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…

For those of you with a monitor wider than 530 pixels…

Emm Labs XDS1 CD/SACD Player

Audio Note PALLAS interconnect

Several videos from CEDIA 2009

Milan Show coverage by Audiophile Bob

Milan Show coverage of Audio Note by Dave Cope

Our first exhibitor in the Online Audiophiles Show: Kevin’s Place

(we will put up the ‘turned on’ series of Emm labs XDS1 photos and some Nordost ODIN photos in the next day or two. And then it is off to RMAF!)

So, the Rocky Moun’tane Audio Festivities are soon to begin - well a couple of weeks seems like ’soon’ to me.

We will be in our usual two rooms: 9030 and 9026. One big and one small [medium size seems just not the d’rigor for show hotels].

————————————————————————–

Tentatively we will be showing, in the large room:

* Audio Note AN/E SEC Signature speakers (we’ve shown with these before, but not in the big room!)

* Andio Note Gaku On amplifiers (Audio Note’s top of the line 211-based monoblocks)

* Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier

* Audio Note TT3 Reference turntable

* Audio Note digital: DAC 4.1x Balanced and CDT-3 transport

…and…

* EMM Labs XDS 1 reference-level single box SACD/CD player (product debut: about $25K)

* Nordost ODIN cable (everything ODIN but our 10 meter Valhalla and the Audio Note Sogon hard-wired to the speakers)

… and …

* HRS MXR and SXR equipment racks and M3 isolation bases

————————————————————————

And in the small room:

Audio Note ‘Zero’-based system:

* I Zero integrated amplifier
* R Zero phono section
* CDT-Zero CD transport
* DAC 0.1x with USB input

… and …

* TT2 turntable with IQ3 MM cartridge
* AN/E SPe HE loudspeakers

… and…

* Rix Rax ‘Robbs Report’ equipment rack

————————————————————————

We’ll have photos of the XDS 1 and Gaku Ons before the show - both here and in Spintricity.

Hope to see you all there!

… though maybe not exactly a shootout as perhaps more a tasters test.

We performed the test on the downstairs system - the distance between the EMMlabs DCC2 DAC/preamp and the Audio Note Kegon amps was close enough [barely] for the 1 meter cables to reach.

We heard the TEO Audio MHD-1 “Standard” Liquid Cable interconnects, the Stealth INDRA with the newer connectors, the Audio Note U.K. PALLAS, Nordost VALHALLA and Jorma Design PRIME. Before this whole thing started we had the Nordost ODIN cables on the system for a few weeks.

There were all RCA cables. The TEO, PALLAS and PRIME were warm - the VALHALLA and INDRA hadn’t been used for a month or so.

We just leave the cables in place, and it looks so cool to see them all lying there. Kind of like having multiple tonearms, you can just “turn off, un hook, hook up, and turn on” to switch to a different sound entirely.

A long report will be forthcoming, I think, and the TEO and PALLAS writeups will be in the magazine.

The TEO speaker cable

The short and sweet is that the TEO is indeed liquid sounding - very much reminding me of an MBL sound or a clear-sounding CARDAS. The sound is round, and more forward/room pressurizing than the other cables in its price range. This is a sound that ‘comes to you’ rather than you having to ‘go to it’ - i.e. it doesn’t require your brain to work as hard as other cables in this broad price category do - not the last word in transparency, soundstaging and inner detail [which are all closely related], but you can just sit back and enjoy the music. Personally, I like them.

There are a lot of people we know who insist on this kind of sound - many are good friends who happen to be Canadians. Interestingly TEO is also manufactured in Canada [not to suggest there is a Canadian ’sound’ but… well, is there one? And is this it?].

Another TEO interconnect (the PDL)

Oh, prices: $2500 for the TEO, about $4K for the VALHALLA and PALLAS, about $6K for the INDRA and about $10K for the PRIME all for 1 meter RCA interconnects.

The PALLAS, although considered a small signal cable for the backs of turntables and digital transports, performed perfectly in this large signal position between the preamp and amp. Sounded just like itself.

The PALLAS has one of the most evenly distributed soundstages and with an uncanny ability to keep separate and distinct the disparate threads of the music. The timbre and frequency response is very, very even up and down the range.

It does not have quite the blackness of background nor the uber resolution of the PRIME [not to mention the ODIN] but this is one of my favorite cables and I put it at a close 3rd place behind the other two. If you look at the relative price of this cable - you will know why we are so EMPHATIC about people taking a closer look.

