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…

[OK. Here are the official list of features. Pretty impressive.

See the full brochure on Spintricity.]

o One gain stage from DAC to output with fully discrete Class A circuitry
o MDAT™ signal processing technology
o Provides 2x DSD upsampling for SACD and PCM playback
o Preserves phase, frequency and dynamic integrity of waveform
o MDAC™ discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit
o MFAST™ technology for instant signal acquisition, jitter-free performance
o High-isolation resonant mode power supply for silent, green operation
o Exclusive aerospace-grade composite laminate circuit boards
o Silky smooth Esoteric™ drive
o Sculpted, brushed aluminum chassis
o Low resonance, internally braced design with thick, machined sole plate
o Available in silver or black
o LCD display with four brightness levels and a display-off setting
o New precision-machined aluminum multifunction infrared remote control
o Remote-controllable polarity inversion performed in the digital domain
o PCM inputs via AES/EBU and Toslink

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!)

We spent some time comparing the Emm Labs XDS1 single-box player to the older Emm Labs two-box CDSD transport DCC2 DAC combo. From this comparison we can deduce some differences between the XDS1 and the two-box Emm Labs TSD1 transport and DAC2 DAC (which we spent quite a bit of time with previously and with which we did this comparison with the older pair many times).

Whew!

The one sentence conclusion is that the XDS1 is a evolutionary improvement ‘in kind’ with the improvements the TSD1/DAC2 brought us compared to the CDSD/DCC2 - taking it another step in the direction of blacker backgrounds, control and separation - with unexpectedly, a few additional evolutionary improvements in the bass and dynamics areas.

By evolutionary, I mean you don’t immediately wince when you go from the XDS1 to the CDSD/DCC2 [it is not like going from an ODIN power cord to a ordinary top-of-the-line power cord]. You won’t immediately wince - but you will eventually.

Going from the CDSD/DCC2 to the XDS1 it is much more apparent. There is a greater ease to the presentation: dynamically, details, harmonics - it all makes the other player seem like it is ‘trying hard’ whereas the TSD1 it just happens effortlessly.

Personally, I think these are all related. The greater control over each note of the XDS1 lends itself to having greater ’slam’, along with the blacker background to be able to pick out individual violins instead of it sounding like just one with a lot of ‘noise that could be other violins’.

We could play the XDS1 louder than the other pair - it had greater resolving capability and whereas the older pair as not able to disambiguate the individual sounds, making it kind of bloby and overwhelming at certain frequencies, the TSD1 sounded just fine. All the instruments could be heard correctly so at the higher volume, it just sounded louder [i.e. the slightly confused rendering of the notes was always there in the older pair, they just didn’t overwhelm us with their unpleasantness until the volume was turned way up].

The UNconfused rendering of the notes of the XDS1, the significantly enhanced control over the notes, the deeper, more round and 3-dimensional bass, the blacker background, made a more immediate and significant impact than the TSD1/DAC2 did over the older CDSD/DCC2 - lending us to conclude that the XDS1 is at least one-step-beyond the TSD1/DAC2 pair.

And now I want to talk about the more psychological aspects of the sound of the XDS1. This is the most fun part for me - both to experience (!) and to write about. But it is also sad because it takes a $25K player [as well as a decent system. This system is quite good - but its optimization is still an in-progress thing] to get to this state-of-mind I am going to TRY to describe.

When you first get the XDS1, it takes some amount of time of concentrated listening [for me] but eventually I got to this space where it I was feeling so much joy listening to one track after the next, one CD after the next. I think a lot of it was because I could just relax ‘in-between the notes’. The awesomely deep black background [without attenuating detail. This is important. This is different than most other ‘blacker backgrounds’ and seems most similar to the Walker Turntable black. But it is even blacker.] combined with resolving capability that we really do not associate with digital players, combined with the control to make the notes do what they the music says they should do and the dynamic capability to make it all seem easy resulted in….

.. an ability to relax and ‘Trust the Music’.

.. to let the music wrap all these strands of melodies around and around you as you listen…

.. picking this melody or that instrument to follow or focus on … but the others are still there(!), doing their thing, not competing with each other, but complementing each other

.. to marvel at the wonderfully rich complexity and beauty of the notes down to the smallest aspect of each note and how it fits into its strand of the melody

.. how it becomes an almost tactile thing - an almost physical experience… ‘touching the music and being touched by it’

Anyway, I had these experiences with the TSD1/DAC2 on a almost perfectly optimized system [Coltrane/Ongaku/ODIN and sometimes some PRIME (which additionally allowed us to experience decays of amazing beauty)]. Now the XDS1 is allowing me to have them on a less optimized system [Audio Note speakers|Kegon Balanced|DAC2 Preamp|ODIN|Valhalla|AcroLink].

Already I am an addict. Pursuing these experiences is about half of what I devote my personal system ‘I Really Want That’ energies to.

[The other half is more amorphous right now - in the direction of a purer Audio Note approach combined with big open well-designed horn speakers. Yeah, amorphous because we don’t got no horn speakers here (and the ones that we did are moving in a direction untenable to us).]

Ergo, almost all my personal audio desire/passion/addiction is for these systems fronted by the newest Emm Labs gear and the high quality systems that are able to do what I want them to do - to provide these kinds of experiences.

Jeez, and I told Neli this was going to be a short write up.

[People seemed to enjoy the previous photo shoot, so here are a few more - with the power on]

Breaking in the XDS1 player on a system that… sort of resembles the one we are taking to RMAF. We think. Today.

Haven’t done any serious shootouts yet, but seems to be less digital [how can you be less digital than something that doesn’t sound digital? I don’t know - but it does] and have more separation than the CDSD/DCC2 pair [we are using the DCC2 preamp for the XDS1]. I think I remember saying the same thing about the TSD1/DAC2 when we first heard them too. Emm Labs is steadily progressing toward digital nirvana.

One thing we can say - the player responds to the remote control very quickly. Switching tracks takes about 1.0 seconds. That, by itself, is almost worth the $25K price tag.

Several shots here of the Esoteric transport with the metal tray

The drawer opening during the photo.

On power up.

The Emm Labs XDS 1 player arrived today. We will be showing it at RMAF 2009.

We only have some photos for everybody at the current time. Before we can talk about what it sound like we have to hook it up. We will hook it up as soon as husband and wife decide which system to put it in [actually, it is -which system will serve as the Show System Prototype area].

Hopefully husband and wife decide before Oct. 2 (the day of the show)

Anyway, here are some photos of the player and its remote control. Larger photos, many of the same ones in fact, will appear in Spintricity tomorrow if all goes as planned.

Fresh from Canada.

Double boxed.

Nice heavy closed-cell foam

The box usually contains more goodies when the player is not a ’show player’

The player, safely nestled.

The player rests on more foam.

A nice stretch cloth bag protects the player

Neli takes the bag off.

Player on the kitchen counter

Player on the kitchen counter

Rear of XDS 1 player. Your basic stuff. If you want USB you need to get the Emm Labs DAC 2.

The icons for the buttons have changed slightly since the TSD1 / DAC2.

The XDS 1 remote appears to be the same as that which comes with the TSD1 transport / DAC 2 DAC.

Hope you enjoyed. We’ll talk about the sound in a few days.

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!

[Finally getting some of these shootouts published…]

The juicy details of the shootout are now up on Spintricity: Emm Labs Shootout: TSD1/DAC2 versus CDSD/DCC2 (with older transport mechanism)

Sorry some of these shootouts are kind of out of order - we did so many shootouts during that period - but it would get boring to just focus several sequential articles on the ML3, or the ODIN, or the TSD1/DAC2.