Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

Are You Audiophile or Are You Luddite

Everybody likes music. And Everybody likes the best quality of reproduction they can afford (with respect to their other priorities in life, like food, heat, kids, and stuff].

So everybody SHOULD be an audiophile.

But a surprising number of people are Luddites – or more correctly, I think, completely ignorant of science and the scientific method [and this includes many PhD’s who pontificate on all sorts of things they do not understand well – drowning us all in the sea of ignorance that has become the internet].

The Scientific Method: People are experiencing phenomena for which there is no explanation. Develop theories and develop experiments to test the theories [high-end audio has no funding, no governmental or corporate grants to do this].

The Let’s Stay Ignorant Method: People are experiencing repeatable phenomena for which there is no explanation. Let’s just declare that the phenomena doesn’t really exist and pontificate endlessly about how it doesn’t exist. It’s not like we are doing anything useful, so we got lots and lots of free time.

These people, when approached with a light bulb – probably mutter to themselves:

“Light bulbs are so obviously a scam. People are so stupid they’ll buy anything.

Scientists don’t even know if light is a particle or a wave!

Yeah, I think I see light sometimes, shadows, colors, all that mumbo-jumbo, but until they figure out what light is, and can explain it to me and my friends, I am not going to spend my hard earned money on light bulb rip-offs. Plain sunlight is AOK with me and my friends.”

[Did I get it right Steve? Seemed like it was funnier at 1am :-)]

And so on, for other things like Art, Music, Wine, Cars … all lovers of quality are derided by people who seem to be afraid they are missing out on something … but aren’t sure exactly what.

It is fine if one’s priorities do not allow one to dedicate money or time to the pursuit of the ultimate in quality vis-a-vis this or that hobby – but to deny that such qualities even exist – that is Ludditism.

in Audiophile 101 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

How to Quantitively Rate a System

The process is to model how to value, how to score, a system and then let the brain to the math.

For example:

* How much to I want to take this system home and Live With It for a long time? [Is it fun to listen to, but it is too much of a good thing and would sour quickly? Or does it feel like something you have wanted your whole life but did not know it?]

* What emotions does this system instill in me across several types of music? [Uncomfortable? Anxious? Got a headache? Looking around for a vomit bag? Or, perhaps, falling in love with each musician played, and oh how to break it to the spouse?]

* How does this system make me feel about the state of humanity? [Is there hope, or are we doomed with perhaps only days or hours before the end?]

* How does this system make me feel about the skill of the designer? the fabricator? [Is this contraption before your the apex of 10,000 years of civilization, that all the sweat and tears finally culminated in something worthwhile? Or perhaps, scopping back a little from the system because the speakers look like they might fall on you at any moment – and thank goodness for a remote because… are those sparks?!]

* How does this system make me feel about the musicians? [Are they real people? Are they supremely skilled? Are they filled with the emotion appropriate to the song they are singing? Are they just making a buck? Can you even tell? Sometimes this just says something about the musician, not the system. Frank Sinatra, in his later years, came across as bored out of his mind when he sang many songs – really turned me off to his music until I heard him sing when he still had the old fire in the belly]

This system is orthogonal, independent of yet works within the system of the categories of sonic preferences: Real, Impressive, Sweet, Emotive, Magical. It helps us answer: How Impressive? How Sweet?

It does require some introspection of the listener’s part. But the idea of mapping a quantitative question like How Real? to a emotional question, and letting the brains massive computational capability figure out how it ‘feels’ about the question, can help us put in relative terms measurements that we do not know how to measure yet.

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

RMAF Show Report: Floors 9 and 10

This show report will be floor by floor. Floors 9 and 10 are up, more or less, in high res photos. Comcast has been going up and down all day, so not sure all the photos made it, this the second time it has been uploaded.

Hope to have floors 11 and 2 done late tonight / very early morning.


Photo of Constantine Soo’s camera, from Dagogo, taking the same photo I am taking. We’ll link to their report as soon as there is something to link to / my foggy-brain here can find it.

And the link is…. Rocky Mountain AudioFest 2007 Show Report – The Main Reportage

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2007 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Post Show Setup

[Yes, still working on the show report. Taking a break here tho…whew!]


We setup the show system back in our living room with a few changes:

* Using a 2 meter Valhalla instead of a 1.5 meter Jorma Prime interconnect which we had borrowed for the show (thanks Dan!).
* Putting the bass towers inside of the main towers.

We wanted a wider soundstage than what we were getting here, in our room which is narrower than the room at the show. As long as we keep the bass towers back far enough, and close enough to the main towers, it shouldn’t mess up the imaging… much. And it doesn’t, at least with the 1/2 hour of modest volume testing we have had time to do so far. Did make the soundstage quite a bit wider 🙂

And, no, before anyone asks, the vacuum cleaner is NOT a secret tweak of ours. Really. It’s not.


We also have, finally!, got the MXR rack and Brinkmann Balance turntable upstairs in the main listening room. Looks awesome there. Seems to sound pretty good too, but, like we said above, we have only just started optimizing this setup.


