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.

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…

First a few photos of our *Audio Note U.K. room.

Everything was more or less modestly priced except perhaps the CDT3 and DAC 4.1x Balanced, together a $20K front end, that was probably more expensive by itself than many other entire systems at the show. Here’s our brochure that gives the details of the system we brought to the show.

Neli thought that maybe 50-60 people made it to the room. In comparision, about 400-500– get to our room at RMAF.

We took the *Acoustic Dreams equipment rack again. Many exhibitors chose to use the hotel furnishings to support their gear rather than to bring a stand.

The show’s rooms were suites. This is what the sleeping room looked like, with the furnishings from the main room and empty equipment boxes piled up more or less out of the way.

This was our next door neighbor, Custom Isolation Products showing with Clarity Cables. One of the few rooms to bring a real equipment rack and amplifier stands, which they build. Very distinctive, modern look with heavy acrylic shelves and that very cool blue light. At $1200/shelf it is comparable in price to our Acoustic Dreams’ rack which comes in at $1500/shelf. Sonically … it’s so hard to tell about the specifics of a line of vibration isolation products, or a line of cables, at a show, but … their room sounded very nice. It’s so easy to have good things sound bad, especially at a show.

They were showing the*Marten Design ‘Miles II’ speakers and *Audio Aero Capitole Mk II CD player, with a pair of Art Audio amplifiers doing a wonderful job on the Miles. Why is it that rooms that have the Capitole player always are amongst the best rooms at a show? Maybe it has to do with the aesthetic of the owner themselves…

Duke and his wife, from Audio Kinesis were also there, Neli saying it sounding pretty good in this room as well.

AudioKinesis brought their Jazz Modules, in a lovely walnut finish. They were powered by Richard Grey’s 300B amps, in a custom chassis, and accompanied by a vintage Infinity preamp. These are very interesting loudspeakers, and would benefit from a larger room.

This room was set up by the Dallas Audio Society. Texas is big fun, and the Audio Society folks are certainly proof of this. Neli did not for some insane reason photograph the completely restored original Keith Monk record cleaning machine that was hiding in a corner … the very lucky and diligent owner purchased it for very little money, the new ones are now about $6K. This is the machine on which the Loricraft is based.

Fred Thompson’s line arrays definately do a big sound, at a real budget price point — if memory serves me, they’re $350 to build a pair yourself. The amplifier is a tiny Class T device, there on the top shelf.

Bob Spence from Maxxhorn is always a gracious host, and the sound in here was big and open with good separation and good tonality. Electronics include the very distinctive little Berning amp in the front (I think this is a microZOTL), powered by the battery pack that is hiding next to the table with the CD player (a modified Sony 9000ES). We had wanted to let the Mixibitors bring the Audio Note OTO Phono SE over from our room … but Neli was too tired Sunday evening and dinner beckoned. In retrospect … we missed an opportunity. Maybe at RMAF!

Hi Folks, Neli here … my writing is rather different from Mike’s so you can probably tell that some of this post is his, and some mine. A few overall remarks on the Lone Star show:

I did a lame job at getting out of the room and taking pictures. This was compounded by the side effects of ongoing construction in the hotel *during the show*. Jackhammers. Carpenters. Random loud banging and assorted other noise. I didn’t really get out of our room on Friday or Saturday morning to take any pictures, and many exhibitors just bailed and checked out Sunday morning. Our room, which was over in the corner, at first seemed like not-so-good of a location but in the end it was one of the quietest places on our floor for construction noise. I would expect that the show organizers are mighty annoyed. They were able to quiet the jackhammers by Saturday afternoon … but by then the damage was done.

So I didn’t get to all the rooms, and I didn’t take pictures in all the rooms I did get into. For example, Brian Smith of Audio Note Kits brought a bunch of very kewl parts, and a full kit-built system with new monoblocs that sounded really quite wonderful, and a lovely new chromed chassis … but I didn’t take any pictures. Sigh. Please don’t worry — Mike will be back at his usual antics soon.

The most complete discussion area regarding the LSAF that I’ve found so far is at AudioRoundtable.com, in their General forum. I have a hard time with forums sometime — but I like the tone of the discussions at Audio Roundtable. I’ve been liking the AudioCircles, too. A bit kinder and gentler than the better known forums.

