We were originally scheduled to drive out to Las Vegas tomorrow, Monday [it is about a 12 hour drive], setup on Tuesday, and fix any problems and let things warm up on Wednesday.

But the shipment from Audio Note did not clear customs until late New Years Eve. So Monday we spend at the shippers, forwarding things on to Las Vegas and several dealers. Now Tuesday we drive. Wednesday we rent a truck and go pick up things at the shipper and get them up to the two rooms. We figure that by 6pm, we will start unpacking and setting up the system.

Audio Note Gaku-Ons at night

For some reason, I think a lot of people are like this - and wait to the last minute for everything [ALTHOUGH 90% of the exhibitors get it together early enough to have time to ship their stuff so that it automagically appears in their exhibit rooms without them having to lift a finger]

The thing is, we are not like this.

One of the [many] reasons our rooms at shows sound so good is that we allow ourselves time to let things warm up, to tweak things this way and that, to actually listen to the system to see if and where it needs a little love.

We’ll do our best, of course, but this sure ain’t helping my gray hair problem any!

Audio Note Gaku-Ons at night

We’re taking the Gaku On amplifiers to CES. .

We have a ton of photos. Still will take another ton.

These are not our amps - but suffice it to say I ***WILL*** have these amps for my own, someday. They are just so much better than anything else… except, well, the Lamm ML3 are different. Suffice to to say I ***WILL*** own both someday.

And I usually, eventually, perhaps decades down the road, own everything I want. As do most people, really. It is figuring out what I want that takes for-ev-er. And then figuring out how to focus my efforts so that they are not wasted on silly things like food and vacations

Yes, a ton of photos. A little bit of confusion about where to post the photos. Here… yes, but they are so small. On Spintricity, it will look great, but if we are not careful, everything over there will be Audio Note - they make such a wide range [aka large number] of good looking equipment.

Maybe I’ll post it over on Luxury Review [a stealth zine where I can say what I want - and be the old exuberant me and then some], then convince Mattters to run it on their luxury channels.

Anyway, the quandary will soon end, one way or the other. Post CES we are going to rethink the publications a little bit. Well, first we will rest and sleep a lot. Then we will do a rethink.

This is what we currently plan on showing at CES at the Flamingo (T.H.E. Show).

Several of the items are coming from the factory in the U.K. and are due to arrive in Denver this Wednesday. After they make it through customs we will ship them directly on to Las Vegas.

We are doing two rooms….

Smaller System:

AN/E SPe HE speakers
TT1 turntable
M3 RIAA photo stage
Jinro integrated amp
CD 3.1x player

Larger System:

AN/E SEC Signature speakers
TT3 turntable
S9 phono step-up transformer
M9 Phono preamp
Gaku On amplifiers
CDT Three transport
DAC 5 Signature

We are close enough to drive - it is about a 12 hour trip - so we always have this tension between driving with all the equipment to the show, perhaps renting a bigger vehicle or taking fewer things… and shipping it all. Or mixing and matching.

We are taking everything for two rooms - so that adds up, cubic footage-wise - but it is so much safer to use mike & neli shipping incorporated than the alternatives. At least, we hope it is

You know, in the last few years, places like C|Net and engadget have started covering CES big time. They really overwhelm the internet so it is hard for little guys [like us!] to compete in some ways. Have to figure a way around that

2010?

It’s been 10 years in this millennium already?

We’ll have two rooms, both Audio Note-based, one for the upper end of things (powered by the Gaku-On’s ) and one just a little bit lower (powered by the Jinro - a copper version on the Ongaku integrated amp).

A complete list of equipment will be forthcoming.

We had thse speakers for a few days. Really quite nice looking. And they sounded quite nice too They sit around the $20K mark and have out-board crossovers.

[Yes, the power is back on. They really do a pretty good job here, considering we are in the mtns and how all the power-lines and pine trees often try to share the same space].

For your viewing pleasure - some photos of the Audio Note AN/E SPe HE high-efficiency speakers in plain maple. Retail price is $7600.00

You will notice that the maple that Audio Note is using is more interesting than the plain jane maple we often see here in the States.

The speakers are also brand new - and compared to the much older (~7 years) maple of the Acoustic Dreams rack, it is lighter in color. But, expect it to also gain some slight patina [color] over time as it ages.

The color in these photos is very close to real. Yes, our carpet has a touch of burgundy in its darkish gray [we thought that the purplish color of the carpet would help it go with the many pieces Mahogany and red Cherry furniture we have - and it does. It also is a little more cheery than plain gray].

But enough about the carpet on to the photos!

So, I would like to talk a little about the sound in our large room.

