Audio Federation - high-end audio blog

November 7, 2006 by Michael

Showroom 4 – the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers…

… in a small room.

The Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers, Audio Note Kegon amplifiers and Audio Aero Capitole CD player.

This room is 10.5 x 20 x 9 feet tall.

The sound very much reflects the sound of the Capitole, ultimately musical, a little sweet, a touch of raspberry and tobacco – oh, wait, I mean a little round and luscious.

It sounds quite good – though the room can be overloaded at about, I would guess to be 90dB or so, unlike our larger rooms. In other respects the system interacts very little with the room, so little in fact that it was a little surprising.

We know that the Coltranes were designed to be able to work well in small spaces – but were still unprepared for the results. Very much like the Audio Note speakers, which were designed to use the room’s acoustical properties to best advantage.

I mean, most of us play our systems, our speakers, in a room, right? And most if not all speaker manufacturers know this, right? And only some manufacturers expect audiophiles to live in a padded cell… [unlike society at large 🙂 which is probably quite happy yet mystified to see us building our own padded cells. Self-incarcerating lunatics. How conveeeeenient.]

We are currently running with Nordost Tyr speaker cable, which is very good but not quite as good as Valhalla – lacking some finesse and truth in comparison. We hope to optimize this system quite a bit before we are through.

The Acoustic Dreams equipment rack with… yes, the Kharma MP150 amps.

We were only able to try the Kharma amps for a few minutes, while a pair of balanced interconnects flew in and out of here.

You see, the MP150 only come with Single-ended OR Balanced connections. This one has balanced. We do not have any balanced cables here (long story, suffice it to say that very little of the equipment here is balanced).

So, when our 2m Valhalla balanced interconnects arrive (we sell a lot of Nordost here – might as well have a balanced cable around) we will get to hear these little big amps again.

Two questions:

1. Is it improper for us to put these amps on the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers (there is something of a friendly rivelry between Kharma and Marten)

2. How many people besides us and Steve want to see pictures of the Elrod Statement power cords – the LARGE Elrod statement power cords hooked up to these guys? Power cords that are about the same width as the amplifiers?

Thought so.

Kharma MP150 amp with smaller Elrod power cord and Nordost Valkryja speaker cable

This last picture was hastily taken with the smaller, one might even say reasonably sized, Elrod power cable attached to the amplifier.

Finally, this system will have the Audio Note M8 phono on it for a few days this week, and with the Brinkmann Balance turntable running through it. THAT should be interesting. Hopefully we will get time to put the Audio Note cartridge on the Brinkmann, and with the Audio Note S4 stepup transformer, see what THAT sounds like.

This is what they call F-U-N.

November 6, 2006 by Michael

Updated Our On-site Equipment List found in the Tour

Still need to update the Tour photos…

But it was time to update the Equipment List.

Much of the text that we had there (and some of it still is there) was written in the first year of our store, some 4 years ago.

I had included stuff like This Magazines Award and That Magazines Award.

I thought I was sceptical at that time of the Reviewer community… hah! Now it is all but ludicrous.

I can just see the budding reviewer as a child on career day…

Politician? Reviewer? Politician? Reviewer?

Hey, at least it keeps them away from the nukes.

We try hard to ignore that part of the industry… really we do.

The equipment page was fun to redo – we have some cool stuff here – and some cool pics:

Audio Aero Capitole amplifier. The colors! More larger pics

The text describng our equipment here has a ways to go – to sort of migrate from the advertising copy approach which we kind of cut and pasted from various manufacturer’s copy to the “What Neli and Mike Think” approach.

For example:

Our Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeaker. More larger pics.

What we say now is:

“The best 2-way speaker technically and perhaps the most magical 2-way as well.

Ours here, pictured at left, are in aubergine – which is kind of like an eggplant purple. Subtly hallucinogenic – just like the way they sound.

That 1.0 inch diamond tweeter provides an amazing amount of resolution, seemingly much more than the 3/4 inch, and it just seems to be able to project the music from the speaker into the listener’s head.”

