An (Almost Pure) Audio Note System
Listening room #3 with Audio Note AN/E SEC Silver Signature loudspeakers, Audio Note high-gain Kegon SET amplifiers, Audio Note M8 preamplifier, Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC, Audio Note CDT-Three transport, all on a Acoustic Dreams equipment rack.
First we put in the M8 preamplifier into the system with the Lamm ML1.1 amplifiers. But something was wrong, the timbre was messed up to these ears (Neli didn’t hear anything wrong). Well, I’ve never heard Lamm sound off key, so it was kind of a mystery… until we put the Audio Note Kegon amplifiers into the system in place of the Lamm.
Ahhhhhhh……..
For some reason the M8 and ML1.1 just did not work well together. But with the Kegons….
The one thing that Audio Note does better than anyone else seems to be the reproduction of Music – with a capital ‘M’. There is just something ‘right’ about the sound that is quite unique. More on this when we talk about the M10 preamplifier that arrived today – but I think it has to do with some very subtle cues from the music that other equipment seem to obscure a little – cues like very fine gradiations of harmonics,
This system, sorry or glad to say, not sure which – sounded WAY better than the Audio Note systems we have heard at shows – both Kondo and U.K. I guess we are just addicted to what vibration control and fat power cords will do for a system – which both of those camps eschew (though Kondo did use some kind of platforms at CES 2006 – they also used a loudspeaker that just…did … not… work).
Our Kegons are the high-gain Kegons. Our Kegons can drive a rock. The newer low-gain Kegons however have more finesse and micro-dynamics, especially on efficient speakers like the Audio Note speakers.
This system actually had too much bass – to keep these amps on here any longer we would have to move the speakers out from the wall, or reposition them in some fashion.
We also used Nordost cables in this system which caused our system to sound leaner in comparison to one cabled with the Audio Note cables, whcih are very rich, and emotional sounding cables.
So, we didn’t get to a 100% pure Audio Note system. But we got a glimpse of what it would be like. We got a glimpse of our future.
Listening room #3 – The listening couch.