As a reminder (it has been a few weeks now. Time flies when buried in 1800 page show reports) we had the Emm Labs XDS1 single-box statement player driving the Audio Note M9 Phono preamp and Gaku-On amps. All cables were Nordost ODIN and all components were on M3 HRS platforms and we also used an HRS SXR rack

We had a little hiccup when one of the 211 tubes arrived in a non-working condition. Phil (thanks Phil!), a local audiophile, loaned us a 211 tube [and the next day Nick Gowan shipped us another pair. Thanks Nick!]. Neli arrived back with the 1st relief of 211 tubes and then left to pick up some HRS platforms we needed for under the Gaku-On amps.

All to say that I was left alone to position the speakers. [Yes!]

So, here we have 20+ feet of front wall space minus the 2 feet or so the rack occupies [also up against the front wall] - and the speakers will probably be fine anywhere.

Then Fred Crowder and Paul arrived. OK good. I moved the speaker and their comments and the expressions on their faces told me if it was for the better or worser. Every so often I would step back into the room and listen for myself. Surprisingly enough, this resulted in at least a locally optimized position for the speakers that was pretty decent. It was surprising to me because we seemed to flail around quite a bit, the sound getting a wee bit better or wee bit worse - but all of a sudden they were both nodding their heads a lot and when I stood back it really had snapped in to coolness. With only a few minor mods it became much more fun to just listen to music than it was to play with the speakers anymore.

—> Position 1.

After Fred Crowder, Paul and I positioned them, about oh, 3 feet from the side walls, and oh, 4 or 5 inches from the front wall. Angled in fairly severely to cross in front of the nearfield listening position.

This worked really pretty darn well. It was very engaging, quick, harmonic, with good soundstaging and imaging. There was enough bass reinforcement to be quite satisfying. And I would have been happy showing the system like this. Several people came and went and they all liked the sound.

Then Neli returned with the HRS platforms and we put them under the Gaku-Ons.

The added separation and tighter bass of the sound now wasn’t quite as engaging. It was ‘better’, but the speakers now had to be repositioned because, essentially, we now had a different [sounding] system and the sound coming out of the speakers reflected that fact.

So, I’m thinking… where are Fred and Paul when ya need ‘em?

Then Mario from the Audio Note factory just happened to show up at the door, and I remember that these guys do shows every couple of weeks in Europe [seriously] and they must have run into largish rooms before.

So we start moving them radically this way and that. What I really wanted to know was: What kind of sound does Audio Note go for with their speakers when they do a show in a big room like this?

I mean, I was pretty sure we could get back to the sound that we heard previously, in setup #1. And it really was quite good. But, hey, we got some time, let’s experiment.

We put them closer and closer to the corners - each time hearing no overtly deleterious effects, and each time hearing slightly more room engagement. They eventually ended up just about as far into the corners as we could get them.

—> Position #2.

The sound was very big, pressurizing the room. No lack of bass, let me tell you. In fact, more bass than we let the Coltrane Supremes have in that room [the Supremes could probably do real damage to the hotel fixtures. I mean 2000 watts, 12 9 inch drivers, very efficient speakers. Give me a break]. Perhaps we have been too shy with the bass on the Supremes [trying to differentiate ourselves from the big boom box systems elsewhere in the hotel - you know, the ones that win all the awards from the newbie and want-free-equipment show reporters], because the Audio Note speakers with their more present bass worked pretty well.

The bass and the dynamics was all hitting the big time [all the components in this system are world-class dynamic champions]. The harmonics were like those never heard before [thanks Gaku-On!]. The soundstage was the width of the room. Huge. The musicians were life size. It was like they were really there in the room. Standing in a line across the stage.

Which is also to say that the soundstage depth was not very deep. It was more shallow than it should have been for many people’s tastes. In some ways, this made it more realistic, but perhaps not as much fun. We think the problem had to do with the fake side wall we made on the left, and the big curtained window on the right. Certainly position #1, away from these less-than-optimal side walls, had no problem with achieving great depth of field.

We stayed with position #2, in large part [from my point of view] to further differentiate it from last year and invalidate any direct comparisons. This was a different system… evaluate it as it is, not as last year’s system with different speakers. This is also part of the reason we did not put the system over on the side of the room: to make the system and room look different than last year [the others being 10 meter ODIN is hard to come by - 10 meters is needed to reach the rack when it is on the rear/side of the room - and we were tired of lugging tons of equipment to the show and back].

It really worked and most everybody liked it a lot, in fact everybody except those people who really do prefer a sophisticated and very accurate sound [about 5%, this show is not very kind to these people] - and those [my guess about 20% of the people [NO, I really do not think it is as high as 95%, though an argument could be made… ]] who have no ears anyway and pick rooms they like more or less at random [using a algorithm, in any case, that has zero, nada, zilch to do with the sound. No, I do not think this is criminal - but when you read about what someone thinks about a show, keep these people in mind].

