It was actually warm and sunny out yesterday… but the photos did not come out so great. Will try again on the next sunny day. Should be one coming up … sometime.
It is also hard to show just how BIG the amps stand, and amp! are. We;ll try to fix that for next time too.
Anyway… there are some HRS couplers under the amp, but in gernal we have not done extensive listening tests to test the HRS or the system itself in this configuration… yet.
These speakers, this system, actually does fill up the room with sound. It is amazing.
Not quite the easy open bass the Triolon bass towers had- but few systems have THAT large of a sound.
But the bass goes down on both this and the previous system to about the same frequency, and with about the same resolution… so there ARE similaritities.
And here, the soundstage is a more reasonable 6 or 7 feet tall, instead of 20 feet – so it is, as always, about tradeoffs. And at about 1/4 the price… we are happy with this being the primary system… for awhile.
I will have to take more photos of the Ongaku on the Rix Rax outpost amp stand. It was just a kind of accident that this got set up this way – the HRS going out on a local audition this week – but this looks really … farout man.
The two are about the same size and it is as if were made for each other. And Neli polished up both of them, which doesn’t hurt the visuals either.
Sonically… we are playing with power cords and have a $2 OEM cord on the Ongaku to establish a frame-of-reference… so can’t say anything yet.
Oh! What hard work! Whew!
Please, no more!
Well, maybe just a little…. 🙂
This is the first post with our new Category scheme – This is what we are calling “Showroom 2” although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).
The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.
We have a tendency – like most people who really enjoy this hobby – to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.
There is also two of us – so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.
We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet 🙂 … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound – which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation – and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve – and you can match that against what you personally prefer.
[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is – I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I – but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].
South side of listening room two – the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps
Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.
Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp
Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background
Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background
Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers
Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs – so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.
It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-
So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…
This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact. 🙂
As far as breaking in – the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.
The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…
