or… “Running Out of Room Here at Audio Federation”.

or… “The Beauty and the Beast”

or… “It really sounds pretty darn good, considering…”

or… “So, we keep stacking speakers choo-choo style like this and we are going to find ourselves to be sitting nearfield”

These pictures were taken right before a demo of the U1 electrostatics moved the Kharma loudspeakers to the side.

The Mini Exquisites sounded really good with the EDGE Signtaure One amplifiers - even though the Sound Lab loudspeakers were right behind them… more or less.

But we have no choice; we’re running out of room here unless we do something radical.

And Neli has her eye on getting in some MORE speakers…..?

I liked it better when she was collecting amplifiers….

Wide angle view of Listening room #2 - with the Sound Lab U1 loudspeakers behind the Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeakers in a demonstartion of the 27th kind of positioning hell.

“…but it’s all right now.”

Do you know - we could see - a whole Blog written using only Beatles lyrics?

Except for the words like Blog and Website .

Guess that’s why they say that you can get through life just fine if you are able to quote, and understand, every Star Trek episode AND every Beatles song.

They don’t say that?

Sure they do.

I bet someone does….anyway.

A little wacky here tonight… ?

Next will be a Blog software update. And we will probably widen the blog to 1000 pixels from the current 740 or so. Should make for larger photos.

Also need to make the top picture show up on Firefox - and be clickable. Stuff like that….

Hopefully, this won’t be a problem, and things will go as smooth as Diana Krall’s voice and not Dylan’s….

And the funny thing is - if we DO go off the air for a bit - no one will be able to read this BLOG to see that it was indeed a ‘planned’ outage.

Oh well, YOU will know….

Usually we choose one system to leave playing all day - and recently that has been the Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeakers, the Edge Signature One monoblock amplifiers, and the Audio Aero Capitole CD player - all cabled with Valhalla. Very nice. I wonder if Kharma hasn’t tuned their speakers of late to sound very excellente with solidstate amplifiers - as these are the style of amplifiers that they now make themselves.

The Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers got all new tubes and are breaking in…

We are still trying out / breaking in the Jorma Design power cords - veddy veddy interesting. VERY transparent.

Went shopping for LPs at a large antique store which was near where my car was getting it annual thing. Boy, quality (no covers no nuthin?) and pricing (some of these prices are nuts!) sure does vary wildly. Got some Blondie LPs (no, not lips, L-P’s) in great shape though, and a B&W speaker demo LP (haven’t heard it yet), and an LP of turn-of-the century Caberet songs. Anyway, sure made waiting for the car a lot more fun

We have been auditioning the Elrod Statement power cords here for a few months now - and it has become one of those things that we, epsecially Neli, just can’t live without (and its not so awfully expensive that we don’t have to live without them - at least for a little while ).

After seeing the Elrod powercords for years at shows like CES and Stereophile’s Home Entertainment Show, an audition was arranged. Being somewhat unweildy, we tried them mostly on amplifiers.

They just do something that no other powercord does, in our experience, nor is it likely to. These puppies are massive - they seem to let the amp have as much juice as it wants when it wants it [thinking of audiphile powercords now as a local reservoir of electrons - at the ready when the music’s dynamics require there to be adequate power NOW] and the resulting relaxed, open and deep sound is refreshing and natural.

An upcoming Blog post will talk more about powercords - and the shootouts, specifically - but for now just imagine a spectrum:

Very detailed, Fast < --------------------> Very open, relaxed, round and full-sounding

on that spectrum we have:

Nordost Valhalla powercords < -------- Shunyata Helix Anaconda Alpha ------ Shunyata Anaconda Helix Vx -------- older Shunyata Anaconda Vx -------> Elrod Statements

The older Shunyata Anaconda Alpha is not as open sounding as the new Shunyata Anaconda Helix Vx so it should go to the left of it…

but it is less detailed, so it should go to the right of it… so this is not a perfect scale against which to measure all powercords…. but it is a start, I think.

Anywho, the Elrod powercords on the right there is the sound that we, and many of our customers, are often looking for. A sort of antidote to the tight, controlled, detailed sound that many of our other customers like - but which some find a little too clinical and unnatural and who like more macrodynamics.

We have had the Elron Statements on the ML2.1 monoblock amplifiers quite a bit of late. Luckily the Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers have a bass adjustment knob, because we got a LOT more bass all of a sudden when we put these powercords on.

We got similar, but somewhat less dramatic, results on the other systems and amplifiers we put these on.

These powercords are an easy fix for A LOT of anemic and/or clinical-sounding systems out there!

Been a rainy week and it has been quiet here….

Let’s see… a 6C33C tube expired here on one of the Lamm ML2.1’s - we think the sound on these may have been comprimised for the last week or so because of this bad, bad tube - so we moved the Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeakers over to the Edge Signature One monoblock amplifiers. Sounds Great!

Did a shoot out of 6 different powercords: EL-ROD Statement, Nordost Valhalla, Shunyata Anaconda Alpha, Anaconda Helix Alpha and Anaconda Helix Vx, plus the Jorma Design powercords as the underdogs. More on that sometime….

Auditioning another preamp …

Yep. Been quiet here.

Our first Harmonic Resolution System MXR equipment rack, in gloss black, arrived just before the HE 2006 show. So we assembled it, taking lots of photos, played it for a few days (yes, it is just like a component), and then were subsequently inundated with reports to write: From the HE 2006 Show Report, to the VTV 2006 Show Report, to the Cogent True-to-Life horn loudspeaker tour.

So finally, without further delay, we have finally posted to the website (oh, please no! Not more photos! Yes, more photos) the Tour in Gloss Black, the Pictorial Odyssey through the Process of The Assemblage, the Celebratory Victory over the Vibrating Elements of the Sound Dimension, The….

Assembly of the HRS MXR Equipment Rack

This is an equipment rack whose sonic impact on our system in listening room number two Blew Our Minds. We thought it would sound a little better - and look better by hiding all those cables.

And the feel of this rack is like that of a Mercedes - with tolerances few turntables can match - and a truly Impressive impact on the sound - especially dynamics along with much improved evening out, a cmore correct proportioning of all sorts of sonic properties across the frequecny spectrum, top to bottom.

Kind of a loss for words here - everybody expects that a $50K preamp and a $20K pair of speaker cables are going to sound pretty dran good, right? But a 15K equipment rack?

Yes! Yes, Yes!

The Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers now had SLAM on the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers…….!

…… all because the Lamm L2 preamplifier, the Audio Note CDT-Three transport and the Audio Note DAC 4.1x Balanced were on the MXR rack instead of on the Acoustic Dreams equipment rack - no slouch itself in the vibration control department either, at least compared to the rest of the competition.

What, with the Jorma Design Prime cables, the Audio Note M10 preamplifier, and this HRS MXR equipment rack - we have heard a lot of stuff in this last month or so that KICK sonic booty -

that dramatically improve the sound of already state-of-the-art systems,

that really go one step beyond what are reasonable expectations for what a pile of resistors and spun metal can do to one’s mind,

that can open doors into new dimensions of visualizations and sounds to which we attach the dramatically understated label ‘music’, ….

i.e. they kick some humongous sonic booty.

How deep to you want to go today? Red pill or blue? Or gloss black?

Me, I’ll take gloss black.