by Michael

Make room, Make room!

We need to make room and are selling some gear that is just the kind of stuff that some of you may be interested in:

Edge NL Reference 800 watt pyramid amps (demo)
Soundlab Ultimate 1 electrostatic loudspeakers (demo)
Walker Proscenium Gold Signature turntable (demo)
Marten Coltrane loudspeakers (used)

These are all the top performers in their particular category – more or less just like everything else we carry. There just aren’t that many of these that come on the market at demo/used prices. If you want one of these, now is the time.


The Edge NL Reference amps are sitting waiting for a new owner. We need to make room people, the Kegons, both pairs, the Ongaku, the Lamms, … We got amps coming out of our ears….

They are up on Audiogon if you are interested.


The Soundlab Ultimate 1 loudspeakers are playing music while waiting for a new owner. We got amps coming out our ears and speakers coming out our…. ears too. We got four systems and still we always have at least a couple of great speakers just sitting around for months on end.

The Soundlab U1 are still the best electrostatic speakers and are up on Audiogon.


The Walker Proscenium Gold Signature turntable is ready for a new owner. Also on the infamous Audiogon.

Here are some photos of the pieces that come with…


We have the compressor and large damping chambers up on a bookcase in the room next to listening room #2


The compressor.


The large damping chambers


The Walker motor controller.


Another view of the motor controller.


The small damping chambers sit nicely next to the rack.


A closeup of the small damping chambers


A pair of Marten Coltrane loudspeakers that we had here a long time are available – the owner is moving and is selling their entire system. It is not on Audiogon but please, if you are interested, contact us immediately.

OK, back to our normally scheduled programming. 🙂

in Edge / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Marten Design / Soundlab / Walker 0 comments
 by Michael

What we're playing with this week

We’ve been spending most of our time downstairs.


We set up the Audio Note TT3 Reference turntable next to the Walker Proscenium Gold Signature turntable.


It has been back-and-forth, Walker –> TT3 –> Walker –> TT3 ….. both through the Lamm LP2 phono stage into the Ongaku integrated amp and the Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeakers.


How do they compare, you may ask? In raw terms, the Walker is an audiophile’s dream come true and the TT3 is a music lover’s dream come true. Since we are music loving audiophiles, we can’t really talk about one being the ‘winner’. The TT3 is more dynamic, more lively, more engaging… more youthful. The Walker has a lower noise floor, is more accurate top-to-bottom, a more mature sound.

In fact, the idea would be for us to make them sound a lot more alike [which we have to some extent already] – to get a more musical cartridge for the Walker [we are using the Blue Magic Diamond – not so bad obviously, but there are better, unfortunately more expensive ones out there that are generally considered better]. And conversely, to dress up the TT3 with a rack with more vibration control, to correspond to the Walker’s air suspensions [even though the RixRax with HRS platforms comes close, HRS’s MXR rack still laughs at this setup].


Upstairs we still have the EDGE amps on the Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers, with the Lamm ML2.1 amps waiting for us to get our act together and replace the EDGE.


We have our new HRS SXR 3-shelf rack next to our HRS MXR 4-shelf rack.


Look at all that black!


Neli cleaned everything up, but this is two days later and already some Rocky Mountain dust has found its home on our stuff again.


We’ve appropriated some platforms / shelves for our playtime downstairs.


The Brinkmann Balance turntable.

Right now, we only have one phono stage, which the TT3 and Walker share. Even after our Audio Note M9 Phono arrives, we will only have two phono stages. But we have THREE turntables [well, four, but the little TT2 uses the little Audio Note Oto integrated’s phono stage].

We also do not have rack space for digital on the RixRax equipment rack in listening room 2.

What this means is that our Walker is up for sale on Audiogon [Neli is still glaring at me, because this was really my decision]. If anyone is interested…. be sure to think it over… it is not like they appear on Audiogon everyday [in fact, almost never. And for a good reason].

Next : Audio Note SOGON interconnect versus Audio Note SOOTTO interconnect versus Audio Note PALLAS interconnect. And a CES 2008 retrospective.

in Audio Note / Brinkmann / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / HRS / Kharma / Showroom 1 / Showroom 2 / Walker 0 comments
 by Michael

Walker Wash

Well, it is probably not called ‘Walker Wash’. Actually, it is definitely not called that.

But this post is about the Walker LP Cleaning Process Process Process Process.

It is officially, the Prelude Record Cleaning System.

The short and sweet is: It is a four (4) pass process. I hate that it is so labor intensive. I will personally hardly ever spend the time doing it. It works better than other, more commonly practiced processes. It opens a new world of music enjoyment for formerly unlistenable / unnatural sounding music genres.

It comes in some nicely labeled bottles. And I know one has purified water of some sort. Blah Blah Blah.


Neli uses 3 different brushes, all labeled according to their purpose in life.

Look, I did not clean the records. They had already been cleaned carefully by others. And then the Walker Solution was applied by Neli and Kevin. I just got to hang around and listen to several before and after results.

The results?

It made a previously, well – you know those kinds of jazz fusion bands that sounds like a cacophony of instruments slightly out of tune? Not exactly penetrable if you know what I mean. Cleaning with the Walker stuff made it sound like maybe the musicians did, after all, have some kind of plan in mind, perhaps even were accomplishing what they had planned. It was now possible to hear and follow the various, the SEVERAL various, melodies all happening at the same time, intertwining and playing off of each other.

It still wasn’t going to make the top 40 pop charts – but given that its purpose was more to be playful and complex and subtle and a little disturbing… it actually worked.

But before cleaning it with the Walker stuff, it was, uh, garbage? Can I say that? You know, Noise. I always thought that some bands just put out pure noise because, well, boys aren’t that particular sometimes, right? We just want to bang on cans and garbage-can lids and whatever…

Well, now, *dammit*, a lot of this really quite innovative and provocative music might just need an LP and 4 passes of cleaning on the Loricraft with the Walker cleaning fluids.

Whether spending the time to apply 4-passes with other cleaning solutions would also work this well, I don’t know.

Even if other solutions did work as well, it would still make this nirvana of uber-sounding LPs almost inaccessible to me, because, well, it is just so unlikely that I am going to spend the time doing all this cleaning. I mean, hello? How many years do we get? And I am going to spend them cleaning LPs?

But… well, just maybe, MAYBE, I’ll Walker the new Radiohead LPs I am getting for Christmas.

… and maybe DSOTM. … and Amnesiac.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Loricraft / Walker 0 comments