——————–

Compared to our room last year, this was a completely different sound.

Last year’s sound, the Marten Coltrane Supremes speakers with the Lamm ML3 amps, was a very, very sophisticated sound. The delicacy and detail, the preciseness of the harmonics, the shade and shapes of the images in a seemingly infinite 3D space was unheard of. Of course, to really appreciate it you had to know what imaging was, you had to be able to hear the harmonic structures, likely being revealed for the first time ever [they were to us], and you had to relax and trust that the system, rendering difficult notes, was going to do it correctly and so you could relax into the music in a way that isn’t possible with most [which is to say all but one or two] systems.

And this years sound, this year it was danceable, approachable, rocking, boogieable [well, it SHOULD be a real word]. Harmonics were lovelier this year, but not as nuanced or delicate. This year the sound was enjoyable, emotional, impressive. Last year it was OMFG. This year it was “Alive!”.

It is very, very much like Leonardo DaVinci versus Picasso. Leo [can I call him that? He ain’t here so…] paints with excruciatingly fine detail, it is amazing that someone could do that. It is more wonderful than real life photography. Picasso [and I speak only of his ink and brush paintings] uses a half-dozen strokes and makes a woman appear who is so evocative of a real actual person it is just amazing that someone could do that. It is more alive than most people are in ‘real life’.

I love both artist’s work - and the bizarre thing is that some people just like one or the other [yes, now we can put this into the context of some people liking our room this year more/less than the room last year]. I, personally, love both.

I think it is too simple to say that one is of the mind, and one of the body. Or right brain versus left brain. But I think it is indeed something like that. Just not that.

Anyway, since the mind and body [according to most people] cannot exist one without the other - we are now trying to build a hybrid system sound that is OMFG Alive!

And I think, I think we came really, really close the other evening - when Kevin, Neli and I ODIN’d up the system, with the Emm Labs XDS1, Audio Note S9, M9 and Gaku-Ons on the Coltrane Supremes. Horn-like dynamics and ceramic and diamond driver preciseness!

We put the Audio Note Gaku-On amps on the Marten Coltrane Supremes. And we had a few extra Nordost ODIN cables we put on the amps [I did not trust myself to put them on the pre-amp at the same time]. With the Emm Labs XDS1 CD/SACD player there was an amazing amount of separation - both dynamically and spatially. We then hooked up the S9 step-up transformer to the Brinkmann Balance turntable with an old Lyra Titan cartridge.

It has made me re-evaluate the assumption that real dynamics could only be [best be] gotten from a horn speaker.

Almost all of our equipment lately has gone to improving dynamics - and at the Same Time increasing the delivery of uber resolution and clarity to the Supremes - which can handle everything we throw at it [try to name one other speaker that can do that. It sucks but that is where our industry is at: it costs $300K just to be able to forget about the speaker being the primary limitation of your system. …though we would like to try the Marten Momentos… and they are only $150K ].

And, personally, I think the improvement of the S9 step-up over the S4 that we have been using is head-spinningly silly amazing. We will be doing some tests shortly to verify this - for other reasons too annoying to disturb our fine readers about.

The Marten Coltrane Supremes in the foreground, the Gaku-Ons in the background.

Audio Note U.K. Gaku-On

Audio Note U.K. M9 Phono - a preamplifier with a built-in phono stage.

Audio Note U.K. S9 step-up transformer

The Audio Note M9 Phono preamp is still at the shippers… and 2 of the HRS M3 platforms are still coming in to a different shipper - but hopefully by driving all over Denver we will have everything together for our 9030 and 9026 rooms at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009.

Everything except… a turntable for the big room. With the arm not arriving until tomorrow in Denver, with the crates to take the rack we would use for the turntable not arriving until tomorrow down in Denver - it is just too much…

Also, we really wanted to use an all Nordost ODIN system - although we love our 10 meter Valhalla (which runs from the rack with turntable that we usually have near the rear of the room) and we even had it converted to balanced for this show - it would just not be the ODIN.

So this means the entire system will be in the front of the room. This means going up in front of everybody to change a CD. It means just one source so we can’t swap quickly between them, leaving some time where No Music Is Playing.

So it sucks. But we hope the small size of the resultant system, it ability to be optimized with the 100% ODIN, and our better dispositions because we are not dead tired from lugging tons of equipment around - will all be of benefit to the overall show experience in our room.

Hope so, anyway.

We will be doing live reporting from the show - as usual. If they take the internet out of our exhibit room we will just make them Put It Back. Hopefully a few new features we added to Spintricity will let me put up more than the maximum 26 photos - which is usually all I have time for [which took about 1.5 hours]. I am hoping to double that… maybe even more than double.

We’ll see…