And here’s a list of other reports:

Dave Cope (Audio Note UK’s factory liasion, and general websmith/wordsmith, see TriodeAndCO.us) has a very nice slideshow.
The Lone Star Bottleheads’ photos are up on their forum, here – and they also have a slideshow version here.

The CryoParts folks did a little reporting on there site, here:

Bill Epstein attended for Dagogo — his report is here

Both Albert Porter and Akhilesh Bajaj wrote for Positive Feedback:
Albert Porter’s report
Akhilesh Bajaj’s report

Neli will be at the Lone Star Audio Fest in Dallas Texas late this week and weekend representing Audio Note U.K. and Audio Federation.

Yes, we missed the Montreal show and it looks like we will miss the Stereophile Show in NYC.

No, we do not like this.

We going through show withdrawal hell…but RMAF will be here soon… kind of.

We had somebody come by who wanted to hear the Adagio loudspeakers in a larger room… and it was easiest to bring them upstairs…

.. and put them on the Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier…

… driven by the Emmlabs CDSA single-box CD / SACD player.

After we got over the initial shock of how much efficnet these speakers were than the Audio Note speakers they replaced…

They sounded pretty darn good!

We know some system builders like to put cheap amps on expensive speakers… well, this is the other side of that coin.

And in this case I think it worked better, as there weren’t any nasties… mostly just limitations on dynamics, mostly midi- and micro-dynamics, and various subtlties that we in the high part of the fi like to have along with our music.

Things have been a little in flux here… which gave us a chance to listen closely to the Ongaku in several different configurations - primarily:

1. On the Rix Rax Outpost amp stand with a $2 OEM black power cord

2. On the Rix Rax with a $1600 Elrod Signature 3 power cord

3. On HRS Nibuses on an HRS M3 Isolation Base on the Rix Rax Outpost amp stand with the Elrod PCs…

And the winner is…

I wanted to try out #1 because that is what some of the diehard AN experts suggest sounds best, and we will try this again in a system cabled with just AN cables and with AN components, but….

Adding the Elrod PC:

a. Removed some of the compression. In some of the guitar notes on Sailing to Philidelphia, really simple notes by the way, with the OEM PC they sounded hardened near the top of the note envelope, like the note just ran into a wall - splat. With the Elrod there was a smooth rollover as the note went from getting louder to getting softer.

b. The Elrod revealed more harmonic content

c. The Elrod removed an ’scratchy agreessive edge’ that the sound had had. As expected. A lot of people associate this edge with ‘immediacy’ (quickness, speed, etc.). If they don’t here it they may think something is missing. It is unfortunate that it is often the case that to get immediacy one has to accept this edge. In this case it did not seem to me to be the case, however, as I listened carefully for just this sort of tradeoff.

Interestingly, some people will sacrifice everything to get a little more immediacy, real or IMAGINED(!) (like AvantGarde owners ) and some will sacrifice everything to get rid of the ‘edge’ (like PS Audio, MIT, and SRA owners…. etc. etc.). The latter group significantly out-numbers the former, in my experience.

d. Finally, the Elrod brought EMOTION to the party. The music became engaging,. Enough so that it was much more difficult to listen to the sound because the music kept distracting me.

Presumably this was because some of the nuances were being lost with the cheapo power cord - or perhaps the ears were shutting down / shuttoing out nucance to protect themsleves from the ‘edge’ and ‘comrpession’ artificats.

When we added the HRS under the amp… first, what a tower, looks very Chinese ….

a. the first thing was very much improved bass response. Everything tightned up - but it was mostly the bass that now had a degree of slam that was quite … impressive.

b. the next thing I noticed was that HRS has a ’sound’. Not sure what this sound is, but with 9 HRS bases here, and after trying them under everything (usually not in soup-to-nuts HRS setups though, but we are gaining more experience here as well), there is a quality to the sound that is recognizable. This is a sound that is hard to do better than - but it is becoming hard for me to analyze anymore - the old noggin just shuts down…. I could convince myself that this was less, the same, or more emotionally satisfying than the previous setup.

