by Michael

M10 is breaking in quickly… RMAF 2006 is approaching quicker still

Argh.

New and cold out of the box, played quietly, the Audio Note M10 linestage preamplifier was heavenly.

Several hours later, played loudly, there was a harshness / brightness to the upper mids (could have been the Meitner still wamrmng up… people (and you reviewers out there) do know that the Meitner takes about a day to warm up, right?)

The next day, no harshness, but a very tubey tube tube sound.

Today – sounds pretty good. With the purity of the Meitner / Emm Labs front end and the M10, the upper frequencies are very very lovely, the diamond tweeter approaching (and perhaps even supassing?) that of the Acapella plasma tweeters. It WAS very lovely and giggle-inducing.

Tomorrow – who knows.

Break-in darn it. BREAK-IN!

We are thinking about seeing if we can keep all of this plugged in somehow, and then making a mad dash to the show so that everything will only be off for a few hours, instead of the day or so that seems much more likely given that it all sits on and in front of the rack that we are taking.

The Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers are in Denver in Customs. The drivers of the Supremes are broken in at the factory for several hundred hours, as are various other o fits pieces and parts. Cool huh? But we would be a lot happier if they had several months on them.

The important thing now is to get them into the room and just have them sit still for awhile (all that jostling during moves is not good for any component), acclimize to room temperature (it really helps things to sound better if its parts are not both cold and warm and hot at the same time), and get them playing music. And I do not want to argue why all these things are so, just like I do not want to argue why gravity works the way it does – it just does. I mean is.

These things just are. Try and figure out why, if you want to and have the time and expertise. But just don’t deny their existence because nobody can explain why they are indeed so to your satifaction.

Oh, and some of these things people measure, trying to be all ‘scientific’ and using equipment with lots of dials and acronyms instead of nouns. Well, you might as well just the weigh two pieces of equipment to determine which sounds better as to compare them with most of this pseudo-scientific BS. Just because electrons are juicier in one cable than another does not necessarily have anything to so with the quality and accuracy of the sound as enjoyed by a human being. They never prove this casual effect, one way of the other, between what they are trying to measure and the experience that we lay down the big bucks to enjoy. They just pontificate (or assume – and we all know what Felix had to say about ass-u-me-ing something:-)) it is so and awawaaaaaay they go.

Oops, I think that was a soap box. Get that thing out of here!

Anyone know if it Rocky Mountain AudioFest or Rocky Mountain Audiofest or Rocky Mountain Audio Fest… or Rocky Mount Audio Feast?

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2006 / Show Reports 1 comments
 by Michael

Audio Note U.K. M10 3-box Preamplifier

The Coltrane system in listening room #2 with the M10
The Marten Design ‘Coltrane’ loudspeakers, Audio Note Kegon amplifiers, Audio Note M10 preamplifier, Emm Labs CDSD Signature transport and DCC2 Signature DAC, Brinkmann’s Balance turntable, Lamm’s LP2 phono preamplifier.

A closer view of the components on the floor

It kind of spreads out acorss the floor, doesn’t it? Cable length issues dictate that the Meitner CDSD Transport be out front with the Kegons. Then we have the two ‘Galahad’ power supplies in the row behind them. All are on HRS ‘M3’ Isolation Bases. Shunyata power cords and Valhalla cables adorn the floor space between the monoliths.

A closer view of the equipment rack

Another closer view of the equipment rack

We do now seem to have a equal numbered set of both silver faced and black faced equipment. What to do… what to do.

How does it sound? Even though cold? Even with the M10 not broken in?

We haven’t heard the Kegons on this system in a long time, the Meitner for an even longer time. But given what we know about the Kegons and Meitner together – and these speakers – and we know a bit….

This is a big step towards the sound we have been always looking for.. engaing, magical, sophisticaed, natural, dynamic, exciting,,,.

The guitar on Radiohead Amneeeeesiac now sounds like my guitar upstairs. Never noticed that it didn’t sound quite exactly right, tonally, until now.

The soundstage is much more dynamic – like the recording engineer intended it to be – things not only more solid, but moving much more fluidly around while maintaining their solidity, keeping the part of one’s brain, that ancient part that keeps an ‘eye’ on things in one’s immediate neighborhood, which was suspicious before about those solid-sounding singers and instruments that were seemingly invisible, at even fuller attention. [uh, sorry about all the commas in that sentence…kind of a parsing nightmare… but onward…]

And we have two more big steps to go until we get to our RMAF Show system:

1. Putting the Jorma Prime cables on the system…

2. Replacing the Coltranes with the Coltrane Supremes.

Holy ‘How am I supposed to get any work done NOW?’ Batman!

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / HRS / Reviews 0 comments
 by Michael

An (Almost Pure) Audio Note System

Listening room #3
Listening room #3 with Audio Note AN/E SEC Silver Signature loudspeakers, Audio Note high-gain Kegon SET amplifiers, Audio Note M8 preamplifier, Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC, Audio Note CDT-Three transport, all on a Acoustic Dreams equipment rack.

First we put in the M8 preamplifier into the system with the Lamm ML1.1 amplifiers. But something was wrong, the timbre was messed up to these ears (Neli didn’t hear anything wrong). Well, I’ve never heard Lamm sound off key, so it was kind of a mystery… until we put the Audio Note Kegon amplifiers into the system in place of the Lamm.

Ahhhhhhh……..

For some reason the M8 and ML1.1 just did not work well together. But with the Kegons….

The one thing that Audio Note does better than anyone else seems to be the reproduction of Music – with a capital ‘M’. There is just something ‘right’ about the sound that is quite unique. More on this when we talk about the M10 preamplifier that arrived today – but I think it has to do with some very subtle cues from the music that other equipment seem to obscure a little – cues like very fine gradiations of harmonics,

Listening room #3

This system, sorry or glad to say, not sure which – sounded WAY better than the Audio Note systems we have heard at shows – both Kondo and U.K. I guess we are just addicted to what vibration control and fat power cords will do for a system – which both of those camps eschew (though Kondo did use some kind of platforms at CES 2006 – they also used a loudspeaker that just…did … not… work).

Our Kegons are the high-gain Kegons. Our Kegons can drive a rock. The newer low-gain Kegons however have more finesse and micro-dynamics, especially on efficient speakers like the Audio Note speakers.

This system actually had too much bass – to keep these amps on here any longer we would have to move the speakers out from the wall, or reposition them in some fashion.

We also used Nordost cables in this system which caused our system to sound leaner in comparison to one cabled with the Audio Note cables, whcih are very rich, and emotional sounding cables.

So, we didn’t get to a 100% pure Audio Note system. But we got a glimpse of what it would be like. We got a glimpse of our future.

Listening room #3
Listening room #3 – The listening couch.

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Reviews / Showroom 4 0 comments