Been busy here lately…

With the mortgage finance crises and just a general malaise here in the states, February and March were some of our slowest months ever.

But April is making up for both of them and more. Lots of people wanting to hear things – and lots of people buying things. Which is good for us – but not so good for blogging… oops.

Let’s see. We’ve sold our venerable Soundlab Ultimate One electrostatic speakers. They’ve been here about 5 years and it was time for a change. Neli wants to replace them with the M1 – a slightly smaller and lighter weight model in the Soundlab line. The price / performance ratio for Soundlab speakers for those who like a audiophile-quality [yes, this requirement leaves most competitors out of the competition :-)] big, full range sound is not really being challenged out there as prices go through the roof on all import and many domestic speaker models.

We did a [somewhat lighthearted] shootout between the phono stage in the little Audio Note M1 preamplifier [$700 on the used market. A steal] and the Lamm LP2 phono preamplifier [about $7500 new] – but we botched it. We started with the M1 pre’s phono stage – the first time we had ever used it here. It sounded good, and very musical – but lacking some control and resolution, which was expected. Then we went over the the LP2, which sounded more transparent… but hmmmmmm…. not quite right. We investigated and …. Oh! Something was channeling vibrations to the tonearm through their wires [must be Neli’s fault :-)]. So a quick fix and… lo and behold… things sounded great as expected. But we started the shootout too late, and no one wanted to go back to try the M1 again [I *told* you guys that starting *after* we stuffed ourselves with Vietnamese food wasn’t going to make us super productive… ;-)].

We’ve done a number of shootouts between Harmonic Resolution System’s (HRS) vibration control and the leading competitors – and it weren’t pretty. Not sure if people want to hear about which brands they were and the details… We usually stay away from talking about the performance of brands we do not carry on this blog, except for those little show reports we do…. 🙂 … and then only in the context of the sounds of various rooms, as opposed to head-to-head shootouts where ain’t nobody can hide [don’t ask me why I talk like some pseudo backwoodsman sometimes… I just don’t know].

The Kegon Balanced amps continue to impress the poop out of me. During a lot of the auditions people are talking with Neli and this or that thing – and I just sit there listening to the KBs controlling the heck out of those Kharma Exquisite Mini speakers. It is something to hear if you are familiar with just how hard the Kharma’s are to whip into shape for all other tube amps. The way the notes just appear from ground zero, blossom in just this very exquisite [sic] way [and correct, natural, musical, organic way], and then are controlled all the way down to zero again. And not just the bass, but the midrange as well.

We are going to move the Kharma’s and Acoustic Zen’s Adagio speakers to where the SoundLabs used to sit while we decide on what to replace the U1’s with. Funny, having those big guys gone did not make me, anyway, feel that we got back a lot of room. Maybe because … I don’t know. Because we were always walking behind one of them and the other was off to a side where we never go in any case?

Prices of things from Europe are going through the roof. Audio Note is OK so far – the British pound has been stable at $2 per pound for awhile now. But everything else…..Whew! It ain’t pretty.