Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers on Audio Note Ongaku, driven by Meitner CDSA CD / SACD player, 100% cabled by Jorma Design Prime cables.

Very small, very exquisite system.

Upstairs we had the player across the room, so always connected it to the system using he 10m Valhalla interconnects. So this was the first time we heard the Kharma speakers, and later the Marten Coltrane speakers, in a 100% Jorma Prime system.

Yummy.

Sonically, it was just more of what we heard upstairs, taken to a higher level. Specifically, more PRESENCE. Voices were just THERE. Bass seemed even tighter as well, though that might be the smaller room.

The chairs are turned away so that people can hear the Soundlab system in this photo.

Later, we put the Martin ‘Coltrane’ speakers in this system. First time we heard the Ongaku on the Coltranes. Compared to the Kegons, the Ongaku seems to control different frequencies, … differently. It is sweeter than the Kegons - but not sweet in the sense of warm, but perhaps in the sense of more color, and a better sense of the ‘right’ note decay.

The Kharma and Marten are worlds apart in this kind of uber-system, and, to generalize, the Marten in a more neutral speaker, more even top to bottom, soundstage behind the speakers, and the Kharma is a more exuberant speaker, very high-resolution in the mids and upper mids, soundstage in front of the speakers, and probably can’t be beat on vocals.

Also, the Kharmas prefer larger rooms and the Coltranes smaller.

Again, just generalizing.

The soundlabs!

Finally, the SoundLabs get a chance to breathe…. Nice to have them back out from behind the Coltrane Supremes…

And speaking of the Supremes… here we see them all nicely polished up by Neli.

The aesthetic of these speakers, tall vertical, wooden, in this room with its tall vertical wooden beams - is striking now that we are getting used to the whole idea that they are FINALLY up here.

Took us long enough, huh?

Well, we had an excuse, with the huge horn speakers hogging all the space up until May.

Then Neli’s sorry excuse for a husband was under orders not to lift anything heavier than 25 - 35 lbs. for 6 weeks - which we determined actually did rule out 300 lb bass towers.

And then we had audition after audition - and everyone really loved the Audio Note Ongaku on the Kharma Mini Exquisites with the Jorma Prime cable. - so we were hesitant messing with perfecttion [but this system will be downstairs, so we’ll see how much the size of the room contributed to the sound - it IS a small system, after all]

We had some concern - and numerous, numerous, numerous to the point of ridiculousness - discussions about how to get the speakers up to the main room. How to wrap them, ho wmany layers, how dirty the blankets could be, using a hand-truck, going outside instead of up the stairs, I was about to die with all this talking - what is WRONG with me that I was the one who started the conversation half the time?

Here is the stairs we carried them up. Neli did great carrying the top of the speaker up, and we did take off the 40lb or so spiked feet - but otherwise we ‘just did it’, like Nike keeps telling us to do, though at least with the second bass tower, we wrapped the banister with towels to prevent any ‘accidents’ - which luckily we didn'’t have (whew! and yippee!).

We put the EDGE Reference amps on the main towers (800 watts on top, and the built in 2000 watts on the bottom - these boys go LOUD - so far I haven’t turned it up above -32 on the Capitole CD player - which is already over 100dB). Well, we wanted to wake up the speakers and this should do it.

Positioning still sucks.

And now starts the long journey to finding the magical combo of components that will make these speakers sing the way we know they can. This currently ain’t it, not the least reason of which is that the Capitole player needs vibration control bad - there is some serious BASS going on and it is just sitting on the Black Diamond Racing cones, right there next to the speakers, poor thing.

We moved the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers over to in front of the Soundlab U1 speakers and the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers over behind the Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers. The ‘Supremes’ are slowly making their way upstairs.

The Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers driven by Lamm ML2.1 amps and Lamm L2 preamp. Source is the Brinkmann Balance turntable with Lyra Titan cartridge and Audio Aero Prestige CD / SACD player / linestage.

The system sounds good - at the volumes we play it at (i.e. below 100 dB) the bass tower’s rear-firing ports did not seem affected by the proximity of the SoundLab speakers. The main towers, being sealed, also did not have too many adverse affects [we still need to move the bass towers farther back, away from the front of the main towers - which improves imaging significantly].

The thing about these speakers, which has been unexpected, is how ‘intimate sounding’ they are. Unlike most (all?) other speakers that produce a large soundstage, which have a somewhat dominating influence, distancing the musicans from the here and now in some way that is hard to explain right now - the listening experience here is more like listening to monitors. Like the musicians are playing music Just For Me.

