Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

A few notes…

First, the bass on the Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers is much improved with the Odin, especially with music that has a lot of bass at frequencies that the speaker is tuned for, i.e. around the port frequency. But, as we all know, the bass between the port frequency and about 35 Hz, say is not as strong and will never be as strong as that of a larger speaker.

Second, there is some relationship between dynamic compression and (multi-dimensional: frequency, imaging, dynamics, etc.) congestion. These cables, removing these, makes one wonder how they got there in the first place. One possibility is that, because problems often can be heard even on very well recorded, yet not very complex music, near or at loud notes, that it is the red-lining during the recording processes, maxing out the dynamics of the media, that most cables find hard to deal with. They can’t disambiguate the signal very well at all when there is not a lot of dynamic headroom – but that the Odin, being more sensitive, and consistent, can.

We put the Odin on as a digital cable between the transport and DAC. It did indeed improve the sound in the same character as when we inserted it between the DAC and integrated – but not to the same degree. But don’t take this as the final word on where that all important first / best cable should be inserted into a system. Although it makes sense that having more cable that the signal goes through the more of the character of that cable the sound will have, the opposite makes sense too – that the smaller signal needs the most help. Anyway, there is some interaction between the Valhalla and Audio Note SOOTTO (much more musical) as compared to the ODIN and SOOTTO (much more competent), that throws the test results askew.

The system was then outfitted with 100% ODIN. Very intense, and quite enjoyable, and they only have a few hours on them now.

Speaking of competent, Neli came up with it first, but these cables are the first really competent cables, like the Coltrane Supremes being the first, real competent speakers. They just do the job – plain and simple, but unlike anything that came before them, nothing else has been able to just do the darned job of carrying a signal without mucking with it.

And once you hear them, once you try them in a decent system that you are familiar with, you are… ruined.

Next, putting a cable or two in the Marten Coltrane Supreme system.

I took these photos first thing in the morning (MY morning, which is about 10:30am) with a unzoomable 50mm lens and almost zero charge on the flash – but was too lazy to go back upstairs get the other lens and some charged flash batteries… But they don’t look too bad… it was kind of an interesting challenge.

I was good (this time, not implying anything about next time) and waited for Neli to get back home and both of us to get done with supper.

The test was done on the Kharma Mini Exquisite system with the Audio note Ongaku U.K. amp and Audio Note DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and CDT3 transport.

As the title of this post suggests, the Odin has not been broken in yet – our Nordost Vidar cable burner has not arrived back from repairs at the factory after it suffered a mishap while burning in some cables: aka the house being stuck by lightning.

Cables used were the Audio Note SOOTTO interconnect at about $8K / meter, also not burned in. The Jorma Design No. 1 speaker cables, at about $8K / 2.5 meters, and a slew of digital cables.

And of course the Nordost Odin at $16K / meter interconnect and about $29K / 2,5 meters of speaker cable. [Note to Mike, look up these prices or Neli will kill you. [Good thing I did, too :-)]].

This is not a shootout… nothing is broken in and the things that are would have an unfair advantage. In fact, we will not let our visitors hear the SOOTTO or ODIN cables until they are broken in [although both are sounding remarkable right out of the box – there is still that brand new sound that we all know and get to hear so of much at shows].

We didn’t take photos at each step – so I’ll just have to describe the process.

… What a blast! It is so fun to swap things in, hear in a second or less that, “nope, that is not as good, go back” [we went through a lot of digital cables trying to see which mated the best with the Odin: answer… the Valhalla interconnect [NO, we did NOT try the ODIN interconnect, that is for dessert] and SOOTTO interconnects, strangely enough] and the startled silence that comes from putting in something that will take us years to fully understand, appreciate and enjoy.

First, we listened to the system with using a Valhalla interconnect as a digital cable [because Neli had hid the ‘official’ digital cables – more on this later :-)], the Audio Note SOOTTO between DAC and Integrated amp, and Jorma Design No.1 speaker cables.

VERY engaging. We talked about this system a few posts ago. Neli REALLY likes this sound. Me, the hodgepodge of different cables makes coherence a little iffy. But that is because I was sitting there listening closely and she was enjoying the music.

Anyway, sometime we are supposed to order more Audio Note cables and can do the top of the line Audio Note versus Jorma Design versus Nordost shoot out.

OK, in goes the Odin interconnect between the DAC and the Ongaku integrated, replacing the SOOTTO.

