Audio Federation - high-end audio blog

September 24, 2009 by Michael

Rix Rax Equipment Racks

As you all probably know by now, Rix Rax decided to sell direct a little while ago.

To that end I finally got around to removing it from the lists of products we carry here scattered through the little website of ours.

I will however leave this link:

http://www.audiofederation.com/dealership/rixrax/index.htm

which has some photos we have collected over the years of these beautiful equipment racks.

For those in search of an attractive, do-no-harm style rack (that can support, for example, HRS M3 vibration control platforms under the components as funds allow), we recommend you consider Rix Rax as a viable solution.

September 22, 2009 by Michael

Preliminary Impressions of the Emm Labs XDS1

We spent some time comparing the Emm Labs XDS1 single-box player to the older Emm Labs two-box CDSD transport DCC2 DAC combo. From this comparison we can deduce some differences between the XDS1 and the two-box Emm Labs TSD1 transport and DAC2 DAC (which we spent quite a bit of time with previously and with which we did this comparison with the older pair many times).

Whew!

The one sentence conclusion is that the XDS1 is a evolutionary improvement ‘in kind’ with the improvements the TSD1/DAC2 brought us compared to the CDSD/DCC2 – taking it another step in the direction of blacker backgrounds, control and separation – with unexpectedly, a few additional evolutionary improvements in the bass and dynamics areas.

By evolutionary, I mean you don’t immediately wince when you go from the XDS1 to the CDSD/DCC2 [it is not like going from an ODIN power cord to a ordinary top-of-the-line power cord]. You won’t immediately wince – but you will eventually.

Going from the CDSD/DCC2 to the XDS1 it is much more apparent. There is a greater ease to the presentation: dynamically, details, harmonics – it all makes the other player seem like it is ‘trying hard’ whereas the TSD1 it just happens effortlessly.

Personally, I think these are all related. The greater control over each note of the XDS1 lends itself to having greater ‘slam’, along with the blacker background to be able to pick out individual violins instead of it sounding like just one with a lot of ‘noise that could be other violins’.

We could play the XDS1 louder than the other pair – it had greater resolving capability and whereas the older pair as not able to disambiguate the individual sounds, making it kind of bloby and overwhelming at certain frequencies, the TSD1 sounded just fine. All the instruments could be heard correctly so at the higher volume, it just sounded louder [i.e. the slightly confused rendering of the notes was always there in the older pair, they just didn’t overwhelm us with their unpleasantness until the volume was turned way up].

The UNconfused rendering of the notes of the XDS1, the significantly enhanced control over the notes, the deeper, more round and 3-dimensional bass, the blacker background, made a more immediate and significant impact than the TSD1/DAC2 did over the older CDSD/DCC2 – lending us to conclude that the XDS1 is at least one-step-beyond the TSD1/DAC2 pair.

And now I want to talk about the more psychological aspects of the sound of the XDS1. This is the most fun part for me – both to experience (!) and to write about. But it is also sad because it takes a $25K player [as well as a decent system. This system is quite good – but its optimization is still an in-progress thing] to get to this state-of-mind I am going to TRY to describe.

When you first get the XDS1, it takes some amount of time of concentrated listening [for me] but eventually I got to this space where it I was feeling so much joy listening to one track after the next, one CD after the next. I think a lot of it was because I could just relax ‘in-between the notes’. The awesomely deep black background [without attenuating detail. This is important. This is different than most other ‘blacker backgrounds’ and seems most similar to the Walker Turntable black. But it is even blacker.] combined with resolving capability that we really do not associate with digital players, combined with the control to make the notes do what they the music says they should do and the dynamic capability to make it all seem easy resulted in….

.. an ability to relax and ‘Trust the Music’.

.. to let the music wrap all these strands of melodies around and around you as you listen…

.. picking this melody or that instrument to follow or focus on … but the others are still there(!), doing their thing, not competing with each other, but complementing each other

.. to marvel at the wonderfully rich complexity and beauty of the notes down to the smallest aspect of each note and how it fits into its strand of the melody

.. how it becomes an almost tactile thing – an almost physical experience… ‘touching the music and being touched by it’

Anyway, I had these experiences with the TSD1/DAC2 on a almost perfectly optimized system [Coltrane/Ongaku/ODIN and sometimes some PRIME (which additionally allowed us to experience decays of amazing beauty)]. Now the XDS1 is allowing me to have them on a less optimized system [Audio Note speakers|Kegon Balanced|DAC2 Preamp|ODIN|Valhalla|AcroLink].