Perhaps over time it will be easier to settle this - and one should spend some time evaluating system mods like this - especially if one is subject to emotional swings on a minute by minute basis [aka doing system setups with one’s spouse ].

It was actually warm and sunny out yesterday… but the photos did not come out so great. Will try again on the next sunny day. Should be one coming up … sometime.

It is also hard to show just how BIG the amps stand, and amp! are. We;ll try to fix that for next time too.

Anyway… there are some HRS couplers under the amp, but in gernal we have not done extensive listening tests to test the HRS or the system itself in this configuration… yet.

These speakers, this system, actually does fill up the room with sound. It is amazing.

Not quite the easy open bass the Triolon bass towers had- but few systems have THAT large of a sound.

But the bass goes down on both this and the previous system to about the same frequency, and with about the same resolution… so there ARE similaritities.

And here, the soundstage is a more reasonable 6 or 7 feet tall, instead of 20 feet - so it is, as always, about tradeoffs. And at about 1/4 the price… we are happy with this being the primary system… for awhile.

I will have to take more photos of the Ongaku on the Rix Rax outpost amp stand. It was just a kind of accident that this got set up this way - the HRS going out on a local audition this week - but this looks really … farout man.

The two are about the same size and it is as if were made for each other. And Neli polished up both of them, which doesn’t hurt the visuals either.

Sonically… we are playing with power cords and have a $2 OEM cord on the Ongaku to establish a frame-of-reference… so can’t say anything yet.

In this post, we will not talk about sonic characteristcs, per se, but just the differences in functionality of the higher-end players we currently have available.

Just by itself, the difference in what these players do, and their basic approach to sound, is enough to differentiate them - enough to help many people choose which one they are most likely interested in.

*** Audio Note U.K. DAC / Transport combinations. $[varies]

Tube. If you want a musical, very customizable sound (through tube-rolling), do not need another preamp, do not want to run your PC or video system into the DAC. , and have space for a two component player.

*** Audio Aero Capitole Reference CD player with linestage: $9,580.00.

Tube. If you want a very musical yet unveiled sound, need a good linestage, and do not care about SACD.

*** EMM Labs CDSA CD / SACD player $9,995.00

Solid-state. If you want a very pure yet musical sound, want SACD, do not need another preamp, do not want to run your PC or video system into the DAC, and/or only have rack space for one component.

*** Audio Aero Prestige CD /SACD player with linestage: $12,990.00.

Tube. If you want a very musical, detailed and solid sound, want SACD, need a good linestage, need a front loading CD player and/or only have rack space for one component.

*** EMM Labs CDSD SE and DCC2 SE: $21,900.00

Solid-state. If you want a very pure yet musical sound, want SACD, need a good line-stage, and/or want to run your PC or video system into the DAC, and have space for a two component player.

*** Audio Note U.K. CDT3 and DAC 4.1x Balanced: $22,600.00

Tube. If you want lots of detail with each note rendered in an analog-like fashion, do not need a preamp, and have space for a two component player.

————-

A FEW THINGS

First, these really are some of the, if not THE, best digital today.

Second, the built-in preamp are really quite good. Not spectacular, but really, REALLY good for the price paid.

Third, given your current system, and where you want to take it, you probably have a good idea about going for a tube versus a solid-state solution. The solid-state here is very, very good, very un-solid-state-like, but it will not ‘add musicality’, but neither will it take away musicality [unlike most other solid-state digital]. . It just ‘is’.

Fourth, given a budget, it may be best to allocate a larger portion of the overall budget to a player with a built-in pre, rather than get both a lesser CD player and a separate pre. Not only from a potential shelf space (and extra power cord and cable!) issue, but because it will be find to find a preamp that does what THESE built-in preamps do for anywhere near the money.

Audio Note is coming out with several single-box players, so this will make some choices harder. But for people on a budget, who have a system that they want to keep most of, who know whether or not they like their current preamp, have a preference for a specific-sound, who have limited rack space, the choosing process is really going to be very similar to the list above.

It’s just a start - and only overviews the more complex parts of the line (ignoring the M1… M10 naming simplicity of the preamps and DACs for example). But hopefully it gives an idea of how things are organized…

It is located off our Audio Note distributership page at:

Audio Note Overview

We will keep trying to make the window narrower over time as well