News Archives - Page 66 of 79

May 24, 2008 by Michael

Spring is here

It is so nice. A little distracting from my blog posting duties though… Spring in Boulder is a wonderful thing – a transition from gray hues to green and yellow and red and blue and purple….

The SoundLab U1 speakers have been sold. The Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers took their place – but it is not as different ‘feeling’ as I expected it to be…. A speaker down at that end of the room is just like any other speaker, I guess [no photos cause the speakers are on location until their new Adagios arrive].

We have a ARC Ref 3 preamp trade-in [that is for sale, BTW] that we are going to plug in to the system here and hear in a known environment.

Stewart Suda who has been with Audiogon for, what, about 5 years? [since the site got bought from Arnie) has left for greener pastures [or, hopefully, at least less stressful].

Also about Audiogon, they have once again dropped all show coverage from their site since at least Montreal. This is not to say that it won’t pop back up on their site again someday in the future – as this has happened before.

The availability of the new Nordost ODIN power cords have been announced at about $11K for a 4 foot cord ($10,995 for 1.25 meters). [Can’t wait to hear them! … but we’re going to need two…].

The Munich Show is over and the Portland show is starting NOW [Audio Note is there but Mike and Neli are sitting this one out – though some of our precioussss gear is there].

The AN Kegon Balanced amps are still kicking butt and ruining me for listening to any other amp [Neli is more forgiving and still listens to other amps…. poor girl ;-)].

OK, that is about it. If I know Audio Federation, things are quietest before everything happens at once. And June is the end of our fiscal year… so I think I will be glad I am rested up… 🙂

Happy Spring Everybody (above the equator)!

April 2, 2008 by Michael

News of the Week

A lot of unrated bits and pieces.

Apparently Hi-Fi+

was in dire straits when it was purchased.

Besides that nugget, 98% of what goes on Audio Asylum is bickering. So, yeah, nothing new there.

Mike (me) is miffed

that 1/2 of the hallway A on the 29th floor of the large photos section of the CES report was missing the photos and commentary and no one (NO ONE) told him (me). 😉

I have been listening

to a hip-hop radio station and it is great. Well, except for the repeating of about 10 songs over and over (not kidding) and the SHOUTING at me between songs to buy stuff, or, as often as not, telling me HOW GREAT they are that they are not running a commercial that particular moment.

But they play the Hip Hop’s that is a blend of techno (electronics), disco (it has a beat), rap (one can understand the words and they use a lot of slang) and soul (it is not angry like rap, instead it is more like love songs and good times). Anyway, sometimes it is nice for a pick-me-up, and then switching to the classical station at the first commercial to balance out the hormones and minimize the speeding ticket income of the local police.

Let’s see.

The Kegon Balanced

amps kick butt. They control the Kharmas like nothing else I have heard. I just sit there and listen to them and it is so fun, switching between the glory of the harmonic structure and the beauty of the music and the impressiveness of he control.

Solid state amps on the Kharmas, and probably on everything, can be likened to SHOUTING [I know, twice in one post with the all caps shouting. What is with that?] when they get loud. The drive the speaker by punishing it. By throwing watts at it. But a great tube amp drives it by controlling it with an iron fist.

I am not saying that solidstate amps don;t have their place. Sometimes we want to punish the senses, to push them aggressively. After work, sometimes we might want to let off some steam, or to get a little rowdy.

Kind of like a couple of shots of tequila versus a glass of fine wine. I’ve enjoyed both [and now enjoy neither] and it is great that music, and our systems, can be tailored to suit our every mood and desire… 😉

Danny Kaey reviews

the Audi car stereo over on sonicflare. This is probably a step above the one in my Audi S8, even though I had it replaced about 6 months ago [a pushbutton on the dash had fallen off, so they replaced the whole unit. Ah, German engineering. You have to love it. You have to wonder why.]. As I get older [yes, it happens here at Audio Federation too, darn it] I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that A8 V12. But just a look, mind you. A good… long…. look.

Oh, the stereo is decent. It is well-balanced, top to bottom for what it has to work with. A little tipped up [or more like pumped up, the port frequency of the door?] in the bass to counter the bass of the wheels on the road. I don’t listen to XM or Sirius – which needs like a tube radio or something to be moire than just bearable, it is so bright and neutral sounding [aka DIGITAL]. The stereo, for me, is better than the ones in the less expensive Audis and was way better than the Levinson in the Lexus, the Levinson being worse than the cheaper Bose in the Lexus. So, the Audi Bose system is nice, but no great shakes… it is not audiophile, IMHO.

March 14, 2008 by Michael

News of the Week

The Audio Asylum Critics’ hangout had some gossip. I haven’t noticed HP’s marginalization at TAS – it seems like his copy grows and shrinks at random anyway. It does have a different feel than the ‘corporate’ [is that the right term? Rah rah. Lacking depth. etc.] feel of the rest of the magazine. But rumors of HP starting another magazine… he doesn’t seem hungry or interested enough in what is happening in audio anymore in my opinion… Theyalso mention in this thread that it is common knowledge? that TAS’s circulation numbers are falsified. Maybe so, but it certainly keeps getting fatter and Stereophile keeps getting skinnier… for whatever reasons it appears like TAS is doing better and better these days.

Checked out Dagogo for the first time in awhile. They seem to have a ton of reviews listed on the front page of cool looking stuff. For all you web developers out there, if your target demographic is older people, you need to use a large text font – because we are near as to be blind [although with the FireFox browser, ctrl + or ctrl mouse-scroll-button makes all the text larger – but I happened to visit using Internet Explorer, which I think a few people still use 🙂 …or is it 🙁 ].

The Marten [previously Marten Design, the guys who make our Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers. Yeah, them.] folks have just finished their new demonstration studio – the Marten Center. Extensive photos and commentary in Swedish is at the Swedish Euphonia AudioForum [anyone else noticing that Audiogon ad at the top of the page on that forum? Now that our country, and by inference everything in it, is worth half as much as it was 7 years ago, This is really a good time for Europeans to shop on this side of the pond for used gear.]