by Michael

Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note on Enjoy The Music.TV

This video has Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note being interviewed by Steve Rochlin of Enjoy The Music 2 months ago.

Interesting discussion about prices in high-end audio, using silver as a conductor, black gate capacitors and AN’s development of a successor capacitor, new metal foil resistors, the top-of-the-line AN TT3 turntable, and a new top-of-the-line DAC on the horizon

Recorded almost 2 months ago on June 23.

This video hits many of Audio Note U/K/’s core competencies.

a) Turnkey, 100% AN systems that sound decent with not at a lot of fuss and at all price points.

b) Truly high-end gear that sounds as good as it is expensive, with a multi-decade long hard-earned pedigree of producing state-of-the-art gear.

c) AN produces many of their own electrical components (like capacitors, resisters, transformers, etc.), giving them a competitive advantage over those who have to use off-the-shelf components

d) AN spends a good money performing advanced research into how to make better components, better designs, and better synergies between components

e) AN continues to try and achieve dominant footholds in all parts of the market by using innovative designs – in this case: turntables

f) AN champions newer better [now cheaper digital?] designs breaking new ground that few can follow [although AN has open designs, c) helps their implementation be always somewhat better, and always being a few steps ahead keeps them a few design leaps ahead of everybody else]

Let’s talk about a few of the points in the video. We invite you all to chime in.

1. Jeez, look how expensive some of this new gear coming out is!

No kidding. Ever wonder who is buying this stuff?

I have a theory. It is that a large percentage of the people left in high-end audio like to swap out gear a lot. They are not looking for the best sound they can get at their budget nor a system that will provide them enjoyment that lasts them many years.

Audiogon, and to some extent eBay, in their heyday, opened up the market. People could now buy new gear knowing that they could sell it for a fair price if and when they got tired of it, or just flat out didn’t like it. This allowed them to be more experimental with their gear buying.

But then this got pumped up another notch. The used market became saturated, and audiophiles realized they could, for not much money, try gear by buying it used, playing with it for awhile, and then selling it when they were done with it in what on average is what? A few months? And it cost them not much money at all to do this. This ‘Advanced Audio Nervosa’ has been very contagious and many many people have the disease. :-/

Well, of course it is not a disease.  It is quite fun.

It is just that at the current time, people with audio Nervosa account for a significant percentage of audiophiles. This diffuses the services that many manufactures and some dealers [like us] think they are providing for audiophiles. Some still do want the best sound, for their ears, that their money can buy. But others just want something fun and cool to play with for a bit.

[Co-commitment with this must be their feeling that they are going to live forever. For me, one more second of listening to some sound that is not As Good As It Can Be means one more of my last few seconds here on Earth wasted. Just fricking Ruined. ]

With the shrinkage of Audiogon, the pendulum may be swinging back towards the long-term audiophile buyer. Or maybe something will take Audiogon’s place and Advanced Audio Nervosa is here to stay.

People with a lot of money, and audio Nervosa, will buy $150,000 amps put out by a new company or one with no history of building amps of this caliber, because it scratches their itch to try something new. No matter that the thing really sucks at its purported job.

 2. Systems composed of gear from different manufacturers have little chance of sounding decent.

We do actually agree that 100% Audio Note U.K. systems do sound decent, no matter what the overall cost of the Audio Note gear is [and is one of the reasons we sell Audio Note]. However, most other manufacturers with 100% solutions are not as successful at the ‘sounding decent’ thing.

And, referring back to discussion point #1 above, for people with Audio Nervosa, a complete solution from just one manufacturer is so boring as to be like unto hell.

It is our approach, and practice, however, to mix and match gear from different manufacturers a lot of the time to tailor the sound to individual preferences. However, we spend a good deal of time thinking about what works with what. In particular, we think a lot about, and talk extensively here on the blog about, the importance of getting the amp – speaker combination right.

For the average Mary and Joe, this system configuration can indeed be problematic. And 99% of dealers could care less.

3. Black Gate capacitors are dead. Long live Black Gate capacitors.

Many people, including AN, have found that these are really good sounding capacitors for high-end audio gear.

When Black Gate decided to close their doors [figuratively speaking] AN bought up all the remaining Black Gates they could find. But even these are starting to run out.

So AN has been working to be able to restart production of Black Gate capacitors again. This is a good thing for AN to talk about, as it reemphasizes that they actually manufacture a lot of their own components – and do not just limit themselves to off-the-shelf parts that are widely available like the vast majority of other high-end audio manufacturers.

4. The new much-cheaper but even better DAC

Although we have heard snippets about this new DAC, AN has been very secretive about this Manhattan-like project … until now. Kind of wish, from a dealer’s standpoint, that this came out in a different way, but it was going to be a bombshell, regardless.

It sounds like this discrete DAC is similar to the same(?) approach EMM Labs cum Playback Designs cum P.S. Audio etc. are taking. Where instead of using cheap [sounding], ubiquitous and marginally functional off-the-shelf DAC chips, they encode their own DSP algorithms in some high-speed chip of one kind or another.

Previously, AN was able to wrap exceedingly well-performing supporting electronics around these cheap chips, and came up with, to our ears and many others, the best sounding DACs in the world.

What they will be able to do with their own great sounding chip, kind of afraid to find out. And to announce that it will be significantly cheaper… hmmmm…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

in Audio Note 1 comments
 by Michael

High-end audio cables myth Trolls need to be booted off the island

High-end audio cables myth trolls need to be booted off the island. Now. And preferably with a BIG honking boot.

Why?