Still don’t know what to make of this - or whether other people will appreciate this or not. But there is a lot more ‘affection’ for the music in this context - it is much more approachable.

On the other side of the room, behind the listening chairs, is the now sparsely settled showroom 2 with the Marten Coltranes waiting behind the Khamra Minis. This will be the configuration we will use, along with a pair of Audio Note speakers standing by, when the ‘Supremes’ make it all the way upstairs into the big showroom #1.

… in a small room.

The Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers, Audio Note Kegon amplifiers and Audio Aero Capitole CD player.

This room is 10.5 x 20 x 9 feet tall.

The sound very much reflects the sound of the Capitole, ultimately musical, a little sweet, a touch of raspberry and tobacco - oh, wait, I mean a little round and luscious.

It sounds quite good - though the room can be overloaded at about, I would guess to be 90dB or so, unlike our larger rooms. In other respects the system interacts very little with the room, so little in fact that it was a little surprising.

We know that the Coltranes were designed to be able to work well in small spaces - but were still unprepared for the results. Very much like the Audio Note speakers, which were designed to use the room’s acoustical properties to best advantage.

I mean, most of us play our systems, our speakers, in a room, right? And most if not all speaker manufacturers know this, right? And only some manufacturers expect audiophiles to live in a padded cell… [unlike society at large which is probably quite happy yet mystified to see us building our own padded cells. Self-incarcerating lunatics. How conveeeeenient.]

We are currently running with Nordost Tyr speaker cable, which is very good but not quite as good as Valhalla - lacking some finesse and truth in comparison. We hope to optimize this system quite a bit before we are through.

The Acoustic Dreams equipment rack with… yes, the Kharma MP150 amps.

We were only able to try the Kharma amps for a few minutes, while a pair of balanced interconnects flew in and out of here.

You see, the MP150 only come with Single-ended OR Balanced connections. This one has balanced. We do not have any balanced cables here (long story, suffice it to say that very little of the equipment here is balanced).

So, when our 2m Valhalla balanced interconnects arrive (we sell a lot of Nordost here - might as well have a balanced cable around) we will get to hear these little big amps again.

Two questions:

1. Is it improper for us to put these amps on the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers (there is something of a friendly rivelry between Kharma and Marten)

2. How many people besides us and Steve want to see pictures of the Elrod Statement power cords - the LARGE Elrod statement power cords hooked up to these guys? Power cords that are about the same width as the amplifiers?

Thought so.

Kharma MP150 amp with smaller Elrod power cord and Nordost Valkryja speaker cable

This last picture was hastily taken with the smaller, one might even say reasonably sized, Elrod power cable attached to the amplifier.

Finally, this system will have the Audio Note M8 phono on it for a few days this week, and with the Brinkmann Balance turntable running through it. THAT should be interesting. Hopefully we will get time to put the Audio Note cartridge on the Brinkmann, and with the Audio Note S4 stepup transformer, see what THAT sounds like.

This is what they call F-U-N.

Oh! What hard work! Whew!

Please, no more!

Well, maybe just a little….

This is the first post with our new Category scheme - This is what we are calling “Showroom 2″ although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).

The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.

We have a tendency - like most people who really enjoy this hobby - to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.

There is also two of us - so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.

We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound - which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation - and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve - and you can match that against what you personally prefer.

[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is - I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I - but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].

South side of listening room two - the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps

Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.

Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background

Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs - so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.

It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-

So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…

This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact.

As far as breaking in - the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.

The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…

The System: Marten Coltrane speakers, Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers, Jorma Prime speaker cable, HRS MXR equipment rack. Also Lamm L2 preamplifier, Audio Note CDT-Two and DAC 4.1x Balanced. Nordost and Shunyata cabling.

We mentioned how amazing this was sounding in our review of the Jorma ‘Prime’ interconnects.

What does does amazing mean?

Here is what amazing means:

The Coltrane speakers are so freakin revealing… The Jorma Prime cables are slightly more forward than their No. 1 and even the Valhalla, and this new effect was already taking hold. Now, with HRS’s MXR rack [we set it up yesterday, much more on this later ] in place of the Acoustic Dreams, the system sound is even more ‘present’.

We kind of take it for a given that the Coltrane speakers are a little laid back - given the highest quality, completely neutral components up front. But maybe not…

Witb these two new, admittedly over the top, additions to the system… the sound is much more of a engulfing, in the room type of experience.

Our good Canadian friend, Dave H., [you there Dave? Missed you in Monteal] used to talk about how he wanted the sound to come to him, to not have to focus on listening to what was being played, to have the sound ‘take control’ [my words] as it were.