Trying to remember the exact sequence, but first thing we notice is a slight (but only a slight) reduction in engagingness. I mean it was noticeable, but I thought that the Odin was able to do pretty well, considering the SOOTTO (SO Over The TOp) was designed for this equipment and to obtain a level of musicality until now unheard of in the industry.

And neither of these are broken in, about 20 hours on the SOOTTO? and about 5 minutes on the ODIN.

I know I keep saying this, but in some ways the character of these cables might change quite a bit after a few ‘virtual centuries’ on the Vidar – but I do expect the improvements to be ‘in kind’, by which I mean that more and more of the character will shine through.

OK, we are listening. Listening… I say something like “For out of the box, I can hear that they are new, but they’re not bad. Not bad at all. [A lot of cables are unlistenable out of the box, including our beloved Jorma Design Prime, which we insist on burning in for people who purchase them, at which point they really kick butt].

OK, we are listening. Listening. Maybe 30 seconds goes by. Yeah, we hear added resolution, definition, stability in the soundstage… all things we kind of were expecting, knowing Nordost Valhalla as well as we do. And these being, you know, Valhalla++.

A complex musical passage comes up.

Oh. F.

And another.

The separation is just… just the way one would wish it to be. So much of the issues that we thought were inherent in speakers and placement and source media…? They’re not [necessarily]. Its the cables.

The musical instruments in the soundstage just did their thing. No having to kind of mentally ‘blink’ for a second as the instruments usually kind of fuzz out and blur together.

OK, a delicate passage comes up. Well, that was later… It was my turn for the sweet spot (ah ha!) and I chose to play my Radio Head Amnesiac test track (the first one).

Image stability. check. Lots more resolution. check. Blah Blah Blah.

Then I noticed that the voice sounded more ‘real’. As I tried to figure out why, I decided that there was something in the way that a voice appears, a kind of throaty noise, a grittiness, that was until now I had not heard on this track. And this noise, which we all hear but do not usually think about it [for good reason one would think… eeeewwwww :-)], added a level of intimacy and Truth that was… comforting. I was able to relax more into the music, now that it was providing me the minute clues and details that my brain was expecting to hear.

This is not one of those “OH, for the first time ever I heard a cymbal in the back of the room that I never heard before” B.S. reports. For one, this is a track we have heard on 100s of systems [at least]. Second, we are well aware of the tendency of reviewers to focus on various aspects of musical reproduction – both with 1) different levels of mental concentration than they had previously used during a particular fraction of a second during their test track, and with 2) careless disregard for the ability of one system to ‘highlight’ certain frequencies to the detriment of others.

This ain’t that.

What this is I am getting to presently, but I want to kind of show the process of how we got there, so that you, dear reader, can kind of better understand what we are trying to say.

So anyway, I got the sweet spot, and we started relaxing, not listening so hard [which is one of my favorite ways to listen, BTW], talking with Neli, going back to staring at the performers…

And, this [all?] Radiohead has a lot of weird noises, you know kind of fuzzy meandering harmonically beautiful noises? And, somewhat like our experiences in Las Vegas at CES 2006? with the first time we heard the Coltrane Supremes, a 3D shape could be heard. Actually, this was a much more down-to-earth experience, as one can easily describe why one would see a shape, the soundboard person is varying the width, height and thickness and depth of this shape… moving it t-o-w-a-r-d-s me… and a-w-a-y from me. How cool is that? I’ll tell you, it is really cool.

At this time we started talking about being in the soundstage, but, now that I think of it, kind of ‘swimming’ into the soundstage, but not all that voluntarily, and much more like flying, like when one is dreaming. Things were just really really deep, and solid and well, Radiohead is kind of weird. And we got to enjoy the weirdness.

OK, Neli gets the sweet spot and we play American Beauty. She wants to play the second track, with all the delicate bells, that we have played many times here, but I just start playing track 1, which turns into track two soon enough, right? OK, so this becomes important later when we put on the Odin speaker cable.

So, the bells. For the first time, you can hear the technique the person is using to strike the bells, that there is resonance in the thing they use to strike the bells [sounds like glass to me, but I am notoriously bad at determining the composition of things from their sound]. You can hear how they sometimes roll the wand against the bell, how they are twisting their wrist to strike one way then another. [No, this is still not THAT kind of review :-)]

I guess I’ll get to the point here.

It is that there are a lot more details than we are used to hearing [except perhaps on the Wilson Alexandria X2, and there people put on MIT cables to muffle the speaker to try and get it to be somewhere close to musical and realistic]. Which is just to say that it is not THAT kind of detail. It is more like the absence of compression artifacts.

It is not the fault of the media or speakers that we are hearing these. It is the stupid cables.

