Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

Vincent Belanger ft. Audio Note U.K. at Munich HiFi Deluxe 2019

Recorded in 24bit, 96khz on May 11, 2019 at the Munich Marriott during Hifideluxe 2019.

Vincent was accompanied by, well, Vincent being played back on an Audio Note U.K. stereo with:

1. X? a prototype Level 5 DAC (on the Fifth Element DAC platform with Fifth Force power supply) with a brand new very bold architecture which is a big departure from what anyone has tried before and a clear advancement of the state-of-the-art
2. AN/E SEC Signature speakers (on “J” stands)
3. Ongaku Kensei stereo 211 power amplifier
4. M9 phono preamplifier
5. TT3 turntable with Arm Three/2 and IO1 cartridge and S9 step-up transformer
6. CDT-Six transport

Vincent was accompanied by the Audio Note system which was – frighteningly(?!) – realistic. From where I was sitting I had to look closely at what Vincent was playing to tell which notes were by him and which were previously recorded [Cellos are much harder for a Hi-Fi to reproduce, to sound correct, than, say, electric guitar for which there are several of these types of live demos]. I guess that is the charm and entertainment here, and with these kinds of demos, but seriously, this was impressive.

There is more to this session in the Audio Note room which we will hopefully get to post shortly.

 

in Audio Note / Featured Audio Note Posts / Munich 2019 0 comments
 by Michael

Back from Munich

[pictured: Hermann Winters of Acapella and Neli of Audio Federation in the Acapella showroom]

But on the way back I caught an “airplane cold”. Bad enough that Neli enforced a 10 foot distance between the diseased one and herself until she left to jet down to Houston [where she gets to compare the Acapella Sphaeron Excalibur speakers we just heard in Germany with the smaller but similar looking Triolon Excalibur speakers, among other tasks like setting up an HRS rack and in general being the life of the party].

So now I sit here staring at 2600 photos and 70 videos and about the same number of 24 bit 96kHz recordings of Munich High-end 2019, Audio Note and Acapella factories, and try figure out how to get these up on the internet in a some kind of organized manner.

First I need to add more memory to my 16GB DELL, because video editing takes mucho memory, and Lightroom in any case likes to grab all the memory and open every single photo it can find on my disk not free any memory for like a day(!) anyway. And before that I want to thoroughly backup the DELL, but memory sticks / thumb drives were so slow, so had to get a nice cheap 2TB drive. Etc. Etc. Etc. can’t wait for AI to get here so computers can take care of their own damn selves.

And can’t wait until the show video+photo post-processing pipeline is all worked out. Steep learning-curve alert for this audiophile.

I want our videos to be quite different than AVShowrooms’s approach – and it may take some time to get them just right.  AVShowrooms has a professional “friendly reviewer” approach that works well for them, but I want to go more for an OMFG “extreme enthusiasts visit Wonderland” kind of approach.

Stay tuned 🙂

 

in Munich 2019 / News 0 comments
 by Michael

Mike and Neli went on a little audio adventure

Mike and Neli went on a little audio adventure to visit Audio Note in the U.K., the Munich High-end 2019 show, and the Acapella Audio arts factory where we listened to the Sphaeron Excalibur speakers (pictured) for most of the day.

Details galore forthcoming after sleep and uploading and sifting through several thousand photos, 100s of videos and many recordings of various systems in 24×96 hi-res audio.

 

 

 

 

in Acapella / Audio Note / Featured Acapella Posts / Munich 2019 3 comments
 by Michael

Acapella Sphäron Excalibur – The holy grail of high-end audio loudspeakers

Acapella Audio Arts has upped the bar significantly with their new statement-level loudspeaker, the Spharon Excalibur:

Frequency range: 15 Hz to 40K Hz.

4 x 18 inch woofers per channel

Sensitivity: 103-107 dB / 1 W / 1 m

Impedance: 8 ohms.

Over 2500 pounds. Each.

1 x ION plasma tweeter per channel

From $620,000 a pair. Active version available for additional cost.

The specifications really do tell the story here. Very big. Very efficient. And, given the Acapella brand sound, it will sound like music, and not a high-school science-day project or mad scientist’s laboratory experiment gone bad.

Don’t believe it? Stop by the store in Duisburg Germany and hear for yourself.

That is exactly what the German Lite Lifestyle technology magazine did.

They go into quite some detail – it is a long article, but in German.

We translated the first paragraph to English below [you haven’t experienced life until you and your spouse attempt to translate the same bit of text together, let me tell you…].

Without further ado…

Acapella Sphäron Excalibur – The answer to all questions

What is the maximum amount of effort that we can put towards achieving the high-end ideal of pure, natural and undistorted playback of sound? How far can we go in pursuit of precision, vividness and coherence? An answer to these questions can be heard in Duisburg, where Acapella Audio Arts, renowned manufacturer of horn loudspeakers, has their rarely built Sphäron Excalibur on display. We seized the opportunity to listen to this magnum opus, and are happy to share our insights.