This is all to say that the speaker functions excellently in a technical sense from the perspective of a listener compared to all other 2-way loudspeakers (for the sake of argument please ignore the ‘stone knives and bearskins’ that J.A. et. al. use to measure sound quality).

It also is trying to say that there is something going on that is hard to describe, but revelatory and pleasurable – that the mind, while focused on and enjoying the very high resolution of the one inch diamond tweeter, is penetrated on other levels which at this time there are no words for.

So we call it magic. Or hallucinogenic. Or “don’t know what it is but I like it”.

It would be easy to kind of cop out and borrow lots of terminology from some religion or another, or Terrence McKenna, or New Age Hermetics, or…. .or Cheech and Chong.

But, although once in awhile borrowing phases from Star Trek TOS (which is simultaneously both tongue in cheek and strangely technically relevent), we try to avoid letting the ‘magic’ of muscial experience be drowned by the hyperbole, nomenclature, stifling hierarchical bureaucracy or consensual irrelevancies of these other pursuits.

We have our own hyperbole and consensual irrelevancies, thank you.

Oops, got side-tracked.

So, trying to explain each component we have here in a few words to someone checking out the list to see if we have something worthwhile listening to… What to say. What to say.

If they are just looking around at various dealers to hear what has received rave reviews – well, that is not going to narrow the list at all. Everything sounds great, haven’t you heard?

So, hopefully just putting down what we think is going on, in halting English, putting it out there – exposing our stumbling around in the dark, for everyone to see, as we try to figure out just WHAT this speaker, and a few other components here and there, do that is so darn AMAZING – that this will tempt people into comimg here to hear and experience the whatever-the-heck-it-is for themselves.

[Oh, and now I see in the TAS we just got that Wayne Garcia just raved the Mini Exquisites. Don’t know whether to giggle or scream. So I guess I’ll just go to bed. G’night everybody.]

[P.S. Hope everyone had a peaceful night. The problem with a rave reviews from most reviewers is that it puts a potentially really great speaker or component on the same level as all the mediocre speakers and components that the reviewer also gave rave reviews to.

Yes, many dealers just point to the recommended lists in Stereophile and TAS and grunt a little – and so random raves do spread the sales around to a wide variety of products – but it does a disservice to the consumer interested in the sound of their equipment. Why must this industry treat audiophiles like ‘marks’ at a carnival – like they were just wallets and purses with credit cards for arms, industry sanctioned ‘recommeded lists’ for eyes, and without any ears? We can do better.]

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

November 6, 2006 by Michael

Audio Note UK Answers – a new Yahoo group

.. and I quote:

“A new Yahoo Group – Audio Note UK Answers – has been started to provide current information and answers to questions regarding Audio Note UK products. The hope is that a global community of Audio Note customers, potential customers and the merely curious will wander through as if it were a coffee shop, asking and answering questions, checking on upcoming shows where they may hear Audio Note systems or special events, etc . . .”

It is very new.

But I expect it to be a nice quiet place where people can ask questions without feeling theatened by the often ‘unfriendly behavior’ that we see on that ‘crazy’ forum. Many (most) people we know were once patients of this institution but eventually checked themselves out of and are now permanent escapees. 🙂

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

November 5, 2006 by Michael

Adagio progress report

The following was posted on Audiogon. Assuming it has not been deleted yet, you will find it here.

“Strenghts: The two things that stuck out for me was the depth of the soundstage which was simply amazing! The 3d effect was addictive! The second thing that struck me was the midrange which was smooth, realistic, and not distorted at all, even at ridiculous listening levels.

Weaknesses (or what I did not like): The ribbon tweeters to me sounded harsh and metallic. There was also a problem with the imaging which was probably due to the setup. Voices seemed too large in comparison to the othe instruments. I felt like I was listening to a giant singing 6 feet away from me. The speakers also did not disappear. I heard way too much music coming directly from the speakers themselves. The soundstage width was restricted to the physical location of the speakers. Again, this could be down to setup. Bass was also light but in a confined room I am sure it would sound better.

