New Lamm LL2.1 Preamplifier

LL2.1

“We are pleased to announce the release of a line-stage preamplifier model LL2.1 which is a direct replacement for the LL2 preamplifier.

The LL2.1 features the following upgrades and modifications as compared to the LL2:

· addition of a built-in remote on/off for LAMM amplifiers

· introduction of the attenuation for gain reduction by 15 dB

· some new parts

· new knobs

· slight changes in schematic diagram

Here are the links to specs and description.

US retail price is $5,990 (deluxe version); $5,690 (regular)

This preamp is in production and available immediately.”

Rix Rax is Moving to a Direct Sales Model

You still have a few weeks if you want Neli to walk you through the many, many details of having Rix Rax build a unique equipment rack that suits you per-fect-ly,

But after that, they be taking your orders directly at the factory. The goal, as I understand it, is fewer sales, higher margins. I am sure we can all relate.

We still love the racks and are not sure what to do for a platform-neutral furniture grade solution priced somewhere between cinder blocks and an HRS MXR [OK, SXR, but I like to keep my eye on the ultimate solution, … if not us then who? :-)].

The advantage to RixRax is that it comes at what has become in this market a very reasonable price – and to which we can add HRS M3 platforms one at a time, at our leisure, as we can afford it, to up the performance one component at a time.

Most other racks try and ‘do something’ to artificially improve the performance, most of which fail miserably [i.e. they hurt performance]. The Acoustic Dreams’ racks work well, but are more expensive [when you take into account all the shelf space on on Rix Rax], and if you plan on putting vibration controlling HRS platforms on all the shelves anyway [which not everybody does, of course. And it certainly can take several years to afford one for each shelf. We ourselves ain’t there yet after five years.Then again, we got a LOT of shelves to fill :-).] , it seems like some amount of the purchase price will be wasted on their built in vibration control. Although, nude, they do sound better than nude Rix Rax.

Mapleshade is the only rack that seems to have the same approach, but at a more modest level and I am not sure about putting 60lb M3 platforms all over one of them. And furniture grade it ain’t. This *is* however a rack that we recommend to people with a very modest budget who want to keep things up off the floor.

But Rix Rax it ain’t.

Anyway, we wish the best of luck to Rick Cox and you will start seeing Rix Rax slowly being removed from the site as we figure out just where are all the places are that we mention it. Ugh.

Stereophile post on our room at T.H.E. Show, CES 2009

Wes Phillips had some very nice things to say about our Audio Note U.K. room [with Nordost ODIN and Acrolink powercords, HRS M3 isolation bases and Nimbus Couplers] at:

Ongaku Means Ecstasy

We thank Wes and J.A. for visiting our room and posting their impressions and are, of course, pleased, especially Neli [! :-)] who staffed the room by herself for the entire show.

Have to say, this being the first time I recollect seeing these two in action, they really seem to enjoy being audiophiles and playing music. Not all [aka few] show reporters are like this, many coming off as if it is all a lot of hard work [which it is].

[Not sure how I come off . To Constantine Soo (Dagogo), I think I come off as someone who gets in the way of his trying to listen a lot ;-)))]

Funny thing [or not] while Neli was trying, and trying, and trying some more to find a CD in the folder, I mentioned something like maybe putting CDs at random in the folder wasn’t such a good idea [actually, what I said was probably a lot less coherent], expecting good ole wifey to come back with a witty, if not outright scathing, rejoinder and lighten up the situation a little bit. You know, at least something like ‘ASShole’ with that big smile of hers [no, she doesn’t always smile when she says this :-)]. But noooooo. So I now wonder if this playfully antagonistic dialog technique between Neli and I is such a good method to lighten up somewhat awkward situations after all. 😉

And yes, we are still preoccupied with all the optimizations that we did not get time to implement with this particular system . Some other time we’ll write about how we tried [and failed, but we got more ideas] to maintain the coherence and lack of strain and harshness, while at the same time opening up the sound-stage and increasing the separation to suit Florian [who has agreed to write for the magazine] – and of course this was Sunday night… AFTER the show when we didn’t have to worry about ‘getting back to what sounded pretty good before’ if we really messed things up].

Anyway, everybody should congratulate Neli. Congratulations Neli!