We are Remastering the Website

The Audio Federation website is always trying to maintain a balance so that it serves equally well all the different kinds of visitors we get: customers and audiophiles, the hobbiest and the merely curious, those looking for information and those looking for audio por*n/photos.

Finally happy with the look of the home page, and we’ll probably keep it until at least June, if not longer.

We added a Site Map page accessible from the home page to make it easier to get around – which I even find myself using more and more. The links at the top of each page in the dealership now let one easily get back to the home (top) page.

The Music page will evolve to become an annotated index into the Blog’s forthcoming posts of audiophile-relevent music reviews. Our emphasis will be somewhat different than other music reviews, focusing on the quality of the sound more than the history of the band or how the album fits within the bands other work, or fits within the genre as a whole. Not that this other information isn’t interesting – it is that it is already done quite well by others in the industry, and no reason for us to duplicate or detract from their good work

The Hifi’ing Magazine will evolve into being not only a list of recent show reports but an annotated index into the Blog so that people can more easily find ‘major Blog posts in history’.

The Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy will be updated, both visually and content-wise. Finally.

We’ve added a number of photo galleries to the dealership product pages, and these will get fleshed out a lot more with both pictures that we take here and those we have taken, and will take, at shows.

Gloss black HRS MXR equipment rack
We’ve also started adding ‘experience reports’ to the dealership’s product pages, which collect and display information about our experiences with the various products in several situations. The HRS vibration control product line is the first of many products we will do this for.

Neli will start working a lot more on the website; she knows a lot more details about most of the products than I do.

This means letting Neli have access to the website. I can just see it now. If you notice some descriptions going back and forth between say “lovely and detailed” on the one hand and “rich and detailed” on the other – you will know it is one of THOSE types of discussions going on here on the other side of your computer.

This is kind of like lending your spouse the keys to your Lamborghini (well, let’s just imagine we all had a Lamborghini, OK, and thatmost of us hadn’t spent all our money on audio equipment and $30 a pop LPs). How many times can you say ‘pleeeeease don’t break it dear’ before you get one of those matrimonial Death Ray looks? Once? Yeah, that is the way it works here, too.

I do try to get her to post her ideas on this blog…at least once a day, (and sometimes hourly. This nets me another kind of look). She made her own trip to Planet Abraxus, and to planet [whatever opera Mike Lavigne was playing the last hour of CES in the Swedish Statement room] and I am sure people would like to hear what she has to say about it.

But she is more comfortable talking about audio than writing about it, the opposite of her way too softly spoken husband. So it will still mostly be me who is posting stuff on the Blog about the ‘goings on’ here at the Belfry – with hopefully some occasional posts by Neli, and perhaps even some special guests, from time to time.

If you have any other ideas, please let us know. Thanks!

The Mating Dance Between an Audiophile and What the Uninitiated Would consider an Inanimate Object

Well, THAT was a long title – let’s see how the Blog software handles it…

One variation of this little dance goes like this:

We loved our Audio Note CDT2 transport. Paired with the Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC there was not the slightest digital etch or hardness to the sound – and whatever slight imperfections that it did have, well, it did not detract from it being definitively state-of-the-art nor did it impact our enjoyment of the music in any way.

Then we met another transport, the CDT3.

CDT3 next to CDT2

“Hi transport” we say with low expectations dripping from our test CDs. Yes, it was an enjoyable time we spent together, it was certainly a very nice transport and was admittadly better in everyway – though in some ways it was more better than others ways where it was only slightly better, it was especially better in the areas of PRaT, harmonic content and continuousness/flow/momentum – we were glad to have met it.

[The CDT2 is slightly more dynamic in the midi-dynamic range – or perhaps it is just that the note envelopes rise faster and decay faster – so I could see some people who would like this more aggressive sound, less analog and less continuous sound better].

But it wasn’t like we were going to abandon our long time partner, the CDT2. The CDT2 was our first Audio Note transport and we owed it some loyalty. Right?

Or is this just loyalty to our emotional investment in our belief that this is a really good transport and sufficiently good for us to be able to enjoy it unconditionally, forever.

CDT3 next to CDT2

Well, now it has been a month since we have heard the CDT3 and …. we miss it terribly. The CDT2 now sounds old and irritable. We now see freckles on our CDT2 that seem to grow louder each day.

Back of CDT3

Well, you all know how this dance finishes. We hope our CDT3 will be able to move in any day now – and though we still love our CDT2 terribly, we think it will be happier with a more appreciative audiophile.

Been there? Done that? Rinse and Repeat?

People who have been in this hobby for a long time know enough to ask before hand…

“Do I dare to listen to this thing?”

Funny thing is, we almost always say, with trepidation in every fiber of our being….

“Ok….”

The Acapella Triolons up on HigherFi.com are NOT Ours

We hear a dealer demo pair of Triolons (and Campaniles and Violons) just appeared there in the last few days.

And since we have the only dealer demo Acapella Triolon Excalibur speakers (the only Triolons of any kind actually) on the American continent, ….

We just think that with equipment this gawd-awful expensive, most people are going to want full-service, not full-discount. They need to have some recourse if something that they spent their hard-earned coin on is not performing to their expectations, they need someone who knows what they are doing and who actually cares about how the person’s system sounds.

This is above and beyond getting faulty equipment taken care of – there is no one in the high-end home audio industry that we know of who will not speedily fix or replace something that is broken. We just thnk there is more to being satisfied with one’s stereo system than just whether the equipment works or not.

[And, as a final note on the subject:

Yes, of course we are very disappointed, we put in a lot of hard work and broke down a lot of barriers between dealer and audiophile over the years, using the Acapella line to explore what could be done. But we are also very relieved – the animosity and … tomfoolery… were frustrating and emotionally hard on us, especially Neli. It is a good thing that we are done with this and it really is time to focus on making sure our other VERY high quality product lines get the high-profile treatment they deserve in the same style that we prototyped using the photogenic Acapella line. We will keep our NEWS page continually updated with the changes to, and expansion of, our website coverage.

Thank you everybody for your support during this transition. We really, really, REALLY appreciate it.]

For those who are curious, our Triolons ARE for sale. Please contact us if you are interested.

Information about our Triolons is here