The question: Does an ODIN power cord on the back of a CDSA make it the equal of Emm Lab’s new ‘black badge’ TSD1 transport and DAC2 pair?

[Thanks Steve G. for the idea for this shootout.]

Starting off with a question like that makes me think of Carrie in ‘Sex and the City’ writing her column [just got done watching the movie. Liked it but it should have been called Spoiled Women and Wimpy Men in the City. Am I right or am I right? ].

The question is especially relevant because the price of an ODIN + CDSA combo is about equal to the price of the TSD1/DAC2.

We decided to do a slightly different shootout, perhaps unfortunately, that compares the CDSA + ODIN against the TSD1/DAC2 using fairly decent power cords [Valhalla and ELROD]. At the time this seemed to make more sense - most people would put a decent PC on the ‘Black Badge’ pair [the ‘Silver Badge’ pair being the CDSD/DCC2]. And the Kimber PC that comes with the Emm Labs gear had not been broken in at all - otherwise we should have used that power cord.

Anyway, we learned a lot from the shootout - or at least confirmed what out other - very lengthy shootouts [appearing soon in the Magazine] told us about the two players.

For this shootout, we were able to just switch back and forth between the two players. They were both run into the Audio Note Ongaku integrated using Nordost ODIN interconnects. The Ongaku was connected to the Marten ‘Coltrane’ loudspeakers using ODIN speaker cable. Every thing was sitting on Acoustic Dream’s amp stands.

Since we were eagerly anticipating the luxury of being able to switch back and forth between the two players in real time [usually we have to do a lot of disconnecting and connecting between listening to one component and other - trying to do it as fast as possible to keep as much aural information in short term memory as possible], we needed to find discs that we had two of. We did and they were: red book Radiohead’s Amnesiac, SACD Santanna’s Abraxus, and SACD Janis’ Rachmaninoff.

Radiohead:

The CDSA sounded a little ‘dirtier’, with a little more ’spit’. Perhaps a little more romantic - but we later decided that the reduced separation here was more familiar, more comfortable, and more accessible. We talked about this before - how as a system gets better and we leave the old familiar problems behind - we miss them. Many people think those problems are part and parcel of the way music is supposed to sound and they [and their poor roommates] get stuck in a sonic rut, a backwater, a musical ‘hell on earth’ [but I probably exaggerate a little].

The Pair had way more separation, a much deeper [spooky] blacker background, and better purity. By purity here I mean that the notes were not more harmonically pure - they are about the same on both players - but that the black background and separation allowed notes to be heard, that they were allowed to live out there lives the way they were meant to, that - well that is what I am calling purity until I can think of a better name [I would say ‘clean’ but that is taken by people describing the lack of note attack aggressiveness. Maybe ’spotlessness’?? Integrity??].

Anyway, I hope people can begin to see that these 3 things: separation, an incredibly black background, and purity/cleanliness/spotlessness/integrity are all related and are a major factor in the difference between the two players on this particular system. [Previously, the Pair also seemed more linear, more well-balanced, than the CDSA but the ODIN PC helped out a lot on this. It also increased resolution, separation and the ‘romantic/engaging’ aspect of the CDSA as well].

Neli: CDSA fuzzier, not quite as crystalline.

Abraxus:

The Pair: The ability for greater separation between the notes helps out a lot here. The first track is actually quite complicated - and the pair was able to separate out separate strains of the music much better than the CDSA. [there was a feeling of… wow, I didn’t even know that those were separate instruments before…]

The CDSA: Again, somewhat more accessible, but in comparison with the Pair, it sounded like things were mixed up, much more the familiar amorphous mass of cool sounds we usually hear when we listen to Abraxus.

Rachmaninoff:

The Pair: the spatial connectedness is better. The rhythm is much more life like.

The CDSA: A little harsher.

PRaT and Presence/Solidity were ….different between the two.

—————-

OK. It is time fasten seatbelts and leave the standard digital player shootout and discuss just what I think this Pair does to the digital playback universe.

