Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

RMAF 2007 Photos

We will be taking photos, we hope, during the show.


The (currently empty) main page of the show report is showing our room this year. Hey, why not? I never seem to get a chance to take a photo of the hotel itself from the outside, with the mountains in the background – which would be my first choice. Maybe this year I’ll get outside? With the camera?

Only other show report I could find was EnjoyTheMusic. Hmmmmm…..

Supposed to be 130 room this year compared to 100 last year. Let’s hope people come. But it’ll be fun in any case. And lifting all this gear up and down the stairs, and setup at the show, is great exercise – Neli and I are always a lot skinnier when we get back from these things. 🙂

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

Our Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2007 System

… is shaping up…

We are now running the Emmlabs CDSD transport through 10m long optical cables to the DCC2 DAC/Pre into the Marten Coltrane Supremes Crossover/ Bass amp into the Audio Note Ongaku and finally to the Marten Supreme speakers.

The key is that the cables are all Jorma Design Prime and one Stealth INDRA interconnect. Less cable, better cable, sound.

Now. This sounds better. But is REALLY sounds better running the DAC direct to the Marten box, not going through the DCC2’s preamp.

When I say ‘really sounds better’, it is both somewhat subtle and somewhat not subtle at all. There is an energy that was present without the extra preamp in the loop that was amazingly hypnotic… but it is hard to hear this when just listening to frequencies and dynamics and other audiophile-type attributes. I guess that is why we call it magic.

Anyway, without the preamp, to change the volume requires changing the main tower volume on the Ongaku and the bass volume on the Marten box. We are running with unity gain into the Marten box, but the bass volume knob works really well. Neli think this is too weird for a show. I think it is no weirder than having two knobs, one for each (left and right) channel, We just have a top and bottom channel instead.

But is is a pain to walk up to the front in a large room like we have at RMAF and adjust the volume all the time, along with syncing up the bass volume to the midrange volume – so it is unclear if we will use the optimized setup at the show (and we want to support use of a turntable as well). But when we get back… This is just too good to pass up.

………and then perhaps swapping out the INDRA for more Jorma ‘Prime’ cable, or Nordost ODIN, or Audio Notes new SOTTO …. How much fun! 🙂

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Jorma Design / Marten Design / Nordost / RMAF 2007 0 comments
 by Michael

Bad Sounding TVs

We purchased a LG 20 inch LCD TV to replace our old Sony 13 inch CRT that got lightninged. [Firefox thinks lightninged is a real word, cool].

The picture is really pretty good – and I watch it from about 2 – 3 feet away, as it is on my desk to keep me company during those long hours on the computer.

But the sound sucks. SUCKS. It is so tinny, and frequency limited. It is pit-eeee-full.

And it has no stereo output jacks either. Oops. Usually I remember to check for this but, well, age takes its toll.

So anyway, I decided to use a trick I used in College, and take the output from thbe headphone jack and run that into the stereo (such as it is, a Lexicon DC-1 that is still working, amazingly enough – our MC-1 spontaneously died, the POS, POS defined as the repairs costing as much as a used one, about 10% of the orig $6500 price, plus upgrades like $100s to ‘fix’ DTS, which never worked in the first place – running into self power Yamahahaha speakers, througb Nordost Quatro Fil interconnect that I bought way back before we started Audio Federation, off of alt.rec.audiomarketplace or something).

And, lo, this jack to get the audio from the computer to the stereo happened to be lying on my desk – my desk is very cluttered with such things.

Works great. BETTER than the audio straight out of the Sony Blu-ray BDP-S1 player, (IT has stereo out), in fact. Not much better, but hey, it is WAY better than the sound coming out of the microscopic speakers in this LCD TV.

Whew! It was really driving me nuts.

And, yes, that is the last episode of the Season 1 DVD of Heroes on the TV there. Thanks, Steve for recommending it. It was great!

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

Nice CDs we get with our dinners

We;ve been playing these CDs that are really pretty well-recorded…

Kind of surprising because they come with our microwavable too-lazy-to-cook Indian-food-in-five-minutes solution. Well, one of our solutions. Whole Foods has at least 3 of these brands of packets… Tasty Bite, something else I forget which is frozen and tastes the best, and this one.

But this comes with a free CD!

And for $299 for dinner AND a CD, that is a decent price don’t you think?

We’ve bought two dinners and got two different CDs so far.

The music is surprisingly well-recorded and is mellow, somewhat like New Age music, except of course, it is supposed to be old age, classical music.

And it has the sitar and other familiar instruments associated with Indian music.