And this is kind of what we figured out during this little preview.

That this detail, separation, imaging etc. may have been just the result of a MUCH reduced compression of the signal.

I was thinking how this sounded a lot like well-designed horn speakers, with which we have lived, like the giant Triolons, with a horn-like ease in the midrange. And then Neli said the same thing out loud. We noticed that with these little speakers upstairs with the Jorma Design Prime cables. For some reason, with the Ongaku amp on the little tiny 100 lb Kharma Mini Exquisites, with great cables, produce a big easy sound like big horn speakers. But this is with the added benefit resolution, unlike any horn speakers we are aware of [except maybe the early Cogent]. And here it was happening in a reasonably sized room, with speakers one does not have to hire 4 guys to move around. [When the cables are burned in, we’ll have to get second opinions from people who have heard both – but we sometimes like the big open sound, and this is definitely it].

This is getting long….

We then added the Odin speaker cable in to the system.

Similar to our experiences with adding Jorma Design Prime speakers cables [at about the same price] into a system that already had the Jorma Prime interconnects, the improvements were ‘in kind’ and ‘in support’, and not as overwhelming. [Someday I’ll be smart enough to try the speakers cables first, and go the other direction. But it is oh so much easier to swap interconnects than speaker cable, especially bi-wire cable on Kharma binding posts :-)]

But one thing was indeed overwhelming, on the first track of American Beauty, there is a lot of bass. And with the Odin speaker cables, the bass was SIGNIFICANTLY improved. Both in amount of bass and in Control. It let a lot more of what the Ongaku can do with a speaker through to our ears. If it is anything the tip top Audio Note components do, as our friend Dave Cope says, it is act as a drill sergeant and control the heck out of the speaker.

And that is exactly what we heard it doing.

I know, I know, but yes, out of these little Kharmas no less.

Anyway, I think that is it.

It was a hard and nerve-wracking decision to go ahead and get the Odin in here. It is expensive, especially the interconnect, and it scared the bejeezus out of us, especially Neli.

But I am so glad we bit the bullet and that they are here. Just the way my mind was able to really relax and enjoy the experiences – in a similar way to when the frequency response is really flat, like with the Coltrane Supremes [and to a lesser extent the Coltranes and YG Acoustics], but much more so. Even breathing is easier and more relaxed…. [and THIS, with the adrenaline producing Kharmas!]. Maybe we should do a post about this psycho-physiological effect sometime…

Lots more for us to learn, and it will, like I said above, take us years to fully understand, appreciate and enjoy these additions to our home.

And with these cables… you know what? I am OK with burning them in the old fashioned way… by playing them. [Don’t worry, just plain curiosity would make us burn them in all the way to see just what improvements we are yet to hear :-)]

[OK, here is kind of where I am at. During the audition last night and while writing this post, I thought the interconnects were $22K per meter (Yeah, I already know my memory is terrible, thanks anyway). And I thought after hearing them that this was a great price for what they did in our, oh, $150K – 160K little system. But they are actually $16K per meter ($18K for the 1.5m we used during this audition) which now sounds like a great deal (yep, thanks again, I am nuts and will indeed seek professional help… but its on the list somewhere BELOW getting more ODIN cables, so….). The ole “The interconnect is a component” stuff is cliche. How about “Want to hear what you paid for?”. I guess that is cliche too. How about “Join the War on Compression Artifacts”?].

The ODIN arrived today – but not the Vidar cable burner – so do we put the cables on Raw? Or wait?

Well, we plan on putting them on raw, who has the patience to wait? Not us, I guess is the point 🙂

But the problem is we had errands to do, and one of the problems of having a partner at a time like this is:

I can’t just put on the cables when she isn’t here and she can’t just put them on when I am not here…. it isn’t fair to the otehr one to ‘miss’ the event.

So we both have to sync up long enough, so we both are here and both have a little extra time, so we can insert these things into a system and do a little listening.

Neli lifting the 2.5 meters of Nordost ODIN speaker cables from the case that it comes in.

2.5 meters of Nordost ODIN back in the case that it comes in, a little more disorderly than before.

The spades these ODIN speaker cables.

The spades these ODIN speaker cables from a better, yet not so artsy, angle

Nordost ODIN interconnect in the sunshine on maple wood.

The ends are protected by little bags.

Special WBT RCA plugs with Nordost Odin emblems.

The WBT next next gen are now mostly metal, but still have two plastic ‘grippers’ or ‘fingers’ at the business end.

So, Neli is out and about. The cables are just sitting here. What to do. What to do.