by Michael

Musical Chairs AND Hot Potato


As you can sort of see, we have the Emm Labs CDSA player going into the Lamm L2 (Lamm L2 power supply is on left, L2 linestage in center), and from there into the Marten active corssover and into the Edge Signature One amps.

This is a pretty good sound. We haven’t heard it enough to really understand it yet (busy here on the phones, etc.). One thing is obvious, these speakers will love as much as you can give them: resolution, micro-dynamics, harmonics, …

We Are Unworthy! [anybody else like Wayne’s World? Anybody? Bueller?]


OK, downstairs we have the Audio Note CDT3 transport into the Audio Note DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC into the Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier into the Kharma Mini Exquisites.

The cables here are interesting: we have regular Valhalla RCA interconnect for the digital cable, Audio Note SOTTO interconnect and Jorma Design No. 1 speaker cable. The SOTTO only has about 12 hours on it [but our Nordost Vidar cable burner should be back soon from the factory – it was happily burning cables in when the lightning struck].


The midrange makes me want to cry. It is so involving. [Now THAT is something I am too much of a boy to say out loud, but I feel I can say it in writing. Alan Alda may have made it OKAY for men to cry – remember that anyone? Bueller? – but just about important things. Not about how beautiful music can be. That, that, if someone comes into the room, I have to kind of look away and think about the economy or something. Tears dry right up. Though the economy is getting to the point where I might start crying harder… $1.46 per Euro]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Showroom 1 / Showroom 2 0 comments
 by Michael

To Surge Protect or Not to Surge Protect

To surge-protect, or not to surge-protect: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the pursuit of sonic perfection to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous mainline spikes,
Or to take arms against a sea of repair costs,
And by opposing end them? To use MOV: to use hydrolic circuit breakers;
No more; and by protect to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That an unprotected component is heir to, …

During our lightning strike, we were most fortunate that most of the equipment was off, and even unplugged, because of all the lightning we had been getting. But this did not provide us any data on the efficacy of the surge protectors we use here, 7 in all, of the Office Depot variety [their best surge protesters but with NO conditioning].

But my office TV was plugged in to a UPS, a Best Fortress 1020, one of the better ones [FYI, APC is the Bose of UPS’s]. But the TV died, though none of the other dozen of things plugged in to the UPS died.

It apparently died because although the power went through the UPS, the TV cable went through a standard Office Depot-style surge protector, and the cable had enough current to kill the TV. And although the phone line went through the Surge Protector, both the computer and TiVo phone cable interfaces fried.

The point being, that the one surge protector that was in a position to help appears to have failed.

Second hand data, from the insurance claim people, is that these types of serge protectors never work. Seems like if they worked insurance agents would encourage their use because that would lower the amount of the claims they have to pay off.

So…

What to do, what to do.

As for right now, we are backing away from surge-protecting everything.

We have tried a little $200 Furutech 6-outlet strip. It did sound better than the Office Depot strips. And they are available everywhere online and often at real good discounts [see previous post].

Then there are things like the Nordost Thor, the Shunyata Hydra (some of which have advanced surge protection) in the $2K+ category. Still $14K is a lot to spend on glorified ‘strips’. At least to us.

And there are the various conditioners, all of which suck, except the Sound Applications, but that is at $7K. And perhaps the Acrolink monster, which we haven’t tried and at an even higher price [and a lot of people like the PowerWing, but we haven’t heard it, so… lots of people can be wrong. Just saying.]. And putting any of them on amps? I …don’t …think …so.

I don’t know, we get $22K/meter ODIN interconnects but don’t want to spend $14K+ on audiophile-grade power strips. What is WRONG with us? 🙂

[Neli talks about a ‘whole house surge protector’. I think that if that thing messed up the sound then we would be in a heap of trouble. Nowhere to hide.]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

Dealer 'Blowouts' when they drop a product line… why?

[Comcast has been down again, or rather, depending on how you look at it, we just got our SEVENTH cable modem in the last 8 weeks. Well, the first one was melted by the lightning strike, so MAYBE Comcast was not at fault for that one, but, … 7?]

OK, on to our topic of discussion.

When dealers lose or drop a line, they often ‘blow the stuff out’ on Audiogon or Ebay at ridiculously low prices.

Is this stupid or what? Don’t dealers care about making money? [Of course not, you may joke, if they did they’d be in a different business :-)]

Dealers [and sometimes distributors] are angry when they lose or drop a line. Understandable. But why sell their stock at such low prices?

The traditional explanation is that they do it to ‘punish’ or ‘hurt’ the line. To get back at the people who used to be their suppliers of the products in the line.

But, half the time they are

1) dropping a line because the distributor or manufacturer is selling out the back door at low prices anyway, so who’s it going to hurt?

And the other half is because they are

2) getting dropped because they are discounting to much for the comfort of the supplier. So why sell them even cheaper yet? Seems like the discounted prices, although higher, were selling just fine, otherwise they would not have gotten caught.

[We are ignoring the other half 3) where the supplier or dealer is just plain psychotic and extremely paranoid and sees daemons and ghosts appearing and telling them things that make no sense at all].

The Blow Out is going to hurt the dealer doing the Blowing Out’s pocket book because they invested time, energy and money into the products and are now selling them cheap cheap cheap.

Anyway, just another stupid thing people in this industry do in their spare time, I guess.

And you others not in the industry , are probably thinking, blowouts? cheap cheap cheap? WHERE?

Well, I’m not going to make it THAT easy, and besides, it changes over the weeks and months. But the ones that are irritating to us [and are the best finds for you people :-)] are good brands that do not get discounted on a day to day basis. So check Audiogon, and find a dealer who has ‘lots of product’ they are selling of a line they no longer carry, at prices way below what the market will bear because they are pissed off.

Go ahead and take advantage of their temporary lack of business sense, better our readers than some random Mary or Joe, but be aware that only the best dealers will offer any support if the product turns out to be broken or not as new as they said it was.

How do you tell if they are a reputable dealer if you don’t already know? Check out their other product lines. Are they heavily discounted on Audiogon and elsewhere or are they top notch lines whose manufactures require some amount of integrity and service of their dealers? [Many dealers lie about what product lines they carry, especially on their websites, so this can be problematic sometimes]. Call them up and tell them you are interested in the most expensive thing they sell, not the thing they are blowing out, and ask them how much will they knock off the price for you… If they start talking about 40, 50, 60 percent or more [some will set you up as a ‘dealer for a day’], you might just figure that they are not going to be carrying THAT line for much longer either, and that another Blow Out will be soon forthcoming, at even higher discounts.

The upshot? You dealers, stop being stupid. Ask around before you pick up a line to see if a distributor or manufacturer is selling direct at 40 – 60% off. Don’t just assume that because what they make or distribute is a great product that they have a clue about building a brand or how to take care of the customers who will one day have to sell these darn products, or , heaven forbid, get them repaired.

And if you lose a product line, please sell it at market [demo] value. Why toss away money? And how the heck else you going to sell anything again? People will just wait around for you to drop whatever they are interested in and get THAT at fire sale prices.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 0 comments