by Michael

"Truth and Consequences" or "We got Jacked!"

We are saddened to announce that for the foreseeable future we will no longer be authorized dealers of Acapella Audio Arts speakers. We were the largest Acapella dealer on the American continent and by far the most visible experts on and advocates of Acapella in the world.

Since our first year of business, 4 years ago now, the person who is now the distributor has chafed against our approach to serving our customers and the audiophile community, as exemplified by the candor of the content on our website. After many years of his intimidations and ultimatums we are no longer Acapella dealers.

As our customers and a hundred thousand virtual guests know, we do not shy away from telling it like we hear it.

And we never will.

We just might have to regroup periodically.

Acapella makes some of the best speakers in the world and we will continue to think so and recommend their products, just like we sometimes recommend other excellent products we do not carry when we think they are the best fit for a particular person’s situation.

To our Acapella customers: we still stand by you and your excellent speakers 100% and will not hesitate to support you, with the same dedication as always, in the unlikely event you should ever require it.

The manufacturers of Acapella are some of the very nicest people we have met, are some of the biggest fans of our show reports and website, and are unabashed audiophiles at heart. Their English is not perfect and they are shy around people who do not speak German, and so they have few industry friends here in America who could have provided them some perspective on what is going on. If you see Hermann Winters and his wife Inge at a show, step up and say hello, welcome them to America, and don’t let their shyness discourage you. Through the shared passion for music and music reproduction, you will understand each other just fine, in English or German.

As for us, we are of course investigating a number of alternative speakers.

We are spoiled. Our next speakers have to excel at being impressive, emotional, jaw-droppingly real, and extremely powerful at communicating what the musicians are saying about what it means to be human. And what it means to be Alive.

For us, this is what music is all about.

Should we use this opportunity to continue to push ever farther against the state-of-the-art here at Audio Federation? Hee hee hee! OK, try not to give away the surprise, Neli…. Neli!!! Shhhhhhhhh…….

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 10 comments
 by Michael

Please Don't Feel Guilty if You Decide to Buy Something Somewhere Else

[This post will make a lot more sense to our family of customers than to those of you who are our virutal guests out there].

We have met a LOT of really nice audiophiles over the years (and a lot of nice people in the industry too 🙂 )

So many people, who we have actually come to like quite a bit, whether as friends or as compatriots on the rocky road to audio bliss, call us back after awhile and feel they have to profusely apologize for not buying our X or Y and instead getting somebody else’s Z.

We appreciate the sentiment. We really, really do. Thank you.

But what we really want is for people to call back (or email) and not so much apologize (uh oh, I am starting to sound like Mal on Firefly) but tell us about how ‘Z’ sounds in their system. We can’t buy and try everything out there – and we are probably just as interested in what your experiences are as you are in ours.

Yeah, of course we would like people to buy things from us, in no small part because we think we got the really ‘good stuff’, man.

But we do not carry everything. Actually we do not carry many lines at all (and it seems like we are carrying fewer lines each day :-)). We are so very careful about each line we pick up that it seems to take us forever to find one we like.

So, if after everything is said and done you end up buying something from somewhere else, It is OK.

Really.

Or maybe you decided to hold off and not buy anything for awhile, perhaps because nothing completely bowled you over, or your monetary situation changed a little… That is OK too.

And if you decided to buy it off one of the audio auction sites – well, you know, that is OK too. We sell extra equipment on the net too and the buyer of our stuff must reside in somebody’s dealer area. If we were not dealers we would be tempted to buy some stuff off the net too. Heck, we are tempted now… some of those equipment prices up there are lower than what we can get them at.

Hmmmmm… Can I say that? Neli? 😉

But really, what I want to say is that we have come to really like a lot of you people – and we know that some of you decided… to…. buy… something…. somewhere…. else.

No worries, man.

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

Where No Low Powered Amps Have Gone Before

I really like the low-powered Lamm ML2.1 18 watt SET amps on the Marten Design Coltrane 89dB sensitive full-range speakers.

The Lamm ML2.1 on the Marten Coltrane speakers
Coltrane speakers, ML2.1 amps, Lamm L2 preamp, Audio Note CDT2 and DAC 4.1x Balanced, Nordost Thor and Valhalla cables, Shunyata power cords

I really liked the Audio Aero Prestige 40 watt amps and the Audio Note Kegon 22 watt amps on the Coltranes before that.

No, they don’t generate that adrenaline rush of a really loud presentation with chest thumping bass.

The Coltranes can do this with the right amplification. And it is really fun. In a Homeresque Whoo Hoo! kind of way.

But the little tube amps on these speakers can hold me…..

SPELLBOUNDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

The little amps are able to grip the speakers pretty darn well. They also show off immense amounts of harmonic detail. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

But it is not about all this analytical crap at all.

It is all, everything, completely, about the fact that the …Sound… Grips… Me.

The Lamm ML2.1 on the Marten Coltrane speakers

Yeah, It helps that the speaker has a very high resolution, a speaker with all ceramic drivers and diamond tweeters has a tendency to do this. It helps that the speakers are full range, so that whatever bass the amps put out, the listener gets to hear. And they put out a lot of bass – make no mistake – but it is analog bass, like bass in the real world, and not electronic bass (which some ever larger percentage of our music these days likes to use and here is where the little tube amps on hard to drive speakers really do take a back seat to solidstate amps).

But this is not about how the speaker or system sounds.

It is not.

This is about how the sounds affects the listener.

In the end why should I care about the sound, beyond a certain minimum standard, any more than I care about the minute contruction details of the chair I sit in, or the the type of weaving and glue the carpet underneath my feat uses? What we CARE about REALLY is how comfortable the chair is; about how pleasant the carpet is to look at and feel underneath our feet.

What if all reviews and all show reports paid attention to nothing except how the sounds …made …them …feel.

I bet the Stereophile list of Class A components would look a lot different than they do now.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Lamm / Marten Design / Popular / Showroom 3 5 comments