Already I am an addict. Pursuing these experiences is about half of what I devote my personal system ‘I Really Want That’ energies to.

[The other half is more amorphous right now – in the direction of a purer Audio Note approach combined with big open well-designed horn speakers. Yeah, amorphous because we don’t got no horn speakers here (and the ones that we did are moving in a direction untenable to us).]

Ergo, almost all my personal audio desire/passion/addiction is for these systems fronted by the newest Emm Labs gear and the high quality systems that are able to do what I want them to do – to provide these kinds of experiences.

Jeez, and I told Neli this was going to be a short write up. 🙂

September 21, 2009 by Michael

Photos of Emm Labs XDS1 – with the power ON

[People seemed to enjoy the previous photo shoot, so here are a few more – with the power on]

Breaking in the XDS1 player on a system that… sort of resembles the one we are taking to RMAF. We think. Today.

Haven’t done any serious shootouts yet, but seems to be less digital [how can you be less digital than something that doesn’t sound digital? I don’t know – but it does] and have more separation than the CDSD/DCC2 pair [we are using the DCC2 preamp for the XDS1]. I think I remember saying the same thing about the TSD1/DAC2 when we first heard them too. Emm Labs is steadily progressing toward digital nirvana.

One thing we can say – the player responds to the remote control very quickly. Switching tracks takes about 1.0 seconds. That, by itself, is almost worth the $25K price tag. 🙂

Several shots here of the Esoteric transport with the metal tray

The drawer opening during the photo.

On power up.

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2009 / Show Reports 0 comments

September 20, 2009 by Michael

A new aggregator of used equipment for sale

There are several websites that list used equipment for sale. Here is a new website that makes a list of equipment, in this case McIntosh, that is for sale on Ebay:

http://www.mcintoshstereoamplifiers.com

I am curious how much people use sites like this. We thought of doing one, even of making it a page in the magazine each month, one that would display components for sale for all brands of equipment.

But then we thought that nobody would be all that interested in yet another classifieds page – and it would likely antagonize all the other sites that do this: Audio Asylum, AudioXSell, Audiogon, etc…. especially if we screen scraped them like Oodle does 🙂

You also got:

# eCoustics.com.
# Audio Video Marketplace
# Audio Shopper
# Avmarket
# Canuck Audio Mart
# HiFi Classifieds
# HigherFi

and every forum and forum wannabe has associated classifieds ads it seems.

Everyone wants to unseat Audiogon – but no one has made much headway as far as I can tell.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 0 comments

September 19, 2009 by Michael

Free Ads on Spintricity?

One of the things I like doing the most is helping promote the hobby. I especially enjoy helping smaller manufacturers – in particular those that make less expensive but good sounding equipment for the money – get attention from the audiophile community [one of my favorite things about the show reports].

We have been offering people the opportunity to publish their press releases, for free, for the last few weeks – but press releases are hard to come up with, especially if you, like me, cannot tell the difference between press releases and advertising. Many people do not want to offend us sending us a advertisement when we asked for press releases only.

So we are going to fix that.

And, as we all know, the economy sucks [unless you are a bank, insurance company, or wall-street firm – or lobbyist or news channel for the same].

Now that the magazine is [almost :-)] usable we could go out and pound the pavement signing up advertisers just like all those other rags. But then we would just get the same ole same ole advertisers who can afford to pay for advertising and the other 98% of the industry would be left out of the party.

Well, that kind of small potatoes party is just not what Spintricity, who brings you 3000+ photo / 2200 page show reports, had in mind. We want 1000s of of brands to be able to present their products, services and story. Well, we want a lot anyway.

To that end, dear reader, we are trying to get everybody in our high-end audio wonderland to pony up one FULL-PAGE ad, which we will publish for free in each issue of Spintricity.

In this way we want to turn each issue of Spintricity into a show report-like cornucopia, a bonanza, a sh*t load if you will, of equipment, and information and photos about equipment – in addition to articles on the lives, times, and adventures in audiophiledom.

For those companies that can afford to do more, we will offer the ability to purchase additional pages, to purchase attention getters for their ads, and to purchase special ‘live webpage’ ads.

To assist with ads, you manufacturers who cannot afford to hire a graphics design firm, and don’t want to go completely bald [yes, you women too] trying to learn photoshop, you can select a photo from one of our show reports [or send us one of yours], send us some (small amount please!) text and we will make an ad for you.