First, I think that finally, digital, THIS digital pair, is now perhaps the equal of analog playback. Before you all click the back button on your browser, let me say what I mean by that.

First, it is OK, for me, that digital be *different* than analog. Why make it sound like analog, we already got analog and it does quite fine, thank you.

Second, what are the ways that analog is better than digital? Separation, midi-dynamics, and sense of rhythm [not PRaT]. It also has a harmonic distortion that many of us enjoy.

OK, in what ways does the TSD1/DAC2 pair excel? Separation. Black background [revealing the midi-dynamics in a way much like analog]. And a sense of rhythm that is not like PRaT.

So, let us talk about PRaT - which in general we can describe as a strong emphasis on the main beat of the song - resulting in an urge to perhaps do some toe-tapping. The idea here is that perhaps it is the lack of separation, causing things to collapse, both spatially and timewise, so that too many things happen at once, and too many things in one amorphous image, causing:

1. an abnormal emphasis on the main beat, and deemphasizing the natural delays between the actual notes and the interplay amongst musicians as they play off one another and which, in reality, are not exactly 100% on the beat each and every beat.

2. an abnormal collapse of the spacial image, in the soundstage, into a solid mass, that makes it seem like there is a solidity and presence there that doesn’t really exist. That in reality there is actually a guitar body, and a guitar neck, and a voice,and the voice reflecting from the microphone…. which makes ‘presence’ and ’solidity’ more real, and more 3D. And less of a ‘lump’.

So rhythm should be what it should be: and notes should happen on the beat when they were recorded that way, and a little before or after if they were recorded that way. When the notes are smeared the least little bit - it is perhaps made up for in the mind of the listener by assigning them to the nearest ‘beat’. But when they are clearly off of the beat, they are interpreted as the natural interplay between musicians, the natural human failing of not being perfectly on time [and this is a good thing - it is how things sound like, live].

So what the pair did, on this system [and make no mistake, this is a *system*. We’ve done so many, many shootouts here lately, everything contributes: the speakers, the ODIN - the decay of the notes are unbelievably beautiful, on both players - and the Ongaku is not chopped meat either ], was to allow us to experience, to enjoy, the music in more ways than we have before using digital playback.

A lot of people [who have lived with audio for awhile and graduated from the impressive], say they want a richer warmer sound. That they want more PRaT. That their system is not involving enough and that adding warmth and toe-tapping PRaT is the way to fix that.

Well, that would certainly help. For awhile.

But what people really want, deep down, beyond this or that tweak or enhancement - if I can be so bold as to say it in print - is to have a convenient playback that evokes the real - that allows them to hear the wonderful interplay amongst the singers and musicians, to hear the beautiful tones and decay and care that went into every single darn note in every single darn piece of music in their music library.

Neli thinks the TSD1/DAC2 Pair is evolutionary. I think it is revolutionary. But maybe she is right. The way way black background [not like stupid power conditioners that strip away detail at the same time], and the ability to keep the different notes from collapsing into each other - is probably just evolutionary.

But there is a tipping point to things. And I think this is one of those ‘tipping point things’. [Boy, and I thought this was going to be a short post].

In this idea, suggesting that the Pair is like analog - different but equal - is the idea that it must be the depth and variety of the ways we can enjoy the two mediums that we need to compare and contrast. It is my sense that the Pair adds more ways to enjoy music - that some of these ways are similar to analog - and unlike the digital of the past - as described above, but that they get there a different way [lower noise floor versus greater dynamic response to notes at ordinary loudnesses, etc.].

More later on all that…

Neli with the Audio Note, Kharma and Acoustic Zen speakers in background, and Jorma Design PRIME interconnects on floor at left.

So, we went upstairs and played the same Rachmaninoff music, but on LP on the Brinkmann turntable, Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier, Kegon Balanced amps and Coltrane Supremes. With the low-gain Lyra cartridge and a problem with noise on the line getting into the sound - it wasn’t an optimal setup by any means.