The system was already subtley sinister in the way it would sneak up on a person and make one stop mid sentence, whether one wanted to or not, as the music Took Control.

But now, …

It is hard to move, much more hard to get up.

It is like ‘if I miss this next note, my life will have been worthless and empty’… ‘I must hear this next note!’

I think this house is going to be much more quiet now… because if we start playing any music, we aren’t going to get ANYTHING done.

[Though I am much more disclipined than Neli, and this system is on the same floor as her office. She, she is doomed. So if you can’t get her on the tele as easily as you could before today, you’ll know exactly why!]

And the new Audio Note CDT-Three transport just arrived. We are doomed!

Audio Federation is raising the bar once again.

We are excited to announce our partnership with Marten Design and Sound Advice in bringing this technological tour-de-force to the Americas. We are now and will be the exclusive U.S. dealer and showroom for Marten’s statement speaker: the Coltrane Supreme. We are also the Coltrane Supreme dealer for our friends up in Canada for the forseeable future.

Marten products have always had industry-leading price/performance, and it is just mind-boggling contemplating the performance of these cost-no-object loudspeakers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you all know how picky we are.

Picky, picky, picky.

So it was with great pleasure, and a little surprise, that after extensive consideration and evaluation of any and all speakers worldwide, we found that the next giant step forward, the state-of-the-art both technologically and musically, in the ongoing evolution of high-fidelity speakers was right here with one of the product lines we already carry.

The Coltrane Supremes list for $250,000.00 and should be here, ready for auditions in the July-August time-frame and we plan on exhibiting with them at RMAF, the 2006 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, this October in Denver.

Perhaps it was best chanted by John Coltrane, and later Santana / McLaughlin (my personal favorite), the Dead, and many, many others…

“…
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme
…”

Just some fun pictures we had laying around on the hard disk…

Closeup of the diamond tweeter and ceramic midrange of the Marten Coltrane speaker. This is the walnut version of these speakers and the wood is starting to take on a nice rich patina as it ages.

The Edge NL Reference 800 watt ‘pyramid’ amplifier. This picture really captures the sleek metalic look of the amplifiers.

Closeup of the top of the Edge NL Reference 800 watt ‘pyramid’ amplifier. Here you can almost see how nice it is to touch these amplifiers, the powder coating feeling very nice, almost soft, to the touch. The cap on top and the way the sides are fastened makes the amplifiers water tight (and maybe even dust tight, which would be nice… see below).

The EMM Labs Meitner DCC2 at dark on an HRS M3 Isolation Base. This picture captures the color-coding of the buttons nicely, as well as showing a how the volume knob is so much fun to turn by hand.

The Lyra Titan cartridge on a Brinkmann tonearm. This picture does not show it perfectly, but there is this feeling of the loooong tonearm snaking out fron the depths at the back of the turntable, the head ready to strike with it diamond tooth into the platter.

Closeup of the Brinkmann tonearm. Ah, engineering. Lovin’ it.

Closeup of the Lyra Titan cartridge. Dust. There are lots of little dust particles, perhaps hairs from the wool carpet. They do not look serious enough toimpact the sound. But they are everywhere…

The Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm

Closeup of the Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm. More dust particles.

The Brinkmann Balance turntable control buttons. Left is 33 rpm, right is 45 rpm, center is OFF.Sometimes we turn it on and off just for the fun of touching the buttons.

The Nordost Vidar cable burn in device. More pictures from the post a few days ago.

The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers. I like the reflections of the cables and binding posts in the shiny carbon fiber on back of the Coltrane.

The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers. More reflection. These are the EU-safe WBT binding posts.

The Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight. I like the pattern of shdows the various layers of conductors make. When this picture is blown up large, this looks like a work of abstract art. Or maybe industrial art.

Closeup of the Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight held against the blue sky. You can really see how the cable is constructed. As desribed on the Nordost website:

“Each conductor is made from optimized diameter solid 99.999999% oxygen free copper that has 78 microns of extruded silver on the surface. The surface of each conductor is highly polished before a high precision Micro Mono-Filament wrap is applied.

The Micro Mono-Filament is helically wound over the conductor. A precision FEP jacket is then extruded over the conductor. A number of proprietary methods are used in this difficult and extremely precise manufacturing technique that reduces dielectric contact by a factor of more than 80%. Extremely mechanically stable, the conductors are effectively suspended in inert air, preventing oxidation. ”

Well, hope this all was as fun for you as it was for me!

I really like the low-powered Lamm ML2.1 18 watt SET amps on the Marten Design Coltrane 89dB sensitive full-range speakers.

