Photos from downstairs
Just a few odds and ends… OK. Yes. Audio porn. While it still gets through those parental filters.
The Kharma Mini Exquisite.
The Audio Note Kegon Balanced from the front
The Audio Note Kegon Balanced from the side
The Marten Coltrane, showing off its bottom port.
The Audio Note E/SEC Signature speaker with 8 hand rubbed coats of lacquer, in MADRONE burl with piano finish .
A closeup of the finish.
Hi Mike,
you’re using HRS Nimbus Couplers betwen the speaker and the crossover/stand of the E’s instead of the supplied BlueTak!?!?!
As I have the same speaker, could you tell me what you hear/what’s the difference?
Regards,
Andreas
Hi Andreas,
Neli has done some shootouts with the two approaches – so maybe she will chime in later, but I think the couplers are useful in just their simple, mechanical nature:
It is a lot easier to tweak the speaker’s orientation than with BlueTak
It is easier to pick the speaker up and to put it down [which we do fairly often here] without scratching or struggling [BlueTak ‘sticks’ and there is so little that it is easier to ‘miss’ and bang the speaker against the stand.]
As for sonics – If I can remember the few cases when I heard both back-to-back I think the difference is like the difference between Belden and audiophile powercords: BlueTak is a little edgier and gives *a sense of* being slightly more immediate [‘closer to the metal’] and the other is more refined and open and images better. Some people like the former – some the latter, and I think we try to tune things somewhere in the middle – where there is immediacy AND delicacy. Sometimes that might mean using BlueTak, sometimes [usually for most of our systems] not.
Take care,
Mike
Thanks!