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

I don’t know who wrote it, and we do not recognize the writing [except that it is better than mine. *sigh*], but we thank them for their comments:

Audiogon RMAF 2009 Show Report

It was 85 degrees when we left for RMAF.

Now it is 15 degfrees.

THIS is why we like the shows to be as early in the Fall as possible. Next year it is scheduled for October 15th. Get your mittens and earmuffs ready.

Random thoughts here… but silly to wait 2 weeks until report is done.

I thought the Accuphase amps on the Hansen speakers worked pretty well. As you all may know, Accuphase has a particular flavor of sweet and laid back kind of sound. This sound is up there with the CAT 150 watt tube amp sound on the Hansens. The CAT is another laid back, albeit very neutral amp sound.

The other amps we have heard on the Hansens: Boulder and BAT [solid-state if I remember correctly] just sounded etchy and like someone was poking me with a knitting needle: some notes would rise too rapidly, and be jagged at the tops, and other notes just about disappeared.

Yes, I am sure we would all like to hear the Hansens with other amps someday and 1) see if they were able to drive them and 2) if the sound was kick butt or not. The mixibitors would rush around at midnight and try the: big Audio Note like the Gaku-On and big Joule Electra which would both be very interesting. The MBL and even the FM Acoustics would be interesting.

The Show Report is splitting into 2 reports. The main RMAF 2009 Show report is on Spintricity. We will not talk about sound there for the reasons stated there.

Our readers here we expect are more interested in the hardcore technical description of the sound - and we will post that here in this blog.

For example the Wadia room system. To force listeners to listen off-axis the Dynaudio apparently put the speaker’s tweeter close to the floor. Since I took photos crouching in the front of the system, and then sat front row almost center [it had an interesting sound that peeked my curiosity] it worked for me. In a in-home situation, most people who listen from a sweet spot will have the tweeters in their sight which is all that is required for this design to work. In the few minutes I had I was not able to figure out what it was about this system that I thought might be worth investigating further. It was certainly a soft, and digititus-free sound [which does not mean it was analog-sounding]. Maybe they just removed all the frequencies above 3000Hz - but I did not think so at the time. It seemed to have good separation, and controlled midi-dynamics - typically uncharacteristic of solid-state sound. Guess I should wait until I get to the photos again and then we can talk more about this room.

We will also talk about our room, of course. It was quite an experience!

I think you all might enjoy Pez’s show report (I did):

RMAF 2009 Show Report Day 1

RMAF 2009 Show Report Day 2

Day 3 is forthcoming.

We seem to hear more or less the same things - although perhaps reaching different conclusions sometimes…

Still not awake….

We decided to drive back last night instead of this morning. Got in around 2:30am.

I took 3246 photos. First the dailies will be completed, with the 1 photo per room overview. That should be up after get back from we driving back down to the show to have lunch with Mike Latvis. [well, we enjoy our time with Mike THAT much, OK? Yeah, yeah, The silliness of it strikes us as well. ]

Then we will do the full, archival quality report. That will be fun, for me, because I get to see what all those close-up photos show that my eyes do not have the ability, nor time, to see and enjoy at the time they were taken.

[OK, head still spinning. Yep, I will let Neli do the driving this morning].

Just came on.
Do we dare power back up the system?

… are up on Spintricity.

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…