Remember when I said I thought the unit was 20-30% better than the Big 7? WRONG. Try 200% better. Of course, these things are hard to really quantify - but the best way to describe it is that the REALISM took a HUGE step forward. Tracks I knew well were suddenly
scary. To borrow someone's words who was very close to the building of the unit, it was like I took a @*()! hallucinogenic mushroom, in the best way possible.
In the past when I've had an "improved" piece of equipment in my system, I'd find dramatic improvements with some pieces, less so with others and almost none with some. The magnitude of the improvement over my Big 7 (which is NO slouch) was so vast that
every track I played sounded so different that I was afraid my head would drop off from shaking it in disbelief.
I have no idea what pixie dust or Polish black magic crazy Lukasz has put into this design, but the results are certainly mind-blowing. I just turned off the system 20 minutes ago and am still in awe of his creation.
Ked, does that answer your question about how it sounds?