Upgrade from XPS2 to XPS DR
Posted by: fernar on 16 February 2016
My N272 is now about two months old and I am enjoying it very much.... today I have upgraded the power supply from a XPS2 to a XPS DR...
I know I will have to go through the 'burn-in' period - but fresh after installing the new XPS DR and giving it about 1 hour of warm up time, I was curious to hear how bigger a difference there was between the N272 running on a XPS2 vs XPS DR.
I can say already that there are differences - bass is better controlled - initially I thought that the bass was lighter vs the XPS2, but it only initially seemed like that, but the depth in bass is still there but it's more controlled - the bass has less of a 'one tone' sound to it vs the XPS2.
I also feel that the sound-stage has got a bit wider and the sound of vocals seems to come out of no-where as the singer starts to sing... especially true on female vocals...
I must say that before I decided to upgrade, I did wondered just how much of an improvement the DR upgrade would give me... after all the XPS2 did improve the basic N272 by a lot.
However even after 1 hour of warm up time,.. it's clear that there is an improvement - if I had to put a number to how much of an improvement I would say around 10% -15% already..... (but it's difficulty to quantify improvement in sound quality numerically.....!!) to my ears the improvements are so far subtle but never-the-less an improvement vs just being different
I assume that as the XPS DR beds in over the next two or three week the sound will improve - (much the same as the N272 did over time after being initially installed). I have made some listening notes a number of tracks I played last night with the XPS2 - it will be interesting to note the differences after a few weeks one the new power supply has been run-in.