Audition Tornado

We just survived one of those (3-day long) tornados where we setup a system to someone to hear, then change it… then change it some more.

In this case it was for the gentleman who bought the Triolons – he wanted to hear several of the amps we have here on them, and we wanted him to hear what these speakers are capable of. We spend a lot of time optimizing the sound here, and we wanted to ‘share the love’.

To do this we sort of had to cannibalize the other systems…

Decimated showroom 3

Decimated showroom 2

Lamm ML1.1 amps taking a rest

Lamm ML2.1 amps and Edge Signature One amps taking a rest

The final system setup.

This and the next photo were taken after the day had been 100% overcast, and then the sun came out. It was yellow outside, everywhere – being outside was like wearing rose colored glasses.

The final system setup consisted of Audio Note U.K. Kegon 22 watt SET 300B-based amplifiers, Audio Note M10 linestage, Emm Labs CDSD and DCC2 signature editions, Jorma Design Prime interconnects and Jorma Prime speaker cables on the midrange and Jorma Mo.1 cables on the bass towers. Everything was on HRS M3 Isolation Bases and Nimbuses. Power cords were all Shunyata Anacondas.

One of the Audio Note ‘Galahad’ power supplies for the M10 preamplifier.

So, what do you people think of our solution to the Kobayashi Maru scenario for where to put the power supplies for the M10?

I think Neli’s idea to stick their butt in the general direction of the main preamplifier box was great (helps their umbilicial cords reach without creating that ‘suspension bridge’, or rather ‘trip wire’ that is oh so likely in times like these). They are out of the way of the speaker’s drivers, especially the bass woofers, but there are probably resonance build ups being so close to the wall like that.

This system front-end, including amps, although very similar to the configuration we took to RMAF 2006 this year, has never been paired with these particular speakers. We’ve come close in the past, but we only had the M10 three days the first time we had it, and just got enough Jorma Design Prime cable very recently. We learned a few things by both incrementally changing the system (like how good the Jorma Prime cable is), and by putting our reference system we usually pair with the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers on these speakers.

Like what the added solidity provided by the (as yet still unbroken in) M10 did to the nature of the instruments and the listening experience. At least, I think it was the M10 – or it could have been the Jorma Prime speaker cable. It was probably both.

There was a 3D nature to the whole presentation that was very convincing. It was MUCH more like being in a nightclub than we have ever heard before. I guess I usually associate the feeling of being in a studio with some amount of artificiality, treated walls, and mixers… but this was much more like REALITY. Even the smaller instruments, especially in classical pieces, had a solidity and convincingness to them.

I guess that is primarily what I noticed about this sound in comparision with our standard Emm Labs -> Kegons using the Stealth INDRA interconnect and Valhalla or Jorma No. 1 speaker cable. That not only was the musician ‘solid’ and present and convincing, but that the musician’s guitar, and strings, and arms and face… all had a solidity and presense like they do in real-life – we just don’t pay attention to these kinds of cues, usually. We don’t go walking around listening to reflections of sounds off of things. We take them for granted. It is only when they have been missing (like in most audio reproduction systems) and then appear (in a specially optimized system) that we point to them as say WOW!

A lot of this wow comes from the increased dynamics and control over the speaker that the M10 seems to bring to the party, along with the added ease of the Prime cable in being able to consistantly place and locate instruments where they are supposed to be – along with the added resolution it brings to deliniate the small subtle clues that tell us about what we are hearing.

Wahoo!!!

Now it is back to put this system configuration down on the Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers, now that they have been broken in all of almost four weeks… 🙂