Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Volume controls? Yep. Volume controls.

Audio Note’s more expensive pre-amplifiers have high-performance and awesome-looking volume controls. Hand soldered resisters are used for discrete levels of attenuation – arranged in a couple of different geometries that are pleasing to the eye [well, MY eyes anyway!] as well as the ear.

The red, square-looking one in the photos has more “steps” and allows for finer control of the volume between soft and loud. AN believes in high-gain preamps and so do we, but we wanted a little more control over the playback and recently had Nick at True Sound install the red volume control in our M9 Phono preamp.

We are liking the change. 🙂

It is taking  us both awhile to get used to setting the volume 5  clicks in and still being able to hear ourselves talk [which can be a good thing and a bad thing ;-)].

OK. Enough with the spouse-humor [sorry Neli :-)]. We also upgraded the M9’s umbilical cord between its power supply and control unit a few months ago, a major improvement.

Audio Note U.K. doesn’t stay still and keeps improving things. Which is good. Because after some amount of time, I am always ready for something that brings me closer to the epiphanies of hope and beauty that music can deliver to world-weary tired souls – like mine. And maybe like yours too.

Going through old directories finding tons of photos that never made it to the blog. Here is just a couple of them.

The M9 RIAA is a two box phono stage from Audio Note U.K. which is by far the best phone stage we have heard with respect to revealing [aka letting through. aka not stepping all over] the parts of the music that make music sound like music. What more could one ask for? [a serious question. Can’t think of anything!]

This now lives in Fred Crowder‘s system [M9 RIAA reviewed at DAGOGO].

Audio Note has a long history of making power cords. We haven’t always been fans but the statement SOOTTO power cables ($11k-ish for 1.5 meters) and the affordable ISIS power cables ($450-ish for 1.5 meters) have made our ears very, very happy.

[don’t know about you, but if I can at least make my ears happy, it helps me to solider on to the next sucky tomorrow]

The SOOTTO is comparable to other cables in this price range (e.g. Nordost Odin 1) but is less aggressive and more emotional. Extreme detail but not etched detail like some other cables, which lets through the subtle variations in harmonics and dynamics that are needed to understand and appreciate what is the fantastical adventure happening in each note of each song we want to listen to.

The Audio Note ISIS power cord is an all-around performer in the vein of the SOOTTO [and is just slightly smaller in diameter] and we use them freely when we do not have enough SOOTTO on hand to power a system out. Sounds better than power cords at 5-times the price and we have [and sell!] a LOT of these.