Anyway, I just got the 3rd dinner and am hoping that we get the 3rd CD. I can only assume they put the CDs into the dinners at random, so the odds are somewhat low. But I bought a completely different flavor anyway, hoping to increase my chances 🙂

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 by Michael

The Marten Coltrane Supremes

Just saw a copy of the review in HiFi+ of these speakers by Roy Gregory. Thanks mystery friend 🙂

Haven’t read the whole thing, but I like where he pointed out the intimate presentation (my words) of these speakers.

The Triolons were larger-than-life, which is not necessarily speaking about the soundstage size, but the overall ‘feeling’ of the presentation. A kind of impersonal presentation. I always felt like an honored guest at the musical event.

The Supremes presentation is more intimate, like the musicians are playing for ME. Much more personal.

I do not think this has to do with their relative size. There are many small speakers that are very impersonal. Some of them make one feel like an unwelcome intruder… 🙂

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

Preparing for RMAF 2007

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest here in Denver is just around the corner. October 12th I think. I hope. Better go look I guess.

Anyway…

We are planning on taking the Coltrane Supremes, like last year. But this time using the Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier to drive them. ‘How Sweet it Is!’

We were using the Edge Reference ‘pyramid’ amps you see there in the photo, but not any more, so just delete them somehow with your visual cortex.

The sound is quite sweet and beautiful, the first time we’ve really achieved this with the Supremes (they are finally breaking in, hurray!), which are, to put it simply, the only competent speaker made today. All other speakers have serious flaws in comparison. Not that people don’t LIKE some of the flaws in those other speakers, and they’ve certainly got used to them, but, well, there you have it.

The source equipment consists of the Meitner CDSA and the Audio Note M10 preamplifier. We’re thinking the system may be a little too laid back and are planning on replacing the Shunyata Anaconda Helix Vx with Nordost Valhalla power cords, something closer to the Belden OEM cords the factory recommends :-), to try to get the system to lively up itself a little bit.

I mean, it is close, but people at shows… its hard to figure them out. Some want rooms to be LOUD and IMPRESSIVE (esp. in this price range :-)) some want it to be REAL, … etc. just like they do with their own systems. And our goal, and I think we can achieve this, is to make it excel in all categories.

The problem is in the subject flavor – how to flavor the system right… down… the…middle.

To please as many people as possible. And us too! 🙂

And then there is the let’s just take the EMM Labs CDSD and DCC2 and the Ongaku and be done with it. No preamps, no second rack. No turntable. No second digital source. … Mt arms feel better already 🙂

Of course, there is our second room, the Audio Note room. But that is a small room, a decent-sized system, and adds only a few gray hairs to the noggin.

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

CEDIA 2007 Show Report… finally

OK, Comcast was here all day. Our junction box was fried and the Comcast guy a couple of years ago did not ground the cable. Uh, bad.

But we are now up and running (Yay!) and the show report is here:

CEDIA 2007 Show Report

The Comcast guys were all hard-working, friendly guys, but their management is totally confused and unorganized. Surprise… not.

Onward and upward….

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

Comcastigations

OK. I think we’ve finally got this figured out.

You call in a problem.

They send a crew out if it is not raining, dark or Sunday.

They work on the problem.

They go home.

The next day, Comcast updates your account to say everything is A-OK.

Things are not OK.

The crew knew it was not OK when they left. They say that they are going to put in another ticket, or come out again. Yeah. Right.

But, you cannot call them until the next day AFTER they update your account to say it is fixed. Because no matter what, they WILL mark your account as fixed.

OK, you do this.

They send out another crew.

This crew, or guy, has no clue that 5 other crews have been out here working on the problem. That there are several houses that have a problem here. They all start from zero each time.

This is the 7th day Comcast has been down. One of our neighbors uses Comcast VOIP as their phone service, poor chaps.

Hopefully today is THE day….

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

Denver CEDIA 2007 Day 3 Photos

[Still no Comcastic. It seems the Comcast Confusion is now abating and they now know there is a problem are working on fixing our little neighborhood’s connectivity. When we do get it back, we’ll upload all the big juicy photos. We took almost 700 photos.

The Ongaku, Kharma, Meitner system is OK. One more system to go – unfortunately we suspect that that the Brinkmann Balance turntable may have suffered physical damage as the light switch git blown out the wall and ricocheted off of the platter and ended up 25 feet away in front of the Kharmas. Beezarre huh?. We are insured out the wazoo, as they say, so we are really OK, even if thunder now causes Mike to scoot back away from the windows as far as possible, typing with arms stretched out to the max :-)]

Saturday was not very busy. The booth people were much more eager to talk to us (anyone!), which is a good thing and bad thing. They have all been friendly this year – though actually asking them questions sometimes reveals them to be kinda clueless (Sony). Maybe we should have started the conversation with ‘We know how to use a browser’ so they don’t just rattle off info that we can easily find on the web.

