by Michael

An audiophile remodeling in-progress

As we continue to become settled in our happy high-end audio dramatic comedy of a life here – we are making a few changes and additions. We put up background curtains in front of the mirrored fireplace, and added more padding under the carpets, to reduce the liveliness of the room a little bit and improve overall aesthetics [if not livability, that is the only working full-length mirror in the house! :-)].

 

The before

 

The After

We also setup a 3×3 Harmonic Resolution VXR rack [which we videoed, step-by-step. Should be up on YouTube in a few weeks] but when we got to where it was time for us to start putting back the platforms (shelves) on the rack, we realized that we were going have to take it all apart to take down the Acapella Campanile 2 speakers and take them to the California Audio Show in a few days – so maybe we should take the rack back apart again, now, and wait until after the show to install it in its prime position (the rack is about 650 lbs. We weren’t able to just move it out of the way… Neli may be strong enough [seriously]… but I have a few more hours to put in at the gym.)

All I can say is…Damn but we are getting good at putting up and tearing down VXR equipment racks :-/

 

3×3 HRS VXR rack with silver posts

I wanted an all silver rack. Neli wanted an all black rack. We think this black rack with silver posts should look pretty awesome too. Whew! Another messy divorce avoided here in the Bay Area.

in Acapella / California / HRS / News 2 comments
 by Michael

San Francisco Opera in the Park

We attended the San Francisco Opera in the Park yesterday. Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park.

Sharon Meadow was filled up…

We were up-prepared for it to be so unnaturally sunny (for SF) and unnaturally warm (for SF), so all by itself, that was memorable.

The quality of the performance…  was shockingly good. I mean, we listen to a fair amount of opera and classical music here. In my opinion, the sum total of the performance, the musicians taken together as a whole, was better than just about anything I have heard before. Perhaps many albums focus too much on ‘stars’ as opposed to performances?

The quality of the sound… it was amplified. A lot. It was perfectly loud back where these were taken. So, not very high fidelity. There was good immediacy, but the midrange sometimes had a ‘falsetto’ washed out color to it, and the upper bass had minimal decay and sounded more percussive and dead than it should. Similarly the upper mids could not handle much complexity at volume, which is somewhat familiar as many classical CDs have this problem – maybe to do with the microphone being overloaded?

Copland’s arrangement of “At The River” sung by Jill Grove, San Francisco Opera in the Park [sorry about the abrupt start]. There were many others I should have recorded, which are more my cup-o-tea, but this is what we got.

 

The view from Hippie Hill. We *love* San Francisco! [and the air was better here than in Palo Alto. What’s up with that? There wasn’t much of a breeze at all from the Pacific either, but maybe it was just the proximity to the ocean that made the air a little more human-friendly].

 

 

in California / News 0 comments
 by Michael

Main listening room – August 2017

Acapella Audio Arts “High Cellini” loudspeakers, Audio Note UK “DAC 5 Signature” and “CDT-5” transport, Acapella “LaMusika” integrated on a HRS “SXR” rack.

This is the same system we showed at CAS 2017 last week.

The ‘flowers’ are blossoms off our tree that got accidentally pruned along with a bunch of dead branches. :-/

 

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