Coltrane speakers, ML2.1 amps, Lamm L2 preamp, Audio Note CDT2 and DAC 4.1x Balanced, Nordost Thor and Valhalla cables, Shunyata power cords

I really liked the Audio Aero Prestige 40 watt amps and the Audio Note Kegon 22 watt amps on the Coltranes before that.

No, they don’t generate that adrenaline rush of a really loud presentation with chest thumping bass.

The Coltranes can do this with the right amplification. And it is really fun. In a Homeresque Whoo Hoo! kind of way.

But the little tube amps on these speakers can hold me…..

SPELLBOUNDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

The little amps are able to grip the speakers pretty darn well. They also show off immense amounts of harmonic detail. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

But it is not about all this analytical crap at all.

It is all, everything, completely, about the fact that the …Sound… Grips… Me.

Yeah, It helps that the speaker has a very high resolution, a speaker with all ceramic drivers and diamond tweeters has a tendency to do this. It helps that the speakers are full range, so that whatever bass the amps put out, the listener gets to hear. And they put out a lot of bass - make no mistake - but it is analog bass, like bass in the real world, and not electronic bass (which some ever larger percentage of our music these days likes to use and here is where the little tube amps on hard to drive speakers really do take a back seat to solidstate amps).

But this is not about how the speaker or system sounds.

It is not.

This is about how the sounds affects the listener.

In the end why should I care about the sound, beyond a certain minimum standard, any more than I care about the minute contruction details of the chair I sit in, or the the type of weaving and glue the carpet underneath my feat uses? What we CARE about REALLY is how comfortable the chair is; about how pleasant the carpet is to look at and feel underneath our feet.

What if all reviews and all show reports paid attention to nothing except how the sounds …made …them …feel.

I bet the Stereophile list of Class A components would look a lot different than they do now.

The first track on Santana’s Abraxus, “Singing Winds, Crying Beasts”, is one of our test tracks.

This track has revealed some supposedly top-flight systems to be incapable of managing the etheral ’sound angels’ flying in and out and around the soundstage.

While listening to the Marten Design Coltrane Supremes I was struck with the a very interesting, some might say bizarre, 3D impression of some of the notes in this song. Now, this happens to me a lot when I am falling asleep, Jazz and Classical music seems to not be ‘heard’ anymore but instead transformed into moving, interlocking 3D soundscapes that I fly around in.

Hey, those white coated fellas can just stay where they are, thank you anyway.

But in the Marten Design room at CES, I was awake! I mean it WAS the last day of the show and all, but seriously….

O.K. First I will describe what I usually see when I hear the sounds, in this case, the tiny bells that kind of fade in and out at various places in the soundstage during this song, while listening to the Acapella Audio Arts Triolon Excalibur speakers.

What I see is this:

It is right after a fresh snow, and it is very cold so the snow is not sticking to itself or anything else, it is very fluffy but not so fluffy that it does not have a good ratio of water to size. The sun has come out and is shining on a large number of very tall pine trees. A gentle breeze comes up and sends a number of snow flakes dancing, as they are wont to do, in all directions: up down swirling bouncing gliding…As some of the 100s of flakes hit the rays of the sun that are penetrating through the bows of the trees, the flakes ‘light up’, temporarily, in a prismatic flash of dozens of pure colors alternating with pure white snowflakeshine, before they are again returned to invisiblity as they reenter the shadows to be replaced by a 100 others. These flakes are small, about 1/2 inch or smaller.

These sparkling, flashing swirling colors popping in and out of existance is what I ’see’ when hearing these bells. This more or less seems like a normal kind of thing to ’see’, to me, and corresponds pretty well to the ‘type’ of the sound. To me.

But. The Coltrane Supremes….

What I ’saw’ was weird, man.

What I saw were these aluminum things shaped like Cheeto corn chips, in kind of an unpolished silver metal color varying between 1/2 and about 2 inches long and about, I guess, 1/8 inch thick. They kind of faded into existance, moved a little bit closer then a little bit away from me, rotating a perhaps up to 45% during this time period, before they faded out again. There was a gentle diffuse white light playing on these ‘bell chips’.

I cannot let myself beleive that the resolution was so good in that room that I was ’seeing’ the sides of the bells as the overall sound outlined their shapes as it bounced off them and into the microphone. I mean, SACD has a lot of detail, but this is crazy.

Anyway, I wonder if other people sometimes see music as ‘things’.

And I also wonder if sometimes they also experience visual musical shapes that sometimes come unbidden and are shockingly different from what they normally ’see’. While they are awake.