by Michael

Lamm ML3 at RMAF 2008

With our smaller room hosting the king of 300B amps, the Audio Note Kegon Balanced amplifiers – our larger room will be host to the king of GM70 amps – the Lamm ML3 Signature amplifiers [and for those of you who were looking forward to the KB’s on the Supremes – please visit us here in Boulder – anytime, day or night].

With help from Lamm Industries, we will spoil the visitors to our room [and ourselves!] once more this year with the ML3’s on the Marten Coltrane Supremes loudspeakers.

We are not all that familiar with the Lamm ML3 – though for the couple of hours that we heard them on the Wilson MAXX II at CES we were very, very impressed – and this will give us all here in Denver a chance to get a good dose of what they can do. As a reference point, we have had the ML3’s baby brother, the Lamm ML2.1, on the Supremes for most of this year – and most people really love THAT sound. This will be much, much better.

The Supremes present a very high-resolution, very easy, 94-95dB efficient load for the amps because the bass towers, handling everything below 100Hz, are driven by some beefy 2000 watt/channel solid-state amps. This should let us hear exactly what the amps can do in a optimal situation [without having to worry about a speaker’s bass impedance curve shenanigans and listening around bass integration issues] – and likewise hear what the speakers can do driven by amps with a very sophisticated sound [the complexity of each note’s harmonics and micro dynamics being nothing short of remarkable] a sound with what we think of as an innate sense of Russianesque drama and romance.

So… we are psyched! Neli is jumping up and down [and keeps counting HRS isolation bases to see whether we really do have enough to handle the FIVE boxes up front [when one includes the Marten cross-over box], and Mike is [along with talking in the 3rd person for some reason] trying to figure out the cable compliment to use, what TT to bring, etc. We STILL need to try the ODIN speaker cable on the Supremes – but I think we might as well wait for the ML3 to get here at our shop first – because I think the amp->ODIN->Jorma Design PRIME-inside-the-speakers might make the sound very dependent on the amp. What powercords go where …. yadayadayada.

It should be GREAT fun! We hope all of you can make it.

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 by Michael

Goodies we are taking to the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest

OK, so our large room will have the EMM Labs DAC2 / TSD1 – unquestionably the best solid-state digital in the world [to most calm, cool, collected people :-)]

And this source will be driving a whole system of ‘best of breed’ components:

The Marten ‘Coltrane Supreme’ loudspeakers.

And, lets see, the Harmonic Resolution MXR equipment rack [the best rack, and good looking to boot] and at least one SXR rack.

All of our Nordost ODIN cable will be there – though we may not be able to deploy the ODIN speaker cable – since we only have one run and we would need two for the Supremes [one for the bass tower and one for the main tower].

Also our Jorma Design PRIME, our 10 meter run of Valhalla, our ELROD, Valhalla, and AcroLink power cords and …

Our Audio Note room will also be world class this year – as opposed to the last two years when we brought one of the least expensive – yet best sounding systems at the show [OK, the bar is pretty low at these shows, so this really isn’t more election year hyperbole – it really was one of the better sounds].

This room this year will have our AN/E SEC Signature speakers in Madrone Burl – Audio Note’s second best speakers and one which, if you ‘get it’ [which really means that you are addicted to the immediacy of high-efficiency speakers but at the same time do not like the problems most horns and HE single-driver speakers have – aka you have the reasonable but not all that common requirement that reproduced music should sound like music] is one of the best speakers as well.

And one of our rooms [see, you are starting to see into our juggling of components between the 2 rooms and here – preparing the most special feast ever for all of our guests – and we keep coming up with more ideas… and we are afraid that some might be decent, in amongst all the many, many crazy ones :-)] will have the best 300B tube-based amplifiers, the Audio Note U.K. Kegon Balanced [see, by separating out amplifiers into which power tube they use, we can have a whole bunch of ‘best amplifiers’ – and it makes sense since each tube has such a different sound]. The other amp will be the 1st or 2nd best amp – with hopefully a different tube… can you guess which one? 🙂

And, uh, that is all we know for now.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2008 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Emm Labs DAC2 and TSD1 at RMAF 2008

I do not know why it is, but around here we seem to have a hard time agreeing on what to take to a show – and especially our ‘home town’ show the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.

But we do know that we are taking the new Emm Labs DAC2 [a DAC … but you probably guessed that 🙂 But it has no preamp; unlike the DCC2, which does] and TSD1 transport.

Here are some factory photos [we hope to get the pair here and post some more shortly]:


There are some new buttons 🙂 Particularly the one for PC Audio kind of stands out. We will have a laptop at RMAF to demonstrate this capability…


The remote looks more like the DCC2 / CDSD remote than the newer CDSA remote – but I like them both [I just don’t like heavy metal ones that get really cold in the Winter – we think we already have enough c-o-l-d things here in the Rocky Mountains]. There are also a few new buttons there… can’t wait to try them out 🙂

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