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November 5, 2006 by Michael

Breaking in the Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Oh! What hard work! Whew!

Please, no more!

Well, maybe just a little…. 🙂

This is the first post with our new Category scheme – This is what we are calling “Showroom 2” although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).

The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.

We have a tendency – like most people who really enjoy this hobby – to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.

There is also two of us – so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.

We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet 🙂 … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound – which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation – and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve – and you can match that against what you personally prefer.

[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is – I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I – but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].

South side of listening room two – the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps

Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.

Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background

Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs – so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.

It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-

So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…

This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact. 🙂

As far as breaking in – the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.

The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…

October 22, 2006 by Michael

Junior Mixibitor fun with Audio Note Kageki

[After this was written, I learned that the 4 ohm taps on the Kageki are located where the 8 ohm taps are on the Kegons. So, stupid story short, the description below is of the Kageki on the 4 ohm outputs. That therefore most likely means that the enhanced bass and decresed resolution had more to do with the using the 4 ohm instead of the 8 ohm outputs than it had to do with the difference between amps – BUT that the difference in emotion and dynamic swell will likely only be MORE different than reported here]

Been a very busy show for us. I am trying to get at least a photo or two of each room – and we are about 90% there. But even with help from our friends, the high amount of interest has kept me in our exhibit room quite a bit.

We did get to play junior Mixibitors this evening. We swapped out Audio Note Kegon amplifiers for the Audio Note Kageki amps next door for a long listen.

The old high-gain Kageki amps in our RMAF show system

The Kageki are 2A3 tube-based and about 7 to 8 watts in comparision to the 300B tube-based Kegons at 22 watts or so.

The Kageki have slightly richer harmonics and a slight ’tilt’ to the tonal signature in comparison to the more neutral Kegons.

The dynamic ‘swelling’ on the Kageki was more pronouced. The bass was also gripped slightly tighter in the mid-bass, but was not as controlling nor beefy in the lower bass.

Listening to the 2A3 Kageki was a somewhat more emotional experience, with perhaps a slight reduction in resolution as well. I also wonder if the separation on the Kageki was slightly better as well – but this may be because the bass on the active (self powered) Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers was reduced a bit in comparision with the Kegons because we did not have time to dial it in – and the bass in this room is a little problematic, often negatively affecting the overhang and imaging and separation.

All in all the two amps were quite comparable in my opinion – but definitely different flavors…. So of course we want both! But.. not going to happen any time soon, unfortunately. Reason must prevail… right?

Last I looked the Kegons are at about $50K and the Kageki at $40K.

Anyway, those darn Mixibitors did not get to have ALL the fun this show…. 🙂

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Reviews / RMAF 2006 / Show Reports 0 comments

October 16, 2006 by Michael

The Worl'd Gone Topsy Turvy or…

or “Round ’em up, Head ’em out”

or “We’re just going to pieces”

or “Break in Two Systems, Two Systems, Two Systems in one”

Breaking in Sound Lab Ultimate loudspeakers and Audio Note M10 preamplifier together – using the EDGE Signature One amps and Audio Aero Capitole CD player driving them over on the floor to the right [Oh, you can’t see it in this picture, but you can see the Nordost Valhalla interconnects snaking across the floor there].

This is all just a temporary setup. We are breaking in each notch on the M10 volume control. We got up to ‘5’ yesterday, but that was driving the little Kegons pretty hard – and the Coltranes were getting pretty loud.

But over here, on the still somewhat inefficient Sound Lab speakers – with a solid state amp… we are doing ‘6’ today and will do notch ‘7’ tomorrow. That ‘should’ be enough, the Marten Coltrane Supremes (which made it through customs, yay!) are much more efficient than even the Coltranes, so notch ‘7’ should be plenty loud enough for the show…?

Every time we up the volume a notch, the M10 sound is bright and annoying for several hours and the pre lets off another waft of New Electronic Component Smell [Yummmmmm. Is this the only reason we buy TVs and computers and $50K preamps, to be able to experience this smell? Nahhhhhh].

This M10 + Sound Lab speaker-centered system sounds surprisingly good. The Sound Labs really like upstream equipment that errs on the warm side (as opposed to the more icey Parasound or Pass Labs soild-state amps, the former is usually shown witht eh SoundLabs at CES and the latter is to be at this RMAF show in the IsoMike room), and even warmish cables help – like the Pranawire Cosmos speaker cables.

The latest Sound Lab upgrade did seem to tighten the bass quite a bit and increase the midrange dynamics as well – adding perhaps 3dB? of efficiency. Still breaking in, but I noticed that the unfamiliar bluring of images in the soundstage that I heard when we first starting playing the SoundLabs after their upgrade has almost completely gone away.

The old Marten Coltrane system, going to pieces Time to box up most of this system, and move the Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers to listening room 3. The Sound Labs are going to go over here, next, after the show – and how we get around them when we go up and down the steps is still to be determined.

The current state of listening room 3. Most of the system proper is going to the show, including the Acoustic Dreams rack.

We want to put the Marten Coltranes in here after the show – but they sound best with the Lamm ML2.1 amps and the HRS MXR rack. But the Kharma Mini Exquisites sound best with the EDGE amps… it will be hard to build a system that is optimized for two different speakers like this… not to mention the Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers.

And then there is the HRS MXR equipment rack problem, or rather lack of problem: we want a double wide on the Coltrane Supreme speaker system in listening room #2,and another one upstairs so we can play a turntable in listening room #1 (it is the only thing that will work on our very bouncy floor) – but we currently only have one rack….

So little time (and money) and such a long Wish List.

in Audio Note / Edge / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Show Reports / Showroom 1 / Showroom 2 / Showroom 3 / Showroom 4 / Soundlab 0 comments

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