Misc: Even though I loved the nice finishes of the cabinet, I do not care for the overall look for the speakers. Also, when played at very loud volumes, I felt like the Adagios were straining. It sounded like a small speaker trying to sound loud. ”

It seems to me an honest and fair review of what Tboooe heard at the Acoustic Zen factory.

Taking these same points:

The soundstage depth is about average around here – but the competition is quite fierce, so yeah, great depth.

It is the stability and linearity and balanced nature of the ‘midrange’ that attracted us to these speakers – these speakers have a ‘mature’ sound, they don’t try to dazzle with a forward upper midrange or a boomy or overly tight bass – which most of the popular poop in this and most other price ranges do. In this case, by midrange I, at least, am referring to everything but the extreme highs and lows.

The ribbon tweeters do NOT sound harsh and metallic after they are broken in. In the first, oh, 100 hours they do indeed, however.

Voices being overly large? I think that is a setup issue like Tboooe conjectured – but we will have to listen for this ourselves [ and I am too lazy to step downstairs and do it now. Perhaps I will update this later…]

The speakers dissappear here really, really well. And in both rooms, in 3 very different locations.

Haven’t checked soundstage width…

Bass is not ‘light’ here at Audio Federation, in fact it is this ‘fullness’ that attacts many people to this speaker in this price range. There are many monitors and monitor-like speakers that sound quite OK in this price range whose bass varies – depending on setup: Audio Note, Starsound Caravelle, Marten Monk, Oskar Heil, etc. But this is the only decent speaker that tries to get down low enough, in enough different room positions, to be satisfying for people who want to feel their music as well as hear it.

Straining when played really loud? Yeah, that is a good way to put it. More or less I think that is the sound of the limitations of the speaker cabinet – on the similarly sized Audio Note AN-E SEC Silver Signature ($40K) and the Kharma Mini Exquisite ($45K – $55K) loudspeakers that we have here now, there is not this problem – just to show that it is not speaker size that is the limitation here.

As people know, we really do not listen carefully to equipment before it is fully broken in. The above was heard in casual listening. But enough was heard, both here and at shows, to know that this is one of those Great Deals that comes along every so often.

It has a sound (the Acoustic Zen sound – eschewing some sophistication and inner detail for a more natural dynamic and rounder harmonics, kind of like Zu Audio speakers but with a more linear, well-balanced top-to-bottom) and limitations do to keeping the price down (many of the components in the Audio Note speaker’s crossover EACH cost more than this speaker).

This is comparable in value and price/performance, in my opinion, with the Dunlavy SC4 and the original Von Schweikert VR4.

Those speakers are what every speaker under $12K should be measured against. And now we have another to make it three.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 1 comments

November 5, 2006 by Michael

Showroom 3 – Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers…

… also breaking in.

Showroom (show area) 3 now has thge Soundlab Ultimate 1 electrostatic loudspeakers as permanent residents and the Acoustic Zen Adagio as guests.

Neli tells me there are a number of people who want to hear the Adagio’s in a larger room, so here they are for now. We still have to fuss with the positioning… and they might even end up against the long wall where we can, because they are front ported, try putting them from very close to the wall to out in the middle of the room.

The Soundlab U1 really, really sounds nice in this system. Yeah, it is an expensive front end – let’s see, about $130K for a $32K speaker – but it makes that system sound quality on a par with some of the best systems we have heard, bar none. Not just in coherence and detail, which the Soundlabs always have, but involvement and suspense and emotionalty and naturalness. Magic? Can’t tell yet, with the show and all this breaking in we haven’t got a chance to just live with it for any length of time yet. It was the introduction of the M10 that really put this over the top.. and we found this out by accident, if you will remember, when we were just trying to break in the M10 at high gain (volumes) and so put it on the hard-to-drive Soundlabs.

The equipment rack for Showroom 3. We have the Emmlabs CDSD SE transport in front, Edge Signature One amps behind it, and on the HRS MXR equipment rack the Audio Note M10 preamp and its two large Galahad power supplies and the Emmlabs DCC2 SE DAC. Lots of Shunyata Anaconda power cords, Jorma Design No. 1 speaker cable, and Nordost Valhalla interconnects – and I think we have a Jorma ‘Prime’ interconnect in here too.

