Prosaic purple or purple prose? I'll attempt to stay closer to black 'n' white just because it made my exercise more challenging. Let's talk timing. A famous musician once said that to make music just means playing the right notes at the right time. Then why do classical musicians crossing over into Jazz sound so stunted and stilted? Whilst playing all the right notes, they don't understand its freer phrasing. Listen to German clarinetist Sabine Meyer play with Paquito D'Rivera and Eddie Daniels. Her training at the classical conservatory—Hans Deinzer's class in Hannover—won her a position at the then badly male-dominated Berlin Philharmonic because Karajan insisted. Yet it telegraphs like a sore thumb against actual masters of Jazz like Paquito and Eddie whose tone and phrasing are far more elastic. It's why another Jazz cat quipped that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Speaker design has its own opinions on timing. For every Richard Vandersteen who insists on physically time-aligned drivers interfaced by 1st-order filters, there are hundreds who claim that time alignment isn't audible. Speakers of either stripes and spots sell just fine. Clearly some listeners are more attuned to or critical of phase shift and group delay than others. I happen to fancy widebanders with no typical 1-3kHz filter; and DC-coupled class AB amplifiers of broad bandwidth. I've owned classic 3-ways and 4-ways and many different valve amps and class A transistors. Over a good two decades I've sampled a quite varied spread. Slowly but surely I drifted into said preference without conscious steering. One day I simply looked at my considerable speaker and amp collection and which of them I listened to the most. When the penny dropped, I divested myself of the rest earlier this year.

I'm very clear on thinking that sensitivity to timing in both musical performances and the systems which play them back varies between listeners. As such I'm cloudy whether components or accessories which to my ears—and in my systems curated accordingly—improve that aspect will do it for others who focus far more on the frequency response, tonal balance, timbre or soundstaging. In my lingo, the difference lives in the domain of dance. At its most fundamental, inquire into whether a tune dances or marches. It's about feel, not technique or wrong notes. One reading moves free, fluid and elastic; another labours mechanical, restrained and subliminally clipped. It's a matter of gestalt not detail. It's like a restaurant's atmosphere. No matter how brilliant the food, if the atmosphere isn't congenial where we obviously expect different opinions on what congenial means, people tend to not return.

Ditto listeners who travel on the track of time. Regardless how brilliant the sound per se, if the temporal milieu around it lacks that freer gushiness which isn't metronomic, time travellers won't feel stimulated. The difference Regie made on the timing score was shockingly potent. Would you agree had you sat beside me? I couldn't say. Sir Regie as Mister Bojangles the silver fox on the dance floor? Yes. For how I perceive and am triggered. Did that put it properly black 'n' white? Once we open to fifty shades of grey, we ask 'why' and 'how'. Digital and network engineers might know. I don't other than the glaringly obvious: Regie actually reclocks thus retimes the incoming cloud stream. Does that explain it? I'm not sure. I simply suspect that on this score, my desktop installation had considerable improvement headroom. Again, that recent test involving this TriField gizmo had set me on this track. My big 34" computer monitor as noise injector into the system loom couldn't have been innocent. Be that as it may, my before/after Regie gap about the feel of timing was significant. A pragmatist can enjoy without understanding what makes it so.

Let's stick with that.

Here's a sticky doozie one could wield like a bobby's truncheon. If we have fun listening, that enjoyment notices more. When anything about engagement becomes laboured like trying to walk through dry sand briskly, our subtler attention suffers. From this follows that it's virtually impossible to be sure whether certain things which easeful enjoyment notices weren't there to begin with. We simply failed to pay deeper attention because we struggled with coarser matters far closer to the surface. It's a bit like unfounded happiness. It's transformative. Nothing looks impossible. Beauty is everywhere. Meanwhile all the unhappy person sees are misery and limitations. Those sights become justifications for being miserable. It's a self-fulfilling negative feedback loop. It strikes me that in the pursuit of a hifi we call persuasive enough to want to use daily, we must learn our strongest anti triggers which disqualify all other virtues. Rephrased, what must be in place to mean smooth sailing as is? If we just knew that, a system could have known shortcomings which don't impinge on our enjoyment at all. If instead we polish up tertiary aspects whilst leaving primaries unattended, our various hifi fixes will be short-lived. We've not managed to address what is far more important – to us.

Though there were other aspects which Regie improved, listing them would diminish the primacy of timing and potentially run afoul of selective noticing. Handling a personal biggie like Stack's pretty mini brick did should stand on its own to properly parlay the many 'happiness' repercussions. Again, my biggie might not even ping your radar. You have to be sensitive to timing. Here's another doozie. I pay for 1Gbps fibre broadband to usually clock ~600-750Mbps. Yet running a speed test with Regie as his bottleneck Mr. Hyde persona showed just above 90Mbps for downloads and uploads. Since it didn't impact my publishing workload or heaviest multi-parallel streaming, it's a merely incidental observation. Honesty just demands it gets made again before these curtains fall. Given Regie's showing, you won't need me to spell out my value assessment. Whilst seeming pricey for its bijou stature, many DAP of its profile charge more. If you're the time-travelling type listener keenly attuned to temporal looseness or rigidity, the foundational shift Regie made to my desktop would strike you as quite priceless. Given its potency, you'll subsequently applaud that this job needs nothing bigger. To be redundant, the job in question was getting the timing of my tunes to loosen up. If that is Swahili to you, Regie might just not be your man. Or perhaps for you his dance would telegraph quite differently?

Curtain call!

I knew a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you in worn-out shoes
silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants, the old soft shoe
he jumped so high, he jumped so high, he'd lightly touch down.

I met him in a cell in New Orleans, I was down and out
he looked to me to be the eyes of age as he spoke right out…
he talked of life, he talked of life, he laugh-slapped his leg in step.

He said the name Bojangles and he danced a lick across the cell
he grabbed his pants, a better stance, Whoa, he jumped so high
clicked his heels, let go a laugh, let go a laugh, shook back his clothes all around.

He's danced for those at minstrel shows and county fairs
throughout the South, he spoke with tears of fifteen years
how his dog and him, they travelled about…

He shook his head and as he shook his head
I heard someone ask, "please
Mr. Bojangles, dance…"