We were up to 2:30am packing and crating… but we didn’t stop playing music till 6:00 so we got a late start…(show closed at 4pm)

Then from about 9 to 1 packing the truck, and after the hour drive home, *I* am eating breakfast. And going thru my 150 emails that I ignored for 3 days.

This year we crated everything… which takes a LOT longer than just wrapping it in bubble wrap or towels or something…. but it did allow us to partake of the services of a bellhop who was in any case quite careful with things (thanks Samir) which sped things up a lot.

Great show, and we learned a lot about controlling room? distortion a very loud volumes and manipulating soundstage height, a lot more about speaker placement for this particular speaker, with a little help from our friends (thanks Dan) and toys (the background noise from I25 traffic was about 60dB - with the windows closed).

Much more later, but I better go help move things up the stairs - it would be great if we can get these speakers (re) setup tonight.

P.S.

It took from 2:00 to 6:00 to get the show equipment out of the truck and up the stairs (thanks Jim!)

I am telling you all this because maybe you are interested and so that next year we can look at this blog post and align our expectations a little closer with reality in terms of how long all this stuff takes [I always think, and tell Neli, “oh, it’ll just take and hour or so to unload the truck, yada yada yada… “. Oops].

Getting some photos up finally. Been very busy in our room.

A few photos up at :

We got an early date to hear the Nordost ODIN up close and personal… so, maybe we should sleep tonight?

Doesn’t this look empty?

Down these stairs…

.. into the 10ft rental truck that can make it up the driveway…

And into the room. At this point the Coltrane Supremes were out of their crates. Leif (of Marten) and Jorma (of Jorma Design) - we miss you guys! - were not here this year so it takes us hours instead of minutes for the crating and uncrating task Those guys are the like the pros at the Indianapolis 500 and we are like bumpkins in Model T’s… but we DO get there.

The new HRS SXR rack in a side by side, 3 shelf tall configuration.

A cartridge getting mounted in our hotel-turned-mad-scientists laboratory.

The room awaiting the start of the show… though most of yesterday we had so many friends stop by and help us listen to different speaker positions, cables, pink noise, Radiohead,… that it kind of all started yesterday.

The equipment rack…. yes we brought the Brinkmann Balance turntable, Laurence Along with the Lamm LP2 phono stage, and Emm Labs CDSD Signature and DCC2 signature.

… going into the hard core addictive Audio Note Ongaku.

The configuration is … running the CDSD optiically into the DCC2, and the turntable thru 10 feoot Valhalla interconnect, the the DCC2 direct, no preamp into the Marten crossover, which is piped into the Ongaku. What this means is that volume is changed using both the Ongaku (which is an integrated) for the midrange and highs and the Marten box (active crossover and bass amp) for the bass. And the DCC2 is acting as a passive switching box as well as a DAC so we can remotely switch between the turntable input and the digital input.

Confused? You should be here. It don’t get less confusing here either - but it sounds great.

what this allows us to do is use short lengths of very good interconnect (Jorma Design ‘Prime’) for the digital as it goes from DAC to crossover to Ongaku, minimize the number of preamps (one for the upper frequencies and one for the bass), and still have the transport and turntable in the rear of the room and away from vibrations and distracting people with our long pauses between songs if we had walk up to the front to change a CD orLP (unless we want to change the volume. How much a pain this is with two volume controls in the front of the room like this we will soon find out).

In the Audio Note room this year we are planning on a modest system comprised of pieces totally about $15K + turntable cartridge step-up transformer and cables and rack.

Audio Note AN/E Spe HE
Audio Note OTO Phono SE
Audio Note TT2 turntable with Arm Three
Audio Note AN-S4 moving coil step up transformer
Audio Note IO1 moving coil cartridge
Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx
Speaker cable: Audio Note Lexus XL
Acoustic Dreams 4-shelf equipment rack
Audio Note CD 2.1X/II CD Player

Anyone else using the new MS Word? It comes with your new PC (remember, ours got fried by lightning, so we both got a new one), even if you do not get Vista (which I didn’t). There is no ‘Save As’ option so I had to go out and into Windows Explorer and manually copy and rename the file. Geez.