 

Audiophile power: The massive Sphäron Excalibur is 2.40 metres tall and occupies nearly 1.7 square metres. This loudspeaker system is finished in black acrylic cabinets with red horns.

 

Does anyone really need this level of performance? At the pinnacle of high-end audio, that is the wrong question. Here, one aims for a higher goal. One aspires to experience unprecedented quality. One strives for the maximum achievable performance, constrained only by the limits of known science and available technology. One ignores costs, number of materials and market analysis in order to gain new know-how at the leading edge of sonic reproduction. This is the driving force for Acapella co-founder Alfred Rudolph. After building the sensational Sphäron, the ultimate horn speaker system of that time, he asked: “Can it be done better? Will I be able to improve it further? Or, more poetically: “Can I, as in the Arthurian saga, pull this sword from the stone?” And so the Sphäron Excalibur was born.

More here.

 

 

in Featured Acapella Posts / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

Acapella Audio Arts – The Audio One music server

Acapella has recently come out with a music server. You’ve seen it at shows, but it is now in production and we’ve been using it here on both the big and small systems for a month or two now.

On the big system we run it into the Audio Note “Fifth Element” DAC at 24×96 and it sounds very good. Not as good as the very expensive Audio Note CDT-Five transport, but sometimes the laziness bug strikes and one just wants to set it and forget it.

On the smaller system we use the Audio One’s on-board DAC [which we also use on the big system sometimes when we want to experiment – it is VERY competitive (or better) with everything we’ve heard at the price].

The unit perfectly complements the rest of the gear in this system, which are honestly some of my personal favorites of all time and which I could happily live with forever (AN SORO integrated, AN/E Spe HE speakers, TT2), which are all in the $6K to $10K range.

We’re not giving up on CDs just yet [but if YOU are, let us give you our address and instead of just throwing them away… :-)], but their days are numbered and some are getting harder to find and more expensive – and some are now 50 cents.

Audio One music server, Price: $6875.00 USD

 

 

 

in Acapella 0 comments
 by Michael

Audio Note U.K. level-5 volume controls

Volume controls? Yep. Volume controls.

Audio Note’s more expensive pre-amplifiers have high-performance and awesome-looking volume controls. Hand soldered resisters are used for discrete levels of attenuation – arranged in a couple of different geometries that are pleasing to the eye [well, MY eyes anyway!] as well as the ear.

The red, square-looking one in the photos has more “steps” and allows for finer control of the volume between soft and loud. AN believes in high-gain preamps and so do we, but we wanted a little more control over the playback and recently had Nick at True Sound install the red volume control in our M9 Phono preamp.

We are liking the change. 🙂

It is taking  us both awhile to get used to setting the volume 5  clicks in and still being able to hear ourselves talk [which can be a good thing and a bad thing ;-)].

OK. Enough with the spouse-humor [sorry Neli :-)]. We also upgraded the M9’s umbilical cord between its power supply and control unit a few months ago, a major improvement.

Audio Note U.K. doesn’t stay still and keeps improving things. Which is good. Because after some amount of time, I am always ready for something that brings me closer to the epiphanies of hope and beauty that music can deliver to world-weary tired souls – like mine. And maybe like yours too.

in Audio Note 0 comments
 by Michael

HRS M3X2 platform cutaway

An awesome diagram of all the pieces and parts of an Harmonic Resolution Systems M3X2 Isolation Base. These platforms are used many places in a HRS-based setup: as amplifier stands, as shelves in equipment racks, as turntable bases.

in HRS 0 comments
 by Michael

Audio Note M9 RIAA Signature Phono Stage

Going through old directories finding tons of photos that never made it to the blog. Here is just a couple of them.

The M9 RIAA is a two box phono stage from Audio Note U.K. which is by far the best phone stage we have heard with respect to revealing [aka letting through. aka not stepping all over] the parts of the music that make music sound like music. What more could one ask for? [a serious question. Can’t think of anything!]

This now lives in Fred Crowder‘s system [M9 RIAA reviewed at DAGOGO].

 

in Audio Note 0 comments
 by Michael

Giving some lovin’ to our Audio Note SOOTTO power cords….

Audio Note has a long history of making power cords. We haven’t always been fans but the statement SOOTTO power cables ($11k-ish for 1.5 meters) and the affordable ISIS power cables ($450-ish for 1.5 meters) have made our ears very, very happy.

[don’t know about you, but if I can at least make my ears happy, it helps me to solider on to the next sucky tomorrow]

The SOOTTO is comparable to other cables in this price range (e.g. Nordost Odin 1) but is less aggressive and more emotional. Extreme detail but not etched detail like some other cables, which lets through the subtle variations in harmonics and dynamics that are needed to understand and appreciate what is the fantastical adventure happening in each note of each song we want to listen to.

The Audio Note ISIS power cord is an all-around performer in the vein of the SOOTTO [and is just slightly smaller in diameter] and we use them freely when we do not have enough SOOTTO on hand to power a system out. Sounds better than power cords at 5-times the price and we have [and sell!] a LOT of these.

 

in Audio Note 0 comments