Components look nice on the small rack.

The Audio Karma Fest [hard not to type Kharma] is right around the corner, time wise, and right outside Detroit Michigan, hotel wise.

Audio Note U.K. will be showing our Zero level line of separate components. When we fired them up, right out of the box, cold, new, in front of doubting ears [ours], it was immediately obvious that they sounded better than 90% of the rooms at shows that I have heard - and that they sounded like a system. Very well-balanced.

As you can see, they are fashionably small, but not small enough to fit side by side on the Acoustic Dreams’ rack shelves. Almost, though.

A full report later - but hopefully many of you will be in Detroit next weekend and get to hear it for yourselves.

There are four pieces, a transport, a integrated amp, a DAC and a Phono preamplifier.

DAC 0.1X ‘Valve Output Stage’ with USB input

R Zero/II ‘Valve Phono Stage’

I Zero ‘Valve Integrated Amplifier’

CDT Zero/II ‘CD Transport’

You know, we have a lovely and very interesting house. But one thing that makes setting up audio systems here a little bit different, some would say more difficult, is that we do not have rectangular rooms.

The small room setup [listening room 3]

Oh yes, some will say we have it easier, but I say that 1) we still get unwanted side-to-side sound wave reinforcement and 2) most speakers were designed for rooms with a front wall [except those that were designed to go out in the middle of the room i.e most dipoles and most rear-ported speakers].

So here we have the Audio Note speakers. Designed to go into a corner. But we have no corners.

We do put them out from the walls, in the ‘middle of the room’, like a plain-old rear ported speaker - and that works as expected. Excellent imaging [superb actually], soundstage depth, transparency etc. But not as much bass as most speakers that were designed to go into the middle of the room would have.

So. What to do. What to do.

We tried making [in our feeble minds] corners out of the octagonal angles of the room and angling them this way and that. It kind-of-works.

The larger room [listening room 2]

We tried putting thm against the long walls [in our smaller room, not in the larger one yet]. It kind-of-works.

Then, somehow, I plucked down the heavy crossovers and let Neli do-with-them-what-she-will.

And, continuing the theme of the CES setup, with them towed in so much that they cross in front of the listener, she put them in parallel with one of the smaller octagonal walls. [See photos].

And it works! In my experience it works as well or better than putting them in the corners in rooms that have corners. There is bass reinforcement, but it is tight bass, unobtrusive bass. And there is still quite a bit of imaging and soundstaging - and almost all positions in the listening area, from wall-to-wall, have a good sense of a center image [all except where the one of the speakers is pointing right at you].

Anyway, for all of you who have octagonal rooms and Audio Note [or rear ported] speakers - you should really try this

Wes Phillips had some very nice things to say about our Audio Note U.K. room [with Nordost ODIN and Acrolink powercords, HRS M3 isolation bases and Nimbus Couplers] at:

Ongaku Means Ecstasy

We thank Wes and J.A. for visiting our room and posting their impressions and are, of course, pleased, especially Neli [! ] who staffed the room by herself for the entire show.

Have to say, this being the first time I recollect seeing these two in action, they really seem to enjoy being audiophiles and playing music. Not all [aka few] show reporters are like this, many coming off as if it is all a lot of hard work [which it is].

[Not sure how I come off . To Constantine Soo (Dagogo), I think I come off as someone who gets in the way of his trying to listen a lot ))]

Funny thing [or not] while Neli was trying, and trying, and trying some more to find a CD in the folder, I mentioned something like maybe putting CDs at random in the folder wasn’t such a good idea [actually, what I said was probably a lot less coherent], expecting good ole wifey to come back with a witty, if not outright scathing, rejoinder and lighten up the situation a little bit. You know, at least something like ‘ASShole’ with that big smile of hers [no, she doesn’t always smile when she says this ]. But noooooo. So I now wonder if this playfully antagonistic dialog technique between Neli and I is such a good method to lighten up somewhat awkward situations after all.

And yes, we are still preoccupied with all the optimizations that we did not get time to implement with this particular system . Some other time we’ll write about how we tried [and failed, but we got more ideas] to maintain the coherence and lack of strain and harshness, while at the same time opening up the sound-stage and increasing the separation to suit Florian [who has agreed to write for the magazine] - and of course this was Sunday night… AFTER the show when we didn’t have to worry about ‘getting back to what sounded pretty good before’ if we really messed things up].

Anyway, everybody should congratulate Neli. Congratulations Neli!