by Michael

Jorma Design 'Prime' Speaker Cables

She likes it!

Hey Mikey! She likes it!

Uh, yes, Neli likes the speaker cables. Mike likes them too.

After 10 days on the Nordost Vidar cable burner, the caveats I noticed when we first heard these cables, the tiniest bit of midrange leaness and compression, are… gone. As suspected, the cables just weren’t completely broken in yet.

The Jorma Prime cables break new ground in the resolution department. Nordost Valhalla cables are usually considered to have very high resolution. But, well, this is a whole new ballgame. Heck, it is a whole new season.

On the Marten Design Coltrane speakers driven by the Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers, which are very high resolution themselves, what with ceramic drivers and a diamond tweeter, these speaker cables just shine. Shine a light on the music, is what.

OTL-like dynamics. Combined with the wonderful pacing this is just plain fun, happy, wow! to listen to.

Super-subtle voice intonations – where lots of the previously unheard nuances are freed, nuances that communicate more of the emotion and substance and individuality and humanity of the voices and instruments.

Voices? Even on day one the voices were enough to just grab you and throw you down in the nearest seat – or, depending on your personality, make you stand up and drench yourself in it all.

Transparency…

You remember how, the first time you heard a high-end system, you thought “Oh, so that is what was on that CD (or LP) this whole time?!!!”

Deep dish harmonics. Harmonic intent that was previously locked behind a dirty display case is now presented to the listener on a silver.. and gold… platter.

Separation, presence, … resolution.

Reso-f***ing-lution.

These cables were paired with the Marten Design Coltrane Supremes in the Swedish Statement room at CES, with their 2″ diamond midrange and 3/4″ diamond tweeter – No wonder we started hallucinating.

New ballgame? This is a whole new universe to explore.

OK. Whew! So, well, the cables are doing their part. Yep. Let’s just put a nice big check mark in that box….

Next!

The metal facets in the Jorma Prime speaker cables twinkle like streams of magical musical electrons

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Jorma Design / Popular / Reviews 2 comments
 by Michael

The Emm Labs 'Meitner' DCC2 Signature and CDSD Signature

DCC2 Signature and CDSD signature and remote on kitchen countertop
The updated Meitner DAC and transport arrived today.

For those of you unfamiliar with the digital equipment from Emm Labs, these are the widely acknowledged current state-of-the-art in CD and SACD players. They are so well-respected among the cognesceti that you can read many places about this component and that component, at every price point imaginable, which are defintiely better than the Meitner. Not because they are better, but because they all wish they were better. It has become ‘The One to Beat’.

Our previous pair, with the gloss finish and the transport with the fancy metal drawer, are headed out the door, so we won’t be able to compare the pre-signature and signature versions side by side… you know, play a CD track on one then the same track on the other – but those types of shootouts don’t tell the whole story anyway.

Besides, the Meitner takes a good month to break-in. A good lonnnnng month.

And this includes playing lots of ordinary everyday redbook CDs and not just SACDs.

Why?

To break-in the upconversion hardware and who knows what else that is unique to the redbook playback hardware. Otherwise redbook CDs sound harsh and bright just like….like the player hadn’t been broken in yet….This is why some people on the net talk about ordinary CDs not sounding as good as SACDs. On our older Meitner it was very hard to tell the difference between redbook and SACDs – usually we had to look at the box or the front of the transport to see which it was. SACDs have a little more detail and resolution, a little more separation. In fact, it is my experience that redbook CDs sound less harsh and less digital when compared to SACD.

DCC2 Signature and remote on kitchen countertop
This also includes using the analog output stage during the entire break-in process.

Why?

Because the Meitner output stage is amazingly pure – but it doesn’t sound amazingly pure until it is broken in. I often feel that people who prefer to use a preamplifier with the Meitner (or Prestige for that matter) either have not broken in the output stage or are looking for a little tube warmth in their overall system configuration – which is fine, but does not have anything to do with the Meitner per se, but the system temperature as a whole.

Of course, before any break in happens we need to plug the things in and find somewhere to put them (or the other way around…). Hopefully we will get that going tonight…

Then we can talk about first impressions – but that is all they will be until we get some solid playing time on these puppies…

There are some pictures, of course, in the meantime 🙂

Emm Labs CDSD Signature CD / SACD Transport

Emm Labs DCC2 Signature DAC

Enjoy!

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Reviews 0 comments
 by Michael

Jorma Design 'Prime' interconnect

Patience they say, is its own reward.

Well… this is a nice reward. 🙂

Some photos…

Jorma Design's Prime RCA intrerconnect

Jorma Design's Prime RCA intrerconnect

Initial impressions?

Today the Prime replaced the Stealth INDRA interconnects in order to hear just what the interconnects can do – this is the way that we often audition interconnects. All interconnects up to this point have taken a back seat to the INDRA…

Until now.

A funny thing happens with audio gear. Like the Audio Note CDT-3, and now these cables (and, of course, the INDRA themselves), and to some degree all gear, what arrives as an inanimate, cold, dead, technological curiosity comes alive and gets this glow around it as one learns to appreciate more and more what the piece does – how it is enriching one’s life and those who hear it. It goes from being valuable in a monetary sense to valuable in a life-sustaining sense. It is food, that tastes goooooood.

OK. Initial impressions in comparion to the INDRA:

PROS: More authority, lots more separation, lots more presence, deeper soundstage, a little more bass, more suspense, more resolution.

Also… it has more beauty – the inherent beauty of the music comes through better. This is not richness of tone or dynamics or anything like that. Some of this has to do with the musical rightness of riffs playing off of and against and into another. Not too clear right now what else is happening – hopefully will get more insight as time goes on here.

CONS: None [Yeah. Right. This is Audio Federation. The picky people. There are always cons.] except the midrange being a tiny bit leaner than the INDRA, and similarly the midrange is experiencing a little more compression as well.

Funny, we were told to expect these two symptoms as part of the cable settling-in process [ Even funnier, we NEVER believe stuff like this that people tell us, about how something is going to sound. But sometimes, they are right. Too cloudy here – it is snowing – to see if there is a blue moon outside or not.] Well, experiencing them we are. These anomalies are also supposed to go away in a few hours to a day or so – and they are diminishing after only two hours…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Speaking of tomorrow, the plan is that the Jorma Prime speaker cables will replace the Jorma No .1 speaker cables and the system will be almost completly Jorma Prime.

‘Till then, then.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Jorma Design / Reviews 2 comments