OK, OK…. But when the massed strings played over on the left, on both systems I enjoyed them, and in similar ways. I could pick out this or that guy a little louder than the others or a little too long with the note… [in some ways, it is the ability to hear the mistakes in the music that make it seem much more real ]. I got the same feeling of ‘wow’ that the music was trying to invoke in the audience.

I got the same feeling at being present at a concert - the conscious and subconscious cues each medium was giving me that this was REAL were different but equal.

More about THAT later too. This is all just supposition - that the TSD1/DAC2 pair can offer as convincing an experience as analog - it seems like this is something that will come to pass someday - and it seems like that is today, to me, now - but it will take a long time to verify.

Personally, we do not differentiate here between SACD and red book CDs on the Emm Labs gear. The differences between them has more to do with the recording and mastering than the medium. But lately, and maybe it is just me being lazy [and heaven knows I would love to be less of a perfectionist, it would certainly reduce our high-end audio expenses - Oh, wait, Neli would have to get lazy too] - I did not feel I had to care if we were playing CDs on the TSD1/DAC2 pair and LPs at RMAF, and that has been true here as well. Sure they are different. But all the dimensions in which I enjoy LPs I now can enjoy CDs. This was not the case with previous digital gear.

————–

So, do we still like the CDSA? We had to send our TSD1/DAC2 pair back - it was just loaned to us for the RMAF show - we had previous commitments and were not able to buy this demo pair . Big unhappy frown for Neli. Big unhappy frown for me, too, but I am an optimist - or maybe just a masochist - we’ll have our own soon. And then we can think about what it will sound like putting a pair of ODIN powercords on the TSD1/DAC2 instead of the CDSA….

YES we still like the CDSA - it does almost everything as well as the Pair, and we still have the ’silver badge’ Pair, too. But………………….. stay tuned

We’ve had a lot of shootouts lately. Many power cord shootouts. And we’ve started several EMM Labs shootouts.

More later, but here are the upshots:

*** ODIN power cord. Simply put we have a new favorite cable.

*** ODIN power cord versus ODIN interconnect - which is the biggest bang for the buck as your first cable? The short and sweet: In this case, on this system of EMM Labs CDSA, Audio Note Ongaku and Marten Coltranes] it was [kind of] the PC that was the biggest bang - but there is an explanation why the $11K PC beat the $16K IC.

First, the SOUND was better with the IC. But the MUSIC was better with the PC and we didn’t care that the sound wasn’t as good. The explanation? My hypothesis is that the Ongaku, the amp we put the PC on, is the great contributor to the musicality of the system and costs about 8X times what the CDSA player costs. So adding the ODIN PC to it just made that more musical. The ODIN IC, as expected, let way more sound from the CDSA get to the integrated amp - and the sound had more body, more information, etc. But, again, we didn’t care. On a different system, with perhaps a less dominating amp, the IC will likely dominate the PC even more and we would elect a different winner.

*** EMM Labs CDSA versus CDSD/DCC2 versus TSD1/DAC2 [versus red badge CDSD/DCC2]. In progress [but in this system, with the ODIN and the TDS1/DAC2, we heard revolutionary amounts of separation. Each instrument was clearly defined and you could easily follow just one instrument’s sound and its decay. Just like in reality. No, really. We have NEVER heard anything quite like it. It is addicting. This whole system has become addicting. It is so pleasing to the mind [so deep, so many complex musical passages revealed], and so pleasing to the heart [so pure and the decays last exactly as long as they are supposed to and the harmonics are so lovely]. Rarely has anything excelled at both - especially on such a small scale.].

We opened up the Audio Note U.K. M9 Phono preamplifier - to reseat tubes and just to take a big peek inside [taking the cover off of new equipment is not as common in the U.S. as it is elsewhere in the world].

This is a two-box preamp, one power supply box and one linestage box.

Note how packed with components these two boxes are.

We have a ton of photos, but these are of the linestage.

Check out the wood-like composite non-resonant PC boards that the components are mounted on. Checkout the heavy silver wiring.

This is the volume control.

Yes, we like the way it sounds too.

Needs lots more breaking in… but it is very intensely musical [whatever THAT means ]

Ooops - Tour three got posted before two.