We will be taking photos, we hope, during the show.

The (currently empty) main page of the show report is showing our room this year. Hey, why not? I never seem to get a chance to take a photo of the hotel itself from the outside, with the mountains in the background - which would be my first choice. Maybe this year I’ll get outside? With the camera?

Only other show report I could find was EnjoyTheMusic. Hmmmmm…..

Supposed to be 130 room this year compared to 100 last year. Let’s hope people come. But it’ll be fun in any case. And lifting all this gear up and down the stairs, and setup at the show, is great exercise - Neli and I are always a lot skinnier when we get back from these things.

… is shaping up…

We are now running the Emmlabs CDSD transport through 10m long optical cables to the DCC2 DAC/Pre into the Marten Coltrane Supremes Crossover/ Bass amp into the Audio Note Ongaku and finally to the Marten Supreme speakers.

The key is that the cables are all Jorma Design Prime and one Stealth INDRA interconnect. Less cable, better cable, sound.

Now. This sounds better. But is REALLY sounds better running the DAC direct to the Marten box, not going through the DCC2’s preamp.

When I say ‘really sounds better’, it is both somewhat subtle and somewhat not subtle at all. There is an energy that was present without the extra preamp in the loop that was amazingly hypnotic… but it is hard to hear this when just listening to frequencies and dynamics and other audiophile-type attributes. I guess that is why we call it magic.

Anyway, without the preamp, to change the volume requires changing the main tower volume on the Ongaku and the bass volume on the Marten box. We are running with unity gain into the Marten box, but the bass volume knob works really well. Neli think this is too weird for a show. I think it is no weirder than having two knobs, one for each (left and right) channel, We just have a top and bottom channel instead.

But is is a pain to walk up to the front in a large room like we have at RMAF and adjust the volume all the time, along with syncing up the bass volume to the midrange volume - so it is unclear if we will use the optimized setup at the show (and we want to support use of a turntable as well). But when we get back… This is just too good to pass up.

………and then perhaps swapping out the INDRA for more Jorma ‘Prime’ cable, or Nordost ODIN, or Audio Notes new SOTTO …. How much fun!

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest here in Denver is just around the corner. October 12th I think. I hope. Better go look I guess.

Anyway…

We are planning on taking the Coltrane Supremes, like last year. But this time using the Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier to drive them. ‘How Sweet it Is!’

We were using the Edge Reference ‘pyramid’ amps you see there in the photo, but not any more, so just delete them somehow with your visual cortex.

The sound is quite sweet and beautiful, the first time we’ve really achieved this with the Supremes (they are finally breaking in, hurray!), which are, to put it simply, the only competent speaker made today. All other speakers have serious flaws in comparison. Not that people don’t LIKE some of the flaws in those other speakers, and they’ve certainly got used to them, but, well, there you have it.

The source equipment consists of the Meitner CDSA and the Audio Note M10 preamplifier. We’re thinking the system may be a little too laid back and are planning on replacing the Shunyata Anaconda Helix Vx with Nordost Valhalla power cords, something closer to the Belden OEM cords the factory recommends , to try to get the system to lively up itself a little bit.

I mean, it is close, but people at shows… its hard to figure them out. Some want rooms to be LOUD and IMPRESSIVE (esp. in this price range ) some want it to be REAL, … etc. just like they do with their own systems. And our goal, and I think we can achieve this, is to make it excel in all categories.

The problem is in the subject flavor - how to flavor the system right… down… the…middle.

To please as many people as possible. And us too!

And then there is the let’s just take the EMM Labs CDSD and DCC2 and the Ongaku and be done with it. No preamps, no second rack. No turntable. No second digital source. … Mt arms feel better already

Of course, there is our second room, the Audio Note room. But that is a small room, a decent-sized system, and adds only a few gray hairs to the noggin.