We probbbly won’t go back Sunday for the last day. We’ve kind of seen everything, several times.


There must have been some kind of survey that indicated that ordinary Mary and Joes think speakers are unattractive – because there were a lot of booths talking about hiding speakers. Here we see Sony and one of their solutions. 450watts split between 5.2 channels, < 10% THD.
Krell’s new Martenesque Duke Ellington-ish Modulari Duo speaker.


The front of the Talon ‘Hawk, Thunder’ loudspeaker


The rear of the Talon speaker showing how one connects to the other.


An outdoor speaker that can handle being a little (a LOT) wet. Sounded pretty gurgley to me. 🙂 Or is that gargley?


In the Stewart booth, they had a bar with live video – in this case embedded in the actual bar, underneath our drinks. It seemed really cool, and natural, to me. Guess the cost of LCDs and projector technology is getting low enough for all sorts of ‘why didn’t I think of that’ innovations.


Marantz was one of the worst sounds at the show. That is really saying something, too, at THIS show. Again, Totem was sounding fairly good, not just because they don’t suck, but because their booth setup allowed them to screen out a lot of their neighbors noise. Still no picture for the blog, oops.


The Technician Olympics – The AMP THROW competition. Really. Maybe we should start one of these at RMAF? Who wants to donate a couple of amps? Maybe we should have a amp LIFTING competion first?


The new Sony VPL-VW60 $5K 1080p projector, replacement for the VW50.


The big PHC horn speaker. Now THIS can produce dynamic swings and transients – as PHC demonstrated over at T.H.E. Show. The resolution of the mids and highs? Well,….

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

CEDIA 2007 Photos Day 2

[Still no Comcast… So miniature photos is what we got for supper again tonight]

The conference was not much busier today than yesterday, it seemed to me, which was different than last year.

But oday, they did not hand the conference microphone to the SpeakerCraft people, at least it sounded like they were from SpeakerCraft, but he was such an exuberant salesman – SHOUTING his enthusiasm, that the SPLs had us all curled up in fetal positions on the floor trying to stuff carpet fibers in our ears – anything to try and protect ourselves from the Onslaught. But seriously, it was LOUD but decipherable as words in some parts of the all, and total noise in others, and in some the volume was just ridiculously loud. I mean, the announcement system is perfect if someone is trying to tell everyone in the hall that there is a fire. It would work fine. Just keep sales people away from it.


Velodyne has a new subwoofer. Looks like it will produce some of dem bass type notes, all right.


A close up of the marketing specs. Of course, who cares about THD? Most poeple probably care about dynamic distortion. But is is not a horn, nor is it pulling 100 amps, so THAT is likely going to be more than 0.5%. But I bet is is something to hear.


Gallo Acoustics’ cute little speakers.


The EDGE Electronics room at T.H.E. with Montana loudspeakers.


The EDGE Electronics room at T.H.E. with Montana loudspeakers.


The HAL Audio Server user interface. Media server user interfaces were all the rage this show. Kind of like an iphone for non-liliputs. Or an iphone for the home. Or for people who have large fingers or bad eyesight. Personally, I am in all 4 of those cagtegories, so these UI’s interest me.


The new Acoustic Zen subwoofer


Phillips had a supersized remote control. Kind of cool to imagine actually using something like this. A remote control for giants. CEDIA is become like Gulliver’s Travels, I guess.


At least some people are looking for some good sound to be associated with good video…


ADAM speakers has a new line for the home. These use a improved Heil driver for the tweeter and midrange.


Another Media Server interface.


Another Media Server interface.


Sonus Fabers new Cremona M


Sonus Fabers new Cremona center channel


Over at T.H.E. Show. [need to insert speaker manufacturer name when brain comes back on line]. The gunshots had WAY too much low bass. Sounded more like close canon fire, the way it punched a person in the chest, or morter fire. Not that I have had direct experience with those events, but I had heard a gun go off before).


Media Max’s Media Server user interface.

So far the Totem booth has the honor of best of show in the main conference, (oops need to put up a photot ot two) and EDGE / Montana at T.H.E. Show (which only has 4 or 5 rooms this year, depending on how you count – though we did not wait in the line for the Maggie / Bryston demo there).

in Acoustic Zen / CEDIA 2007 / Edge / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Show Reports 0 comments