Well, not much is happening on this floor. Two nice systems. The EDGE is still on the AN speakers - where we are performing some macro-dynamic shock treatments and seriously braking them in, using solid-state so we do not have to waste any tube life on the somewhat contrived process.

Some shots of the Audio Note and Walker turntables. No phono-preamplifier down here yet - so these sit here, appreciated only for their good looks.

The Marten Coltrane loudspeakers [on consignment] on the Lamm ML2.1 and Audio Aero Prestige

This system - the Audio Note Ongaku 211-based integrated amplifier into $7K AN/E HE speakers, driven by a little $3.5K Audio Note CD2.1x Mark II Player [Valhalla speaker cable and AN interconnects] - is obviously somewhat unbalanced - the amplifier costing a wee bit more than the rest of the system put together.

But it sounds VERY engaging. The amp is just tossing note around like they were wisps of air [:-)], it so completely dominates the sound.

Is this approx. $100K system better than a more balanced one with, say, $30K AN speakers and a $30K Conquest-like amp and $20K digital transport and DAC and $20K preamp?

Probably not.

But it is really fun to listen to - especially if you are familiar enough with listening around, and to, individual components in the system. You can HEAR all the flaws, and unsuspected strengths, in the weaker components.

For example, the upper-mids and highs of the little 1-box CD player are really quite good - but the lower mids are a little laid back, and complex passages do not have quite the separation, in comparison to $10 and $20K digital. Pretty good trade-offs, I think.

And, often, perhaps it is the lack of sophistication, the lack of complexity, to the overall sound that makes it really surprisingly straight-forwardly exuberant sometimes - when it all just comes together.

You know, they say happiness is the removal of pain. Like the scratching of an itch. So, perhaps for ultimate musical enjoyment, there has to be some pain, something not quite EXCELLENT, mixed in with the excellent sound, for us to feel that ultimate Audiophile High? [if so, boy do we all need therapy or what? ]

The inside of one of the Audio Note Kegon Balance 300B amplifiers. The Kegon Balance is essentially a 300B Gaku-on. The Gaku-on is Audio Note’s best amplifier which is based on the 211 tube.

The sound?

Very dynamic and controlled. The signature reticence of the speaker’s ceramic drivers is no longer audible. It is hard to over-state this aspect of these amps. A lot of the time is just spent thinking ‘I didn’t know amps could DO that’.

In comparison, solid-state amps just smack the notes out with a sledge-hammer - they [currently seem to] have no ability to control the shape of the notes as it they are supposed to be - if they are to sound like music [or even just musical] that is.

And in comparison, most tube amps just sound anemic, where they, overall, can generated notes shaped more naturally, more real, than solid-state, but lack that SMACK that most musicians often apply to their piano or guitar or drum.

Just the right amount of harmonics. Which is to say more than the Lamm ML2.1 6C33C tube-based amplifier, and less than your other 300B-based amplifiers [that we have heard]. Presumably all of our readers know how bad too little harmonics affects the enjoyability of music. And for too much harmonics, too much harmonics and the primary tone washes out the lesser tones - and it is the lessor tones that make a person hear deep into the richness and playfulness and… I don’t know - that thing that happens when you go into a toy store and bang on some chimes - or into a Tibetan store [we have a dozen here in Boulder] and bang on the gongs or use the Bhuddist bowls - or to a piano store and bang on the keys of their best piano — JUST to listen to the sound and the undertones [and the lovely decades-long decay].

Anyway - more on this system after RMAF.

Just a few odds and ends… OK. Yes. Audio porn. While it still gets through those parental filters.

The Kharma Mini Exquisite.

The Audio Note Kegon Balanced from the front

The Audio Note Kegon Balanced from the side

The Marten Coltrane, showing off its bottom port.

The Audio Note E/SEC Signature speaker with 8 hand rubbed coats of lacquer, in MADRONE burl with piano finish .

A closeup of the finish.