The equipment rack for Showroom 3. One of the Galahad power supplies is on the top whelf – it was the only way we could get 4 things on the MXR rack given that one of those things HAD to be the M10 (for the reasons of curiosity and because we didn’t want to have to step over those big boys every time we wanted to put a CD in the transport).

[No, your eyes do not deceive you, the Edge amps are indeed on the floor. One, they do not sound so bad there, this is not the first time they have visited the carpet. Second, we really do not have enough HRS M3 Isolation Bases to go around – we know we need them, we know we want them, we know we will get them, but for right now… it is on the carpet they go]

As far as how the Adagios are sounding at this point in their breakin process…. see next post.

in Acoustic Zen / Audio Note / Edge / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Showroom 3 0 comments

November 5, 2006 by Michael

Breaking in the Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Oh! What hard work! Whew!

Please, no more!

Well, maybe just a little…. 🙂

This is the first post with our new Category scheme – This is what we are calling “Showroom 2” although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).

The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.

We have a tendency – like most people who really enjoy this hobby – to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.

There is also two of us – so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.

We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet 🙂 … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound – which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation – and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve – and you can match that against what you personally prefer.

[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is – I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I – but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].

South side of listening room two – the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps

Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.

Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background

Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs – so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.

It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-

So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…

This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact. 🙂

As far as breaking in – the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.

The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Lamm / Marten Design / Rix Rax / Showroom 2 1 comments

November 3, 2006 by Michael

Blog is getting a little face lift…

… and hopefully it will also be easier to get around in.

The photos at the top here are short cuts to the various systems / showrooms categories. These categories are the place where we can describe each system, its sound and evolution, in greater detail than we have before. It is unclear to me at this time whether we might modify this from Showrooms to Systems so that we might talk also about systems on ‘standby’ – because we swap in and out systems configurations (e.g. speakers) quite frequently when special requests are made to audition this or that component / speaker. This way one can read about, say, the Kharma Mini Exquisite-based system, which is not currently hooked up at this time.

Yeah, I think we will make that change… [ or maybe not ].

Anyway…

We have expanded the Category section over on the right —> to include a large number of subcategories, so that posts on specific components or topics might more easily be located. Yes, we still have the HiFi’ing Magazine page which does largely the same thing – and there is always Google – but this may be more convenient for some people. Here we may also make a modification – to the Shows category primarily in order to break it up a little into the specific shows that the individual posts are referencing.

This was tested with both IE and Firefox – which bothb work although FireFox will not have the blue swatch at the top of the Blog – this is because CSS sucks and was designed by people who cannot tell the difference between appearance, geometric and automatic layout properties (and with CSS 3, include behavioral properties in that list as well). And because of this confusion the implementations of CSS from browser to browser vary becuase it is needlessly complex and only serves to create another generation of people who get paid for doing nothing more than learning to work around the idosyncratic bugs.. I mean features… in each and every browser and its plethora of different versions and across the several different platforms. Oh, but I digress.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments

November 2, 2006 by Michael

Music to break-in by

We have been in the process of breaking-in a lot of equipment lately: The Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers, the Soundlab loudspeaker’s upgrade, the Audio Note M10 linestage, and the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers.

[I know, some people choose not to acknowledge their experiences that the sound of equipment changes (usually for the better!) after is has been played for several hundred hours and often end up selling their equipment before it is broken in ‘because it does not sound good’. Others just enjoy hearing their equipment change a lot when it is new, and some people are just plain masochistic. We, we just like to ignore the fact that a piece of equipment exists here until we think it has settled- and broken-in sufficiently].

For the M10 linestage, a lot of the break-in (25 – 30%?) can be accomplished by just leaving its power turned on for an extended period of time.

But for the loudspeakers, music needs to be played.

This is where the ‘repeat’ function on most CD players comes in REAL handy.

Yes, we COULD plop in a new CD every 45 to 70 minutes – but we have a tendendcy to, well, SPACE OUT, and there is lots of time between CDs that nothing is being played because we forgot to put in another CD.

And there is also the hours when we are asleep.