Another photo of the system.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Showroom 1 0 comments
 by Michael

We're Back…. Kinda

We were up to 2:30am packing and crating… but we didn’t stop playing music till 6:00 so we got a late start…(show closed at 4pm)

Then from about 9 to 1 packing the truck, and after the hour drive home, *I* am eating breakfast. And going thru my 150 emails that I ignored for 3 days.

This year we crated everything… which takes a LOT longer than just wrapping it in bubble wrap or towels or something…. but it did allow us to partake of the services of a bellhop who was in any case quite careful with things (thanks Samir) which sped things up a lot.

Great show, and we learned a lot about controlling room? distortion a very loud volumes and manipulating soundstage height, a lot more about speaker placement for this particular speaker, with a little help from our friends (thanks Dan) and toys (the background noise from I25 traffic was about 60dB – with the windows closed).

Much more later, but I better go help move things up the stairs – it would be great if we can get these speakers (re) setup tonight. 🙂

P.S.

It took from 2:00 to 6:00 to get the show equipment out of the truck and up the stairs (thanks Jim!)

I am telling you all this because maybe you are interested and so that next year we can look at this blog post and align our expectations a little closer with reality in terms of how long all this stuff takes [I always think, and tell Neli, “oh, it’ll just take and hour or so to unload the truck, yada yada yada… “. Oops].

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2007 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

RMAF 2007 Day Zero


Doesn’t this look empty?


Down these stairs…


.. into the 10ft rental truck that can make it up the driveway…


And into the room. At this point the Coltrane Supremes were out of their crates. Leif (of Marten) and Jorma (of Jorma Design) – we miss you guys! – were not here this year so it takes us hours instead of minutes for the crating and uncrating task 😉 Those guys are the like the pros at the Indianapolis 500 and we are like bumpkins in Model T’s… but we DO get there.


The new HRS SXR rack in a side by side, 3 shelf tall configuration.


A cartridge getting mounted in our hotel-turned-mad-scientists laboratory.


The room awaiting the start of the show… though most of yesterday we had so many friends stop by and help us listen to different speaker positions, cables, pink noise, Radiohead,… that it kind of all started yesterday.


The equipment rack…. yes we brought the Brinkmann Balance turntable, Laurence 🙂 Along with the Lamm LP2 phono stage, and Emm Labs CDSD Signature and DCC2 signature.


… going into the hard core addictive Audio Note Ongaku.

The configuration is … running the CDSD optiically into the DCC2, and the turntable thru 10 feoot Valhalla interconnect, the the DCC2 direct, no preamp into the Marten crossover, which is piped into the Ongaku. What this means is that volume is changed using both the Ongaku (which is an integrated) for the midrange and highs and the Marten box (active crossover and bass amp) for the bass. And the DCC2 is acting as a passive switching box as well as a DAC so we can remotely switch between the turntable input and the digital input.

Confused? You should be here. It don’t get less confusing here either – but it sounds great.

what this allows us to do is use short lengths of very good interconnect (Jorma Design ‘Prime’) for the digital as it goes from DAC to crossover to Ongaku, minimize the number of preamps (one for the upper frequencies and one for the bass), and still have the transport and turntable in the rear of the room and away from vibrations and distracting people with our long pauses between songs if we had walk up to the front to change a CD orLP (unless we want to change the volume. How much a pain this is with two volume controls in the front of the room like this we will soon find out).

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2007 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Audio Note CD2.1X/II CD Player

We got this player in a few months ago. Its only about $3500, but… for my money, this is all the player you need unless you want to go up to the $9+K range of the Audio Aero Capitole / Prestige and Emm Labs CDSA and the other Audio Note players. [Yes, I know there are others, but pay attention to what I am saying, not my memory-challenged brain… :-)]

So much music!

Here are a few photos….

In this price range you just don’t get soul-rendering detail and finesse and harmonic structure. Sorry. [So many people believe that if they just buy enough of the players in this price range, they will find THE ONE that is as good as the $10K+ crowd but sells for 1/4 the price it could bring in a market economy. And they are not just looking for stupid manufacturers who make wonderful CD players either – but wonderful stupid amp manufacturers and speaker manufactures and … :-)]

But what you do want at this price range is livability, enjoyability, musicality, harmonic insight, everything a person needs who wants to listen to music and is not obsessed with having the BEST they can afford (or not afford as the case may be 🙂 for all of us pushing the limits of fiscal responsibility),

This player. This is what I would have if I weren’t crazy.

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 1 comments
 by Michael

Audio Note at RMAF 2007

In the Audio Note room this year we are planning on a modest system comprised of pieces totally about $15K + turntable cartridge step-up transformer and cables and rack.

Audio Note AN/E Spe HE
Audio Note OTO Phono SE
Audio Note TT2 turntable with Arm Three
Audio Note AN-S4 moving coil step up transformer
Audio Note IO1 moving coil cartridge
Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx
Speaker cable: Audio Note Lexus XL
Acoustic Dreams 4-shelf equipment rack
Audio Note CD 2.1X/II CD Player

Anyone else using the new MS Word? It comes with your new PC (remember, ours got fried by lightning, so we both got a new one), even if you do not get Vista (which I didn’t). There is no ‘Save As’ option so I had to go out and into Windows Explorer and manually copy and rename the file. Geez.

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2007 / Show Reports 0 comments