Finally performed the definitive shootout between the interconnects last night:

Nordost Valhalla vrs. Stealth INDRA vrs. Jorma Prime.

When we first got the Prime they were not broken in - a somewhat foward and compressed midrange, and in general the sound came through with a weird, non-flat frequency response. After waiting 3 or 4 days for them to relax, and only hearing minor improvements (exactly as if they were still breaking in), they got put on the Nordost Vidar cable burner for a week or so.

Then we had a marital dispute about the direction the cables were supposed to be used in: should the Bybee purifier go towards the receiving end or the source end? Mike, the Magnificent, (me! insert chest thumping here) thought that they should go towards the receiving end because that is how the Bybees in the speaker cables are oriented. Neli, the wife of Mike the magnificent, remembered Jorma telling her that they went the other way - and somehow during the tests of directionality somebody (not Mike the Magnificent) confused what was towards the receivnig end and what was away from it … well, let’s just say that this week it isn’t I who is the butt of all the jokes around here…

‘Course, this post won’t earn me any points….

Well, it is only fair. last week it was me providing the humor… but I insist it could happen to anybody. You be the judge. The marriage you save could be mine….

In the Audio Aero Capitole player, I looked inside, saw there wasn’t a CD, and put on Ashkenazy’s Rachmanonov.

I pressed play, but different music started playing. Really different.

What did I do to fix this?

I looked inside and saw, yes, the Rachmananov CD was plainly visible. Check.

Then, well…

I pressed STOP, then pressed PLAY again, of course.

This should fix it right?

I mean, when your CD player starts playing something entirely different from what you put in it, this works for you, right?

OK, this was happening during an audition for a nice couple from Rhode Island. So there was an attentive audience for this show I was putting on…

Finally, the Neli of the house came over and took off the Rachmananov CD ….

… and then took off the completely black (exactly the same black as the inside of the top loading Capitole drawer by the way) De Mat that was…. on top of the CD that was underneath the Rachmanonov CD…!

Ha, ha. Very funny.

No I wasn’t trying to play two CDs at once. Yes, I do look inside the player before I just stick a CD in it. No, I wasn’t trying to invent another tweek by stacking CDs in order to improve the sound. No, it wasn’t even a demonstration to show that the player would still play with two CDs and a DE Mat inside of it.

*sigh*

[The De MAT is a black rubbery thing that covers the top of a CD in top loaders to improve the performance of the laser - and thereby the sound - and it works]

Oh, anyway, now everybody has forgotten all about my little ‘incident’ - well, they had until they read this post, anyway.

**************

Back to the Jorma Design Prime interconnect.

It turns out that Mike and Jorma were right and Neli was wrong.

Hee hee hee ))))))

Next - what we heard at the shootout.

As a teaser, let’s just say that $7K for a one meter interconnect is looking like a helluva bargain.

I kid you not. The incremental cost for these cables above the other two brings a tremendous improvement in the listening experience.

Next - the details.

We moved the new Emm Labs transport and DAC upstairs where the old pair sat for just about a year and a half. [They had just spent its first week on the system with the Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers - which are nearly, but not quite, broken in].

I let it settle in some and then played some test CDs.

Swtiching back and forth between the multichannel and 2-channel version of Dark Side of the Moon, it was so obvious that the 2-channel version sounded quite a bit less strident in the midrange, more relaxed, uncompressed, unconfused during complex passages… i.e. it is starting to break in!

In comparison so our previous Emm Labs pair, this pair already had more resolution and a lower noise floor. The combination of these two is serving to increase the transparency even beyond the state-of-the-art industry-leading transparency we had experienced with the older version.

It has been a week since we have been playing it - but it is just starting to relax, which was another major, for me, feature of the Meitner pair: Startling transparency in this casual not-even-trying manner (which derives from, I think, the resolution, especially in the midrange, coming fron naturally formed details, as opposed to the popular lotsa details where notes rise and fall faster than is real).

The trademark purity of tone was immediately apparent from the get-go, after 10 seconds of playing time.

This transparency and purity… it is something no other digital we have heard is able to challenge. Yes, the others may have more detail, or slam, or a rounder sound more able to mate with unforgivning electronics located somewhere else in the system. But if you want a ’straight wire with gain’ kind of sound… this is it.

But… you… have… to… let… it… break… in.

24 x 7 by, say, 6 weeks or more…

OK?

And break in each path through the player that you are going to use: redbook, SACD, preamp analog output, and analog input if necessary… I am not sure the unit gain output needs breaking in too if you are going to use that. But it can’t hurt…

OK.

She likes it!

Hey Mikey! She likes it!

Uh, yes, Neli likes the speaker cables. Mike likes them too.

After 10 days on the Nordost Vidar cable burner, the caveats I noticed when we first heard these cables, the tiniest bit of midrange leaness and compression, are… gone. As suspected, the cables just weren’t completely broken in yet.

The Jorma Prime cables break new ground in the resolution department. Nordost Valhalla cables are usually considered to have very high resolution. But, well, this is a whole new ballgame. Heck, it is a whole new season.

On the Marten Design Coltrane speakers driven by the Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers, which are very high resolution themselves, what with ceramic drivers and a diamond tweeter, these speaker cables just shine. Shine a light on the music, is what.