So, CDs on repeat.

The question arises, which CDs on repeat will not drive us batty(er)? And much more important, NOT make it so that we will never, ever want to hear that CD again because we are so darn tired of it.

In our experience, it is CDs without any recognizable melody, especially without any singing, that we can tolerate for long periods of time.

Unfortunately, we made a mistake with Rachmaninov’s 2nd and 3rd – it has too recognizable of a melody [but since we used it mostly to burn in things near MY office, only I am tired of it, Neli still loves it. Can you just imagine the wealth of opportunities, the glorious potential for some interesting discussions here re: placing this particular music near a player in the future?], but in general Jazz and Classical music works really well, especially Jazz.

The Jazz we are listening to lately is out of the box set: The Kenton Alumni Series “Live at the Royal Palms Inn” (Thanks TeeJay!)

It is just nice straight ahead Jazz and everytime I catch a few minutes of it or sit and listen it is just so enjoyable … the musicians all seem like they are having a really good time and the music is unfamiliar and has a nice improvized feeling but without any seeming effort on their part… nor are they trying to ‘shock’ the listener with something weird (which sometimes I like but sometimes I don’t, if you know what I mean – sometimes I just want to enjoy music, not be challenged by it)

This CD is here somewhere having fun being lost

We also play a lot of an Ocean Waves CD that more or less consists of a rhythmic white noise with some bass when the waves crash and some tweeter activity when birds fly by on the CD and say hi. But we are starting to burn out on this CD as well – we have used it for 5 years – but lately we have had to burn in so many speakers this way… But it is still THE CD to play while we are asleep.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments

October 31, 2006 by Michael

Can it be?

What can this mean?

A. Have Mike and Neli decided to take a lesson from Ray Kimber’s IsoMike rooms and make our amps M-o-b-i-l-e?

B. Does it really require geting the right channel amp so drunk it almost falls off its stand?

C. Are Neli and Mike practicing for their turn at the Olymipic tryouts for the brand new sport: Amp Racing?

D. Are they just using the dollies so that they can more easily reposition the amps in order to optimize the system’s soundstage? (We *do* have to do this with the tall Edge Reference ‘pyramid’ amps – they are so large thier position affects the soundstaging dramatically – but we don’t use wheels but instead really on the grunt and shove technique).

E. Or, after staring at the amps for 15 minutes wondering if I REALLY had to move them a couple of days ago did Neli finally just put them on wheels and move them herself?

Yeah, it is E. But I wish it were C.

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

October 31, 2006 by Michael

All four systems are up and running….

… but tomorrow’s systems configuration may not be the same as today’s configurations. 🙂

Acapella Triolon Excalibur loudspeakers, Edge Reference amps, Audio Aero Prestige CD / SACD player / linestage.

In a few months the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker system will be moved here. But for now we get to learn about how the Supremes sound in a mostly enclosed room with a 8 foot ceiling.

Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers, Lamm ML2.1 amps, Lamm L2 preamp and Audio Note CDT Three transprt and 4.1x Balanced DAC.

Eventually, this is where the Marten Coltrane and larger Kharma loudspeakers will live.

Soundlab Ultimate loudspeakers, Edge Signature One amps, Audio Note M10 preamp, Emmlabs Signature Edtions CDSD transport and DCC2 DAC.

The Soundlab Ultimate loudspeakers will live here for awhile. It is good to put these big guys somewhere where they do not block the Winter-time sun. They kick butt being driven by the Audio Note M10 preamp in this system at this time, but then again, so does everything else.

The Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers are here getting ready for a number of auditions for people who want to hear them in a large room. Wish we had another room here – and we are trying to think of ways….

Marten Coltrane loudspeakers , Audio Note Kegonn amps, Audio Aero Capitole CD player / linestage

The Marten Coltrane loudspeakers are here for both us and customers who want to hear how they do in a small 10.5 x 20 x 9 foot tall room. This is where the Audio Note speakers, smaller Kharma and Marten speakers and Adagio will live.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Showroom 1 / Showroom 2 / Showroom 3 / Showroom 4 2 comments

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