For the longest time I would get so confused when I read someone posting that, say, the sound of Boulder solid-state amps had more detail than Edge solid-state amps, which I totally disagreed with [this was back when I believed everybody who posted about how something sounded had actually heard the darn thing. How innocent we all were about the side-effects of anonymity on the web in those good-old days].

I finally figured out that they were talking about the the ‘leading edge’ of the notes, combined with, in this case, less continuousness which made the notes ’stand out’.

If we think about the sound as composed of many notes, and each of those notes having texture [dynamics of things happening inside the note] and harmonics, we can compare sounds to, say, sand on a beach.

You got your fine sand, you got your larger grains, which when large enough are ‘pebbles’. You got [depending on the beach] larger pebbles that eventually get so be as to be rocks [boulders, boulders would be like the cannon shots in the William Tell Overture]. Each one of these grains is a different shape, with bumps and different colors all over them.

OK.

The Edge amps have lots of finely grained sand detail [which we now call finesse - to get around the problem that people do not agree on just what detail *is*.] and the Boulder has pebbly detail.

The music has some of both [usually], large and small, and we can think of the sand->pebbles->rocks being dynamics and the color of their facets being harmonics/tone.

Solid-state equipment tends to reduce the beach to black and white and tube amps turn up the color saturation a bit. Solid-state equipment also shines a light on the beach like high-noon in death valley [the edges of the pebbles appear sharp, the find sand disappears into the background of white glare], tube equipment like, like, … ambient sunshine on a beach right after a rain just when rainbows are starting to come out [makes you think I like tubes better than solid-state, huh ].

[So far, we have only modeled sound and its harmonics and dynamics by comparing it to the visual appearance of a beach. We can also think about the experience of *listening* to sound with that of walking on the beach… some people want a nice soft sandy walk, some want a rougher, firmer walk. Some don’t care and are only getting exercise or going for a swim.]

We can think of playing music, then, as taking a yardstick and scraping it across the sand, larger pebbles being more dynamic than smaller, the colors of the pebbles representing different tones.

So, using these models…. we can [try to!] define:

Dynamic Resolution: Numbers of different sizes of sand that a system is capable of rendering - higher resolution systems are able to make a particulate of sand sound different than a slightly larger one, which would sound the same on a lower-resolution system. Note that this is often a function of the size of the grain: i.e. two boulders, one inch different in size may sound the same, but two pebbles, one inch different in size would sound different. The best systems are linear… if the pebbles, boulders are more than, say, 1% different in size, we can hear them.

Fractal Dynamic Resolution: The smallest size of a facets on a reference sized particulate of sand that a system is capable of rendering. We want linearity similar to that described above. This indicates the dynamic resolving capability of the system while it is already reproducing another dynamic. Very few systems can do this at all.

Harmonic Resolution and Fractal Harmonic Resolution: Similar to the above, but for tone [frequencies] instead of dynamics. The Lamm ML3 has really good Fractal Harmonic Resolution - it can render not only the colors of fine sand, but of their facets as well.

Dynamic Detail [ability to change direction]: the cleanliness of the beach [i.e. how much mud ]. Is that yardstick we are using make some good THWACK sounds as we hit things, or does it kind of slide up and over them. Again we want this to be linear - to behave the same for larger rocks and tiny particles of sand. Otherwise certain dynamics [horns anybody?] and frequencies [tipped up midrange anybody?] are over / under-emphasized. [We, Neli esp. usually calls this ‘light on its feet’. Most people referring to detail are talking about only the leading edge this very small set of dynamic changes somewhere between micro-dynamics and macro-dynamics - i..e kind of small sized next to slightly but noticeably larger pebbles. Not sand, and not rocks].

Dynamic Control [accuracy]: the ability to accurately trace the edges of the sand/pebble/boulder [what we usually call the note envelope]. That yardstick traces the pebbles up and over, without going too high, without pushing the pebble down into the sound … AND without jumping down too quick and missing tracing all the detail on the other side.

Fractal Detail and Fractal Control. Same as the above two, but for facets. The Audio Note Kegon Balanced amps are great at Fractal Dynamic Control.

Harmonic Detail and Harmonic Control: and Harmonic Fractal Detail and Harmonic Fractal Control: same as above, but for tone [frequencies].

