Well, well, well… it is working a heckuva lot better than anticipated.

Actually, it sounds really excellent.

We are really performing two tests here:

Can the little Kharma fill our large room with sound? Yes.

Can the Ongaku integrated drive the Mini Exquisites. Yes, for the most part.

The highs and mids are extremely lovely. We have not heard the Kharmas sound like this before. The 6C33C tubes on the Lamm ML1 and ML2 amps, and even the 300B on the audio Note Kegons, just do not have the amazingly seductive quality of the 211 tube on the Ongaku. Combined with the Kharma’s natural seductive qualities, along with its very, very high resolution in these frequencies - it is just a joy to listen to.

As for the bass - the bass is present - and satisfactory. Enough to not take away from the rest of the frequencies. But seriously, bass is not why a person has these littler Kharmas nor a tube amp. So I would give it a ‘B’ for bass. An A+ for the rest.

Finally - there is some slight congestion during very loud, complex passages… this started to diminish over time, so perhaps the amps were still warming up from when we turned them off to hook them up. We’ll hear how far things have improved in a few days….

The upstream components… mostly using the Emmlabs CDSD/ DCC2 combo, with the Audio Aero Capitole stepping in for comparison purposes.

We talk to a number of people from outside the U.S. - a significant percentage of our readers are from overseas and Canada - and we often hear something like:

“Oh, only you Americans care about soundstaging.”

Soundstaging - for the purpose of this post - is depth and breadth of imaging - being able to hear WHERE the instruments are. Soundstaging is the opposite of a ‘wall of sound’ - where the sound seems to come to the listener in one big mish mash from the general direction of the plane of the speakers.

OK, it does take a larger-sized room to be able to pull the speakers out from the wall in order to hear any kind of soundstagjing. And many people in Europe do not have large-sized rooms. But we hear the same thing from Australia - which has side-open spaces like we do and presumably large-sized listening rooms.

Funny, Americans are supposed to be unsophisticated - not caring about subtle details that contribute to enjoyment of the finer things in life. Well, at least in this case - I think they are wrong.

Why? Because soundstaging occurs in real life - and one of the things our systems should do is try to mimic real life.

Certainly acoustical instruments soundstage. Otherwise we would be a dead species - hearing the lion’s roar, or baby’s cry, not knowing where it came from.

In many amplified venues, the counter-argument goes, people do not hear a soundstage. I think this is because the amplification is cheap and not setup correctly, sound coming from speakers mounted on the ceiling, in the walls, … coming from amps shared by multiple instruments… etc.

So, not much else to say - it is obviously NOT a vice, and is instead an attribute of the Real Thing. Hopefully our audiophiles overseas will catch up to us Funny though, speakers manufactured overseas soundstage just fine thank you, being a result of matching pairs of speakers (frequency response, etc) and a decently detailed treble. So we just got to get them to pull the speakers out from the wall and get with the program….

One thing I know, once you get used to soundstaging, it is hard to live without. It is addictive.

Whoo hoo, we’re one of the blogs feeding speshy.com!

We got some serious wind a few days ago…. and one of the trees, one that was dead anyway… decided to lay down for awhile.

This tree has been in most of the photos of our main listening room (and listening room/showroom #2). Then it died a few years - but its bark turned an interesting red color and so it still contributed to the ambiance of the scenery outside.

If you look closely, you can see the silhouette of a Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeaker through the window on the left…

The root system sure wasn’t much to look at… Glad it went THAT way through the fence and not through the window…

But it landed on another dead tree - a cool looking one at that - so we have this abstract branch sculpture to look at if we get bored…. So it still contributes to the ambiance - just a little more chaotically.

First off, daughter got successfully married to her first husband (hey, one can’t ignore statistics - or heredity , relatives have come and gone, and time to get back to work….

I’m writing this in Firefox, which has a built in spell checker, so if all goes well my posts will read a little more like English and less like Mikeish.

So… the ro0ms are pretty much the same as they have been…

We have the Kharma Mini Exquisites upstairs waiting to be tried with the Audio Note Ongaku, Driven by the Emm Labs CDSD/DCC2 (the CDSA is out on audition - for those that want transparency and musical truth, this is an amazing deal at $10K, the bar has been raised significantly).

The Mini’s are somewhat hard to drive, so we’ll see if the 25 watt Ongakus do it or not.

The dream system - Marten Coltranes driven by Audio Note Kegon amps and the Audio Note M10 preamp (with an Audio Note digital front end - CDT3 and DAC 4.1x Balanced). We’ve taken most of this system to Rocky Mountain Audio Fest shows - but not with the M10, which adds C-O-N-T-R-O-L. Kind of a Kegon++ type sound. A slightly rounder sound than the Lamm ML2/L2/Coltrane/HRS system/Jorma Prime - our other reference Coltrane system - we might take the former system to CES next year.

The equipment rack. Duh.

The Marten Supremes need to go upstairs - yes - at 300lbs for the bass units (includes the 50lb spikes on the bottom) Neli is pressuring Mike to get the to a gym…. but we might just hire some guys we know - who handled the Triolons several times and will be happy to see that these are REASONABLY-sized speakers for a change.

Finally, out smaller system room. The Audio Aero Prestige CD/SACD player into the Audio Note Otto integrated into Audio Note speakers. Very nice and immediate and uncompressed. Otto still breaking in though….

The closeup view…

The SXR is HRS’s new equipment rack, a ‘little brother’ to their no holds barred MXR equipment rack.

The SXR rack, without platforms (aka shelves) is about 1/2 the price of the MXR without shevles.

It is fully configurable, from one shelf (amp stand) to 4 or 5 (or perhaps more, but sonic degradations will start to show its head much higher than this)

All parts are reusable as you upgrade and extend the rack over the coming years…

Yes, including double-wide, triple and more -wide as well…

We hope to get one or two of these in here sometime, probably closer to the end of the summer…. if for no other reason than they are easier to move around and take to shows.

I’ve been wondering whether many of us have too high of expectations for attendance at shows…

Think about other shows, which I have not attended, much like the vsat majority of the populace who have not gone to these shows either [whether high-end audio or not].

Take for example an auto show or pet show.

As a bystander, I think I might want to go to one of these shows sometime - but a few things hold me back:

1. Difficulty of finding parking (and the expense of parking)

2. Crowds. Too crowded to get to see and do what I might want to do there.

3. A lot of hype. A lot of people trying to convince me what it the best X, Y or Z.

4. Cost. Hidden costs of food and drink and costs at the gate.

5. Wondering if it is just going to be boring. Nothing really cool to see.

If I was marketting a show I would try and address each one of these issues - let people know ahead of time what to expect - though there is not much one can do about #2

So thoughts:

People like passive entertainment - so perhaps a large room could be set aside, large enough to hold 1000+ people, and demos could be wheeled in and out all day long - with a little shpeel before and after. And let people freely come and go.

A pictorial show directory - so people can look for things that LOOK cool and search them out….

But at the end of the day - most shows are going to have the industry and hardcore hobbiasts in attendance - and that goes for CEDIA, CES, HE, and most other shows I have attended. They usually have provisions for the public - often offering free tickets to the exhbitions - but I would estimate less than 1% are John and Mary Q. Public.