OTL-like dynamics. Combined with the wonderful pacing this is just plain fun, happy, wow! to listen to.

Super-subtle voice intonations - where lots of the previously unheard nuances are freed, nuances that communicate more of the emotion and substance and individuality and humanity of the voices and instruments.

Voices? Even on day one the voices were enough to just grab you and throw you down in the nearest seat - or, depending on your personality, make you stand up and drench yourself in it all.

Transparency…

You remember how, the first time you heard a high-end system, you thought “Oh, so that is what was on that CD (or LP) this whole time?!!!”

Deep dish harmonics. Harmonic intent that was previously locked behind a dirty display case is now presented to the listener on a silver.. and gold… platter.

Separation, presence, … resolution.

Reso-f***ing-lution.

These cables were paired with the Marten Design Coltrane Supremes in the Swedish Statement room at CES, with their 2″ diamond midrange and 3/4″ diamond tweeter - No wonder we started hallucinating.

New ballgame? This is a whole new universe to explore.

OK. Whew! So, well, the cables are doing their part. Yep. Let’s just put a nice big check mark in that box….

Next!

The updated Meitner DAC and transport arrived today.

For those of you unfamiliar with the digital equipment from Emm Labs, these are the widely acknowledged current state-of-the-art in CD and SACD players. They are so well-respected among the cognesceti that you can read many places about this component and that component, at every price point imaginable, which are defintiely better than the Meitner. Not because they are better, but because they all wish they were better. It has become ‘The One to Beat’.

Our previous pair, with the gloss finish and the transport with the fancy metal drawer, are headed out the door, so we won’t be able to compare the pre-signature and signature versions side by side… you know, play a CD track on one then the same track on the other - but those types of shootouts don’t tell the whole story anyway.

Besides, the Meitner takes a good month to break-in. A good lonnnnng month.

And this includes playing lots of ordinary everyday redbook CDs and not just SACDs.

Why?

To break-in the upconversion hardware and who knows what else that is unique to the redbook playback hardware. Otherwise redbook CDs sound harsh and bright just like….like the player hadn’t been broken in yet….This is why some people on the net talk about ordinary CDs not sounding as good as SACDs. On our older Meitner it was very hard to tell the difference between redbook and SACDs - usually we had to look at the box or the front of the transport to see which it was. SACDs have a little more detail and resolution, a little more separation. In fact, it is my experience that redbook CDs sound less harsh and less digital when compared to SACD.

This also includes using the analog output stage during the entire break-in process.

Why?

Because the Meitner output stage is amazingly pure - but it doesn’t sound amazingly pure until it is broken in. I often feel that people who prefer to use a preamplifier with the Meitner (or Prestige for that matter) either have not broken in the output stage or are looking for a little tube warmth in their overall system configuration - which is fine, but does not have anything to do with the Meitner per se, but the system temperature as a whole.

Of course, before any break in happens we need to plug the things in and find somewhere to put them (or the other way around…). Hopefully we will get that going tonight…

Then we can talk about first impressions - but that is all they will be until we get some solid playing time on these puppies…

There are some pictures, of course, in the meantime

Emm Labs CDSD Signature CD / SACD Transport

Emm Labs DCC2 Signature DAC

Enjoy!

Patience they say, is its own reward.

Well… this is a nice reward.

Some photos…

Initial impressions?

Today the Prime replaced the Stealth INDRA interconnects in order to hear just what the interconnects can do - this is the way that we often audition interconnects. All interconnects up to this point have taken a back seat to the INDRA…

Until now.

A funny thing happens with audio gear. Like the Audio Note CDT-3, and now these cables (and, of course, the INDRA themselves), and to some degree all gear, what arrives as an inanimate, cold, dead, technological curiosity comes alive and gets this glow around it as one learns to appreciate more and more what the piece does - how it is enriching one’s life and those who hear it. It goes from being valuable in a monetary sense to valuable in a life-sustaining sense. It is food, that tastes goooooood.

OK. Initial impressions in comparion to the INDRA:

PROS: More authority, lots more separation, lots more presence, deeper soundstage, a little more bass, more suspense, more resolution.

Also… it has more beauty - the inherent beauty of the music comes through better. This is not richness of tone or dynamics or anything like that. Some of this has to do with the musical rightness of riffs playing off of and against and into another. Not too clear right now what else is happening - hopefully will get more insight as time goes on here.

CONS: None [Yeah. Right. This is Audio Federation. The picky people. There are always cons.] except the midrange being a tiny bit leaner than the INDRA, and similarly the midrange is experiencing a little more compression as well.

Funny, we were told to expect these two symptoms as part of the cable settling-in process [ Even funnier, we NEVER believe stuff like this that people tell us, about how something is going to sound. But sometimes, they are right. Too cloudy here - it is snowing - to see if there is a blue moon outside or not.] Well, experiencing them we are. These anomalies are also supposed to go away in a few hours to a day or so - and they are diminishing after only two hours…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Speaking of tomorrow, the plan is that the Jorma Prime speaker cables will replace the Jorma No .1 speaker cables and the system will be almost completly Jorma Prime.

‘Till then, then.