See, we all knew that the reproduction of music was a beach..

A lot of unrated bits and pieces.

Apparently Hi-Fi+

was in dire straits when it was purchased.

Besides that nugget, 98% of what goes on Audio Asylum is bickering. So, yeah, nothing new there.

Mike (me) is miffed

that 1/2 of the hallway A on the 29th floor of the large photos section of the CES report was missing the photos and commentary and no one (NO ONE) told him (me).

I have been listening

to a hip-hop radio station and it is great. Well, except for the repeating of about 10 songs over and over (not kidding) and the SHOUTING at me between songs to buy stuff, or, as often as not, telling me HOW GREAT they are that they are not running a commercial that particular moment.

But they play the Hip Hop’s that is a blend of techno (electronics), disco (it has a beat), rap (one can understand the words and they use a lot of slang) and soul (it is not angry like rap, instead it is more like love songs and good times). Anyway, sometimes it is nice for a pick-me-up, and then switching to the classical station at the first commercial to balance out the hormones and minimize the speeding ticket income of the local police.

Let’s see.

The Kegon Balanced

amps kick butt. They control the Kharmas like nothing else I have heard. I just sit there and listen to them and it is so fun, switching between the glory of the harmonic structure and the beauty of the music and the impressiveness of he control.

Solid state amps on the Kharmas, and probably on everything, can be likened to SHOUTING [I know, twice in one post with the all caps shouting. What is with that?] when they get loud. The drive the speaker by punishing it. By throwing watts at it. But a great tube amp drives it by controlling it with an iron fist.

I am not saying that solidstate amps don;t have their place. Sometimes we want to punish the senses, to push them aggressively. After work, sometimes we might want to let off some steam, or to get a little rowdy.

Kind of like a couple of shots of tequila versus a glass of fine wine. I’ve enjoyed both [and now enjoy neither] and it is great that music, and our systems, can be tailored to suit our every mood and desire…

Danny Kaey reviews

the Audi car stereo over on sonicflare. This is probably a step above the one in my Audi S8, even though I had it replaced about 6 months ago [a pushbutton on the dash had fallen off, so they replaced the whole unit. Ah, German engineering. You have to love it. You have to wonder why.]. As I get older [yes, it happens here at Audio Federation too, darn it] I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that A8 V12. But just a look, mind you. A good… long…. look.

Oh, the stereo is decent. It is well-balanced, top to bottom for what it has to work with. A little tipped up [or more like pumped up, the port frequency of the door?] in the bass to counter the bass of the wheels on the road. I don’t listen to XM or Sirius - which needs like a tube radio or something to be moire than just bearable, it is so bright and neutral sounding [aka DIGITAL]. The stereo, for me, is better than the ones in the less expensive Audis and was way better than the Levinson in the Lexus, the Levinson being worse than the cheaper Bose in the Lexus. So, the Audi Bose system is nice, but no great shakes… it is not audiophile, IMHO.

Some photos:

The tops are now on the new Audio Note Kegon Balanced amps. Even with the old $700 used M1 serving as preamplifier, these amps are killer. Very controlled. Very perfect. Like the Nordost ODIN interconnect, it can be hard to find any flaws [we try, it is our job to try, I guess. Haven’t found one yet, unless it is the lack of 211 sweetness. Surprisingly, I do not miss the 211. Not sure why. Maybe the M1 is sweet enough. Or that I have finally outgrown the 211. Time will tell, I guess.]

We are using empty Walker Vivid boxes to hold up the big ELROD power cords [I think it looks cool, but is this kind of like product placement in movies? I guess it is better than using boxes advertising Mastercard and Visa I know what you are thinking. That this is supposed to be a family blog. What’s next? Neon lights? Sorry, I’m in a strange mood today ….].

Also, Nordost ODIN speaker cable is making its way through the photo.

The old high-gain Audio Note Kegon amps are in the background.

A better photo of the Sound Lab U1 system we demo’ed yesterday.

A close-up of the elegantly compact Soundlab system.