This will be the policy for Spintricity for the forseeable future, and forever if things work out as we expect.

——————————

One last thing. A show report is coming right up. You know it. We know it. [Oh boy do we know it].

OK, yes, that would be RMAF 2009 [that is Rocky Mountain Audio Fest you search engine, you].

We create a separate, linkable article for each room at the show. In the article is several pages of photos. In amongst those photos we will run industry ads, for free, for products in that room. This will allow visitors to show report pages for the room to see tech spec sheets, ads, backgrounders, other products from the same brand, whatever.

This allows you, the reader, to see lots more (accurate and appealing) information about the equipment displayed in the room.

We will run 1 fullpage ad/spec sheet/whatever for each brand listed on the sign of the room. Exhibitors can purchase additional pages.

For those who can’t exhibit at the show – we will run your ad in the show report as per a normal issue. Not sure where we will put these if your equipment is not on display, but we’ll figure something out.

[I know I am talking to two different audiences in this post, the industry and audiophiles – and I am switching back and forth faster than a switching power supply – but, well, sorry about that].

Many in the industry read this blog – and we will be sending out emails to the others. But who reads emails [about 20%]? So you audiophiles need to coerce your favorite manufacturers to come up with an ad to publish in Spintricity. Remember: FULL-PAGE [any format] and lots of juicy take-no-prisoners graphics.

Enjoy!

Email ad submissions to: industry@spintricity.com

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News / RMAF 2009 / Show Reports / Spintricity 0 comments

September 17, 2009 by Michael

Emm Labs XDS 1 SE Single-box SACD/CD Player

The Emm Labs XDS 1 player arrived today. We will be showing it at RMAF 2009.

We only have some photos for everybody at the current time. Before we can talk about what it sound like we have to hook it up. We will hook it up as soon as husband and wife decide which system to put it in [actually, it is -which system will serve as the Show System Prototype area].

Hopefully husband and wife decide before Oct. 2 (the day of the show) 😉

Anyway, here are some photos of the player and its remote control. Larger photos, many of the same ones in fact, will appear in Spintricity tomorrow if all goes as planned.

Fresh from Canada.

Double boxed.

Nice heavy closed-cell foam

The box usually contains more goodies when the player is not a ‘show player’

The player, safely nestled.

The player rests on more foam.

A nice stretch cloth bag protects the player

Neli takes the bag off.

Player on the kitchen counter

Rear of XDS 1 player. Your basic stuff. If you want USB you need to get the Emm Labs DAC 2.

The icons for the buttons have changed slightly since the TSD1 / DAC2.

The XDS 1 remote appears to be the same as that which comes with the TSD1 transport / DAC 2 DAC.

Hope you enjoyed. We’ll talk about the sound in a few days.

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2009 / Show Reports 0 comments

September 16, 2009 by Michael

Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009

So, the Rocky Moun’tane Audio Festivities are soon to begin – well a couple of weeks seems like ‘soon’ to me.

We will be in our usual two rooms: 9030 and 9026. One big and one small [medium size seems just not the d’rigor for show hotels].

————————————————————————–

Tentatively we will be showing, in the large room:

* Audio Note AN/E SEC Signature speakers (we’ve shown with these before, but not in the big room!)

* Andio Note Gaku On amplifiers (Audio Note’s top of the line 211-based monoblocks)

* Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier

* Audio Note TT3 Reference turntable

* Audio Note digital: DAC 4.1x Balanced and CDT-3 transport

…and…

* EMM Labs XDS 1 reference-level single box SACD/CD player (product debut: about $25K)

* Nordost ODIN cable (everything ODIN but our 10 meter Valhalla and the Audio Note Sogon hard-wired to the speakers)

… and …

* HRS MXR and SXR equipment racks and M3 isolation bases

————————————————————————

And in the small room:

Audio Note ‘Zero’-based system:

* I Zero integrated amplifier
* R Zero phono section
* CDT-Zero CD transport
* DAC 0.1x with USB input

… and …

* TT2 turntable with IQ3 MM cartridge
* AN/E SPe HE loudspeakers

… and…

* Rix Rax ‘Robbs Report’ equipment rack

————————————————————————

We’ll have photos of the XDS 1 and Gaku Ons before the show – both here and in Spintricity.