Because they are not audiophiles and all of us treating them as if they were is hurting the hobby.

Trolls, not Audiophiles

People who antagonize real audiophiles, insisting that running a signal through different kinds of wire does not affect the sound differently [violating the first or second laws of thermodynamics by the way], are just trolls.

Sometimes this is easier to see just how ridiculous our acceptance of these trolls are if we think of this happening in a more well-known hobby, like autos.

Saying that different cables all sound the same is like someone saying that different tires make no noticeable difference when driving a car.

Typically [continuing our analogy] these kinds of people would own a basic commuter car [modest stereo cobbled together from good, bad and terrible gear, typically wildly unbalanced sonically]. They put on some modestly nice Michelin V-rated tires [cheap cables one step above Monster] on it, and noticed no difference when using their car [stereo] the way they usually do – just plunking around [playing 3- and 4-piece jazz]  .

 

These are people with minimal experience, minimal qualifications, minimal equipment, minimal skills at listening, and tragic inability to understand science.

 

So what is the problem? The problem is that they then go on the forums and loudly bash real audiophiles, shouting that in their ‘expert opinion’, cables have no affect on any stereo and it is all just hokum

These people declare themselves ‘experts’ though they do not ever think about [going back to our tire analogy]  WHY they do or do not like the handling, about how it responds in emergency and under hostile weather conditions; how it could be better, worse or different; how it performs in the extremes of acceleration; and what parts of the design contributes to this or that behavior and subjective enjoyment or lack thereof. Etc.

These people are just trying to rile others and get attention by acting extraordinarily stupid. 

Let’s not give it to them. In fact, let’s take ALL our attention away from them.

Hurting the Hobby

This is serious.

‘High-end audio cables myth’ is one of the first suggestions Google gives when typing in ‘high-end audio cables’.

When noobs visit one of the forums, and they see people accepting as valid another’s opinion that cables have no affect on the sound, that it is just our imagination, they draw the reasonable conclusion that ALL improvements in sound may also just be the wild imaginings of us audiophools.

To a lesser degree there are also those who believe all solid-state amps sound the same, that all CD players sound the same, and that all computer DACs sound the same. These people are also trolls.

We have become a playground for trolls. People who get off on being a**holes and jerks.

I’m Against the Death Penalty in this Case

I’ve thought about it but…. no.

So, not proposing anything too radical here 🙂

I just think we need to censure and, if necessary, kick these people off the reputable forums. If these forums are for Audiophiles, then let’s keep out the Audiophile-haters.

Face it, they hate us and yet they infest our forums.

Why are we putting up with this?

 

 

[Featured photo of big boot from Freshness Magazine]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 8 comments
 by Michael

Miles Davis: Pangaea – A genre of its own

On the front page of the Audio Federation website Neli and I get to post our favorite albums of the day, week, whatever.

[These favorite albums take the place of what was previously our Linkedin profile photos. Neli got tired of seeing this photo of herself everywhere. I think it is a great photo of her. Women… 🙂 ]

I currently have ‘Miles Davis Pangaea‘ as my Audio Federation front page album.

This double-album is part of a set of concerts during Miles’ electric funk space jazz phase. Agharta is another double live album of this concert series from Osaka, Japan. To a large extent Black Beauty, Dark Magnus, In a Silent Way, and even Miles Smiles are other examples of his of this genre. And as far as I am concerned he has this genre all to himself. Although Live-Evil is much more widely available, and many consider it part of this phase of his, I do not – it is more commercial electric jazz-fusion – nice but without the ‘space’ and ‘deep rhythm’ these other albums mostly have (Miles Smiles is missing a lot of the deep rhythm of these others, but it still stands above Like-Evil IMO in terms of groove and aggressiveness).

Here is what Amazon has to say:

“(2-LP set) Recorded on the same day as Agharta (FMN 811), Pangaea‘s 2 LPs of material are culled from the evening performances at Osaka’s Festival Hall. Featuring just 2 songs, both clocking in at over 40 minutes, Pangaea shows Miles’ band really stretching itself to the limit. Live electric jazz-fusion from the undisputed master of the genre. 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket with a reproduction of the original black and white insert.”

I discovered these albums back in the late 70s, early 80s. There was a store on the ‘Hill’ in Boulder that sold lots of cutouts for $3 and lots of mostly Japanese and some European (mostly German) imports for $7. I spent a large percentage of my wealth here at the time [not much to speak of, but it was a lot to me…]. I got this as a Japanese import.

It was definitely an OMG experience that has lasted for 40 years. At the time it was also life-affirming in the sense that an ‘old’ master of ‘boring’ jazz could do something that was so now and ‘with it’.

There is nothing out there like it that I have come across. They lay down a groove with a significant beat and then overlay electric jazz and space all over it for over 40 minutes [on the album].

Make no mistake, this is NOT Kind of Blue. This is more like Funkadelic if you imagine them at the end of a week of playing in front of 100,000 people after being dosed to the gills over and over again. Or Sun Ra if Sun Ra knew what the heck a beat and a melody was.

There are some bootlegs of these concerts. Haven’t played them in awhile, so forget what quality they are [the music itself is, of course, awesome in the sense that It does Inspire Awe].

Neli likes these albums too and they are accessible to the average listener –  just Not At All what you would expect to hear from Miles Davis.

The sound quality is B+. It is really quite good IMO. I have mostly played the original Japanese import LP, though we have been playing the CD for convenience lately. 40 minute songs do require a commitment – there are no obvious places to stop the rhythm once it gets started – so you have been warned 🙂

 

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