Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note on Enjoy The Music.TV

This video has Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note being interviewed by Steve Rochlin of Enjoy The Music 2 months ago.

Interesting discussion about prices in high-end audio, using silver as a conductor, black gate capacitors and AN’s development of a successor capacitor, new metal foil resistors, the top-of-the-line AN TT3 turntable, and a new top-of-the-line DAC on the horizon

Recorded almost 2 months ago on June 23.

This video hits many of Audio Note U/K/’s core competencies.

a) Turnkey, 100% AN systems that sound decent with not at a lot of fuss and at all price points.

b) Truly high-end gear that sounds as good as it is expensive, with a multi-decade long hard-earned pedigree of producing state-of-the-art gear.

c) AN produces many of their own electrical components (like capacitors, resisters, transformers, etc.), giving them a competitive advantage over those who have to use off-the-shelf components

d) AN spends a good money performing advanced research into how to make better components, better designs, and better synergies between components

e) AN continues to try and achieve dominant footholds in all parts of the market by using innovative designs – in this case: turntables

f) AN champions newer better [now cheaper digital?] designs breaking new ground that few can follow [although AN has open designs, c) helps their implementation be always somewhat better, and always being a few steps ahead keeps them a few design leaps ahead of everybody else]

Let’s talk about a few of the points in the video. We invite you all to chime in.

1. Jeez, look how expensive some of this new gear coming out is!

No kidding. Ever wonder who is buying this stuff?

I have a theory. It is that a large percentage of the people left in high-end audio like to swap out gear a lot. They are not looking for the best sound they can get at their budget nor a system that will provide them enjoyment that lasts them many years.

Audiogon, and to some extent eBay, in their heyday, opened up the market. People could now buy new gear knowing that they could sell it for a fair price if and when they got tired of it, or just flat out didn’t like it. This allowed them to be more experimental with their gear buying.

But then this got pumped up another notch. The used market became saturated, and audiophiles realized they could, for not much money, try gear by buying it used, playing with it for awhile, and then selling it when they were done with it in what on average is what? A few months? And it cost them not much money at all to do this. This ‘Advanced Audio Nervosa’ has been very contagious and many many people have the disease. :-/

Well, of course it is not a disease.  It is quite fun.

It is just that at the current time, people with audio Nervosa account for a significant percentage of audiophiles. This diffuses the services that many manufactures and some dealers [like us] think they are providing for audiophiles. Some still do want the best sound, for their ears, that their money can buy. But others just want something fun and cool to play with for a bit.

[Co-commitment with this must be their feeling that they are going to live forever. For me, one more second of listening to some sound that is not As Good As It Can Be means one more of my last few seconds here on Earth wasted. Just fricking Ruined. ]

With the shrinkage of Audiogon, the pendulum may be swinging back towards the long-term audiophile buyer. Or maybe something will take Audiogon’s place and Advanced Audio Nervosa is here to stay.

People with a lot of money, and audio Nervosa, will buy $150,000 amps put out by a new company or one with no history of building amps of this caliber, because it scratches their itch to try something new. No matter that the thing really sucks at its purported job.

 2. Systems composed of gear from different manufacturers have little chance of sounding decent.

We do actually agree that 100% Audio Note U.K. systems do sound decent, no matter what the overall cost of the Audio Note gear is [and is one of the reasons we sell Audio Note]. However, most other manufacturers with 100% solutions are not as successful at the ‘sounding decent’ thing.

And, referring back to discussion point #1 above, for people with Audio Nervosa, a complete solution from just one manufacturer is so boring as to be like unto hell.

It is our approach, and practice, however, to mix and match gear from different manufacturers a lot of the time to tailor the sound to individual preferences. However, we spend a good deal of time thinking about what works with what. In particular, we think a lot about, and talk extensively here on the blog about, the importance of getting the amp – speaker combination right.

For the average Mary and Joe, this system configuration can indeed be problematic. And 99% of dealers could care less.

3. Black Gate capacitors are dead. Long live Black Gate capacitors.

Many people, including AN, have found that these are really good sounding capacitors for high-end audio gear.

When Black Gate decided to close their doors [figuratively speaking] AN bought up all the remaining Black Gates they could find. But even these are starting to run out.

So AN has been working to be able to restart production of Black Gate capacitors again. This is a good thing for AN to talk about, as it reemphasizes that they actually manufacture a lot of their own components – and do not just limit themselves to off-the-shelf parts that are widely available like the vast majority of other high-end audio manufacturers.

4. The new much-cheaper but even better DAC

Although we have heard snippets about this new DAC, AN has been very secretive about this Manhattan-like project … until now. Kind of wish, from a dealer’s standpoint, that this came out in a different way, but it was going to be a bombshell, regardless.

It sounds like this discrete DAC is similar to the same(?) approach EMM Labs cum Playback Designs cum P.S. Audio etc. are taking. Where instead of using cheap [sounding], ubiquitous and marginally functional off-the-shelf DAC chips, they encode their own DSP algorithms in some high-speed chip of one kind or another.

Previously, AN was able to wrap exceedingly well-performing supporting electronics around these cheap chips, and came up with, to our ears and many others, the best sounding DACs in the world.

What they will be able to do with their own great sounding chip, kind of afraid to find out. And to announce that it will be significantly cheaper… hmmmm…..