Hope to see you all there!

in Audio Note / Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Nordost / Rix Rax / RMAF 2009 2 comments

September 13, 2009 by Michael

Imaging, Soundstaging, Reality and Enjoyment

[Neli thinks I write too many pieces on the industry, so here is one on sound]

I was surfing and ran across an article on imaging and soundstaging at Romy’s site

Now, Romy is too opaque for me in that thread, but I am pretty sure I disagree with what he is saying 🙂

Lot’s of people are confused about soundstaging – and it is indeed popular to tarnish it as being faux and imaging as being required to be in some nebulous constraints of size and specificity.

Let’s define these two, shall we? At least for the duration of this post, and I hope these are more or less in line with what you think of them as. So we will define:

—————————

Soundstaging: as the location on a virtual 3D stage of where a sound is coming from, usually on the side of the room where the speakers are

Imaging: as the spacial and textural definition of the musician and or sound – their outlines, their weight, etc.

—————————

So imaging has to do with perceived image specificity and soundstaging as its location in 3D space.

I think I will ignore imaging in this post and talk about the much maligned soundstage.

I, personally, love the soundstage. Even though it is probably 5th or 6th on my list – it is still very important to me.

The only thing I can think of why people disparage soundstaging so much is, as pointed out on Romy’s thread, is that it is popular to do so [though not for monetary gain, as implied there, and which requires a very cynical view of the industry to imagine – though, yes, there are many unscrupulous types in retail out there, I just don’t think they are this smart :-)].

It obviously occurs in acoustic reality. But what really interests me [and I think upsets the detractors] is the liberties that sound engineers take with the positions of sounds in the 3D space.

On a good system [the precise quality and make up of which we can debate and agonize over some other time] you can hear the sound engineer move things around, fade them in and out, and change them in other ways that have nothing to do with unamplified/unprocessed sound.

I think of sound engineers as the ‘forgotten musician’. They add all this stuff to the music – and yet they do not get the big bucks. Nobody knows their name. And many people – audiophiles anyway – think the music would be better off without them.

I don’t think so.

Obviously I am talking about bands like Radiohead and Pink Floyd, and not Led Zeppelin or classical music. But if you listen to your casual pop rock country and crossover songs – in the background, there is a lot of stuff going on that is very entertaining. To me anyway.

And that is why I like soundstaging. I enjoy all the background stuff and the way it appears and disappears and moves around [in, out, left, right, up, down] and [rarely] changes phase and pitch and texture.

On a car radio, or iPhone, all this stuff is merged into The Song. But on a quality high-end audio system – this stuff expands into a wondrous playful menage of delightful sounds, which just feeds back into greatly enhancing the overall song.

For me.

And hopefully for you too. The more things one enjoys in this life, the less room there is for things we do not enjoy. 🙂

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy 0 comments

September 9, 2009 by Michael

Think you are getting a discount? Think again… that's what its worth

The only reason discounts work is because every buyer thinks they are ‘special’…

1) “Everyone else pays full price but *I* get it at 50% off. This salesperson must really love me, they just let me keep my extra $10K in cold cash that I can now spend on my spouse.”

2) “Boy oh boy, I found a great deal! 65% off – I bet nobody else gets this great a deal. The salesperson said they were able to do this because I was the 1st caller that minute.”

Problem is, we are programmed to respect MSRP as being equal to the value of something,. But it is not. What it sells for is ‘the value’.

But the perception of MSRP may be changing.

When shopping for video cards on newegg.com, who looks at MSRP, it is the street price we care about.

When shopping for CDs, the MSRP is what $15, $17? [this was written a year or two ago and not posted. I think $18.99 is now the standard price]. Kind of hard to tell. But we know they go on sale at random (it seems to me) for $11. And they are free if you can find and download them or copy them from a friend.
[Not sure why I originally put this in here. This is the opposite of a discount economy and is pure price gouging. It might have worked a decade or two ago – but we now all KNOW how much it costs to make a CD. In some ways it is this kind of over-charging that may have triggered the discount economy.]

This is worse now during this ‘Downturn’ or ‘Great Recession’. It is worse because both consumers, sales people and manufacturers think they now have carte blanc to play games with reality. “Everybody expects to get big discounts these days”.

It ain’t a discount if that is what they are selling it to you for – that is what it is worth.

Smoke from the L.A. fires

Can hardly see the city today, or even more than a few 100 yards, because of all the smoke.

You can see from the satellite map how the smoke from the fires is blowing here [Boulder, Colorado] from California

It seemed like such a long distance. But it apparently is not. You can even smell the smoke. We are located at the right tip of the smoke stream.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 0 comments

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