by Michael

Audio Note Soro Phono SE Integrated Amp

Audio Note Soro Phono SE Integrated Amp open chassis photos.

Been awhile since we posted photos of the innards of something. Its guts. Out there for the whole world to see.

🙂

Sure is a heckuva lot of ‘stuff’ in this box.

This Soro PhonoSE has been in the storage unit for-ev-er. It is sounding way, way better than it ought to [at its $6500 or so price] downstairs on the little Audio Note AN/E Spe HE speakers.

Its kind of freaking people out 🙂

This integrated amplifier outputs about 18 watts per channel.

IMG_0591-audio-note-soro-phono-se-open-chassis IMG_0592-audio-note-soro-phono-se-open-chassis IMG_0593-audio-note-soro-phono-se-open-chassis IMG_0595-audio-note-soro-phone-se-integrated-bottom IMG_0598-audio-note-soro-phono-se-integrated-amp-open-chassis

audio note soro phono se integrated amp rear

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

Emm Labs MTRX Amps LIVE

emm labs mtrx amps on acapella speakers

Emm Labs MTRX Amps LIVE – and we are already learning a lot about music, sound and what we have been missing.

We all know solid-state amps have lots of power – but typically sound not so much like music but like ‘hifi’.

Well, we already learned one reason why that is…

Who knew solid-state amps were so sloppy with the sound, petering out on notes all the time, making what now sound like half-hearted attempts at each note – some attempts getting closer to where the note is supposed to be, some fumbled all together..

And those background notes! Geez.

Not anymore.

Until you hear it, it is hard to believe.

We’ll have a lot more to say, and about how the 93dB Acapella Atlas speakers, with 2 10in woofers and one isobaric 10in woofer, can tell us some things right away about these amps.

Previously we had on the Atlas speakers an older pair of Edge amps, 200 watts, and to our ears one of the best solid-state amps made [probably worth $50K to $60K in today’s inflated market if that company still existed and did some marketing and hadn’t keep shooting themselves in the foot. You can get this old pair for $8K here. These are WAY better than most of your $120K amps that have been all the fad lately, in our opinion, with more resolution, micro-dynamics, linearity, etc. but somewhat less bass slam].

Currently playing: the famous $25K Emm Labs XDS1 CD / SACD player, the legendary $130K Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier [lots sold, but have NEVER seen one on the used market], the $130K Emm Labs 750 watts/channel amps, and the $99K Acapella Atlas speakers with ION tweeter [our demos need a new home before CES]. Mostly Nordost Odin cables and power cords. HRS SXR equipment rack. Oh, and Kimber Model 10 PowerKords on the amps.

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Can hear amps warming up minute by minute

Kings College Choir – Nelson Mass

Voices much more distinct and legible [we’ve heard this CD on a LOT of different systems, some quite good]. Hear more emotion and modulation and the power of the lead vocal’s voice.

Radiohead – Kid A

More complex and innovative than In Rainbows. The MTRX really showed how this album is a spectacle of sound . Massive amounts of separation – can hear Everything. Changes in tone more accurate a the amps were able to keep up with all the weird changes. The cacophony near the end of track 3 was actually understandable as about 5 to 7 different ‘instruments’ making sound at the same time [some purposely obnoxious. You know. Radiohead.]

Amps still warming up. Been on about 4 hours. With only about 150 hours on them, they still need breaking in as well.

Silly me, but you know how you hear a song on the car radio, and then go home to hear it on your system – you know, to hear what it REALLY sounds like? This is like that, except all over again.

Ha! You think I exaggerate.

…..

All significantly better systems make you want to hear this album on it, and that album…

… but here there is so much more accuracy, so much more information [because the amp does not allow the speaker to slack off on any of the sound, which tends to muddy things up a lot, and which obscures lots of what we hear, ordinarily] … it really is a case of ‘great sound’ [which we had before with some of the best solid-state amps around] or ‘great sound with none of the music removed’ [of which there is, apparently, a LOT.], and which is what, with the MTRX, we are hearing now.

A lot more later… and over the forthcoming days and weeks.

 

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 5 comments
 by Michael

Streaming doing to downloads what downloads did to CDs

Streaming is doing to downloads what downloads did to CDs, which is make the media harder to find and the gear that plays them harder to find and more expensive.

Yeah, we are still keeping our CDs around, and maybe a lot of audiophiles will keep their downloads around, but…

Should audiophiles stop investing in downloads and music servers? Or will we have another niche economy where we collect downloads and machines to store and play them back for the next 100 years, like vinyl?

And what is it with media coming and going so quickly these days? Remember Blu-ray [Sony has  stopped producing this, their own format]? DVD-Audio?

This looking at the abyss as downloads and CDs fade into obscurity for the majority of the human race makes this a bit scary for those of us with many $1000s invested and for companies whose product lines depend heavily on these media. So scary that this becomes the third in our special ‘Halloween Series’  posts.

Streaming is Up (source: PandoDaily):

And Downloads are down 13% to 15%. Similar to the decline in CD sales in the early to mid 2000s.

Streamed albums should exceed CD album sales sometime in 2014:

Q1 2014 At-A-Glance
Digital sales (albums + TEA) Down 13.3%
Interactive streaming 34.28 billion streams (vs. 25.44 in Q1 2013)
Interactive streaming rate $0.005 (vs. $0.00375 in 2013)
Streaming equivalent albums 22.85 million
CD sales 31.9 million scanned (vs. 40.1 million in Q1 2013)
Number of tracks > 1M scans 16 (vs. 15 in Q1 2013)
Electronica 2.7% increase in sales
Classical 33.3% decrease in sales
Pop 28.6% decrease in sales

Yay, Electronica! Ouch, Classical. Pop? Eh.

A lot of more great information at this link: Billboard.com : Nielsen’s Q1 numbers

We talked about how streaming will win the media delivery wars and problems like their being no ‘used market’ with streams, so no one can get top quality music at bargain pre-loved prices. On the other hand, if it just costs a few cents to listen to an album, this will drive prices of Downloads and CD down, down, down unless people really want to put the things on ‘repeat’ [like, uh, we do sometimes here :-)] and won’t want to pay 50 cents an hour, $12/day for the delicious pleasure of hearing:

Kruder & Dorfmeister


over and over..

 

“23% of music streamers used to buy more than one album a month but no longer do so. Download sales are affected most and will continue to feel the pinch with 45% of all music downloaders also music streamers.

Thus although streaming and subscriptions will grow by 238% on 2013 levels to reach $8 billion in 2019, download revenue will decline by 39% – only five percent less than the rate at which CD revenues will fall – leaving streaming and subscriptions representing 70% of all digital revenue.”

Much of this is attributed to the fact that the “first wave” of subscribers to streaming services like Spotify are/were among the most valuable iTunes downloaders.

In the age of streaming, downloading has just become an inconvenience.

From AltPress

 


From the Music Industry Blog.

Unfortunately, while this is great for music lovers, it is unclear how music artists (musicians) will survive all this: What the Numbers Tell Us About Streaming in 2014

It seems to us that it is best to hedge our bets; the audiophile community could even move enmass to back to vinyl [some certainly think this is happening now, based on the steadily dramatic increase in vinyl sales], or to streaming, like everyone else.

For now, pity the poor manufacturers, who have to support Vinyl, CDs, Downloads and now Streaming. Yeah, I realize that some components, like DACs with a lot of interfaces, span multiple categories. Just relax and go with the flow here. Manufacturers have to be really good at reading tea leaves to figure out that next month triple wireless DSD will be the hot must-have feature next month… but only for a month.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 0 comments