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June 24, 2006 by Michael

Audio Note M10 preamplifier

We put the Audio Note M10 preamplifier on the main system upstairs today. Things were kind of in a mess after a recent audition, anyway… 🙂 so we took it as an impetus to see what a Meitner front end driving the Audio Note M10 preamplifier itself driving an Audio Note Kegon amplifier would sound like.

[By the way, that white stuff outside, that is a couple of inches of hail. Yes, it is indeed June 24th.]

I mean, instead of using the Meitner DCC2 DAC built-in preamplifier, which can only but be about $5K of the cost of the DAC, we put a $50K preamplifier in the system with its brother $50K amplifier.

How do you think it is going to sound?

Neli is planning on writing a nasty letter to Peter Q. of Audio Note for letting us ever audition the M10. 🙂

We did most of our listening after the unit being on for only 5 minutes, It has now been 3 hours or so.

There are some audiophile-approved attributes that got a big jump up in quality: harmonics, bass, room pressurization, continuousness, imaging, solidity….

But, people, this is not about me devolving, dehumanizing, detaching the sound into its constituent parts.

OK, Janis’s Rachmaninov on SACD is playing – and I am trying to write this during the breaks between pieces because it is too hard to concentrate when the music is playing down the hall outside my office in the livingroom.

For many people, of a certain age and certain life experiences, music and the pursuit of the reproduction thereof, is an attempt to not only experience the music of our youth, but to recapture the feelings and sense of wonder and appreciation of the beauty that life offers us – but which the years and a well-nourished cynicism distances us from; slowly, inexorably, until life sometimes seems like a cold, boring, cruel joke.

But for a few minutes, or hours if the system is very, very good, and most of the time if the system is this good, our defenses are ripped away and we are filled with the child’s sense of the wonder-of-it-all.

[Here we see the Emm Labs DCC2 DAC, the silver-ish box, which is receiving a signal through 10 meter long optical cables from the transport located on the other side of the room. This is connected, by the Valhalla interconnects that are looping through the sky like the St. Louis Arch, to the M10 preamplifier in the center front. The M10 preamplifier is powered by the two, large, black, about 50lb each power supply boxes called Galahads located in the rear. Finally, the M10 preamp is connected, through INDRA interconnects, to the two Kegon 300B single-ended triode amplifiers (whose tubes are plainly visible).]

What we want our systems to do, what this system does for the both of us:

To communicate with our hearts and minds so well, so powerfully, that we are defenseless against it.

Neli says: “Yeah, Neli hates almost all preamplifiers … finally found another one she likes, 3 big boxes, 2 of ’em heavy boxes, $50K. Verrrry nice linestage. Ack!!!”

May 28, 2006 by Michael

Emm Labs Signature editions – interim update

It wil be two weeks this coming Monday since we started breaking in the Meitner pair – about 300 hours.

We figure about one month, or 600 hours, is about the minimum breakin period for these puppies.

After the first week, with all of the improvements over the previous, non-signature editions, the sound was still somewhat lean.

Now, at about two weeks, the sound is already at, oh, at about 90-95% of the full weight of our previous pair. One can still tell they are not completely broken in during really quick percussion transients in the upper midrange which still sound a little brittle.

Our impresions of the overall improvements of the CDSD Signature and DCC2 Signature editions are the same as that after the first few days:

An evolutionary improvement on just about all fronts with no negative side-effects (thank goodness, as sometimes ‘improvements’ are often a very mixed blesing – think ‘Adobe Photoshop’ – but not in this case) with primarily a darker background feeding more detail, especially in the bass, better midi- and micro-dymamics, and in general more clarity feeding the awesome ‘signature’ transparency which is the real revolutionary impact of Meitner ‘s consumer-targetted digital equipment, from our point of view.

We are playing CDs on the Emm Labs pair 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

At night, and when we have guests auditioning other equipment, we ‘play waves’:

This CD is mostly ‘white noise’, with some amount of bass when the waves crash on the beach and some diminutive bird calls in the background. Very easy on the ears and one can listen to it as background ‘music’ over and over and over and….

… without going… batty.

Unfortunately, our 3-week update on the breaking-in process will be a little late… because we plan on attending the Stereophile HE 2006 show!

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Reviews 3 comments

May 27, 2006 by Michael

System #3: Marten Coltrane, Lamm ML2.1, Jorma Prime, HRS MXR

The System: Marten Coltrane speakers, Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers, Jorma Prime speaker cable, HRS MXR equipment rack. Also Lamm L2 preamplifier, Audio Note CDT-Two and DAC 4.1x Balanced. Nordost and Shunyata cabling.

We mentioned how amazing this was sounding in our review of the Jorma ‘Prime’ interconnects.

What does does amazing mean?

Here is what amazing means:

The Coltrane speakers are so freakin revealing… The Jorma Prime cables are slightly more forward than their No. 1 and even the Valhalla, and this new effect was already taking hold. Now, with HRS’s MXR rack [we set it up yesterday, much more on this later :-)] in place of the Acoustic Dreams, the system sound is even more ‘present’.

We kind of take it for a given that the Coltrane speakers are a little laid back – given the highest quality, completely neutral components up front. But maybe not…

Witb these two new, admittedly over the top, additions to the system… the sound is much more of a engulfing, in the room type of experience.

Our good Canadian friend, Dave H., [you there Dave? Missed you in Monteal] used to talk about how he wanted the sound to come to him, to not have to focus on listening to what was being played, to have the sound ‘take control’ [my words] as it were.

The system was already subtley sinister in the way it would sneak up on a person and make one stop mid sentence, whether one wanted to or not, as the music Took Control.

But now, …

It is hard to move, much more hard to get up.

It is like ‘if I miss this next note, my life will have been worthless and empty’… ‘I must hear this next note!’

I think this house is going to be much more quiet now… because if we start playing any music, we aren’t going to get ANYTHING done.

[Though I am much more disclipined than Neli, and this system is on the same floor as her office. She, she is doomed. So if you can’t get her on the tele as easily as you could before today, you’ll know exactly why!]

And the new Audio Note CDT-Three transport just arrived. We are doomed! 🙂 🙂 🙂

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / HRS / Jorma Design / Lamm / Marten Design / Nordost / Popular / Reviews / Showroom 3 / Sounding Off 3 comments

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