Does anyone really remember what CEDIA stands for without looking it up?
I mean:
“Consumer Electronics Design and Installation Association”?
For some reason I think a lot more installation is going on than design. But there does seem to be a lot of consuming, and so high-end audio does look at CEDIA with both Fear And Longing.
But if they called it:
“INstalling HOme Theater for fun and PROfit” or INHOTPRO
it would be a lot easier to remember.
Or not.
Its mostly a mental thing – and hardly anything to do with audio. I mean, if someone is crazy about audio = spends gazillion dollars and quintillion brain cycles on the stuff, they naturally have to be careful about the consideration of other possible hobbies.
Just because we are craxy does not mean we aren’t perfectly aware of how crazy obsessed passionate we are and cautious about getting any crazier by getting into the visual side of the entertainment event reproduction chain.
So, video is great and we are on the upgrade path, slow as it may seem to other real videoholics (we just got a Sony 26″ XBR LCD TV) – we are just NOT going to go nuts over the stuff.
There is only so much craziness to go around – craziness don’t grow on trees, ya know. [It has to be carefully cultivated and nurtured for years…:-]
Anyway, the mode here is to twiddle bits between autitions and get the show report infrastructure up and clicking:
[Yes, we KNOW the Hifiing logo is too big. I’m just tired with mucking with it]
Not sure if we are just going to do the dailies (aka episodes – cute huh?) with buckets of pix, or a real report. I guess there has to be a ‘Did it Suck or Not’ kind of summary so who knows…
Only the Shadow Knows For Sure… or
Only the Echo Knows For Sure.
The full pictorial of the HRS MXR equipment rack setup is at:
But it will be a little while until we add these latest pictures, we though some people might want to see this now.
The HRS MXR equipment rack without the top shelf
The special HRS MXR equipment rack turntable-platform-support rails.
Neli holding one of the special HRS MXR equipment rack turntable-platform-support rails. These ‘steel girder-like constructions’ weigh about 30lbs each.
The HRS MXR with one turntable-support rail installed. The rails just sit right on the two cups, one on each side of the rack. They slide down on them with a snugness which bespeaks engineering tolerances almost unheard of in our industry.
The HRS MXR with both turntable-support rails installed
View of the entire HRS MXR rack. Looking a little empty with just the Audio Aero Perstige CD / SACD player which is also serving as pre-amp in this system configuration.
The HRS MXR equipment rack with Brinkmann’s Balance turntable on its special HRS Isolation Base on the support rails we just installed.
Close up of how the feet of the special HRS platform for the Brinkmann sit in the troth which was formed by the top of the steel rails
I saw both HD-DVD and BLU-RAY demos at the local audio (Mirage, KEF) / video mart.
Besides coming away with a vow to never underestimate the capability of some stores to treat people like they were marks at a carnival,…
I was not able to determine much visual difference between the new HighRes video formats and their ordinary DVD bretheren.
There was not more clarity or detail or color variety or…., except in perhaps a few rare scenes, (say one out of every 10 seconds the image would tighten-up and there would be increased definition).
This is partially because DVD upsampling… I mean upscaling technologies are getting better and better all the time – and partly because the monitors are not all 1080p yet.
We’ll see more at CEDIA 2006 in Denver, but all this seems mightily familiar, doesn’t it? How SACD / DVD-AUDIO are better, but not worlds better, than the format they were trying to supplant.
If, for the money, an ordinary Mary or Joe can spend a modest amount more on the player / video screen to get more improvement than what a similar investment in the new, ‘risky’ format offers… well…..
The one thing that the new video formats have going is CAPACITY. At 10 times the capacity of an ordinary DVD, things like T.V. series anthologies will fit on fewer than, well, let’s see: the 78 episodes of Star Trek would fit on only 2 discs, and on only 1 disc when the next generation[sic] DVD discs under-development come out.
Anyway, I originally hoped that these new HD discs might be used for highres audio – but now I wonder about the future of the format itself.
Perhaps it will be up to the HTPC and ipodPC crowd to take the format where no recording conglomerate will be able to go: because there will always be the inevitable HD-DVD-burners on computers….. 🙂
CEDIA is in only a few days (Sept. 14th).
Not sure what to expect. A lot of cables and brackets and LCD TVs I guess. Nordost will be there – their cables work inside walls and under carpeting very nicely – So at least one high-end audio company will be on the floor there.
Next door is T.H.E. Show – which is where Kharma loudspeakers will be exhibited along with presumably other high-end gear. There is even talk that we might end up exhibiting there [Hey, I just live here – it is not as if I know what is going on here half the time].
In any case, we got tickets awhile back and we will be trying to find a place to park along with the rest of the Denver Natives and have us a look see [parking in downtown Denver is like parking downtown in any big city – except there are no city-owned parking garages or nor hotel-owned parking garages – at least there wern’t last I checked.
There will be pictures taken – but please don’t expect a HE 2006 deluge – I am going thru a 12-step program all summer to try and calm down my camera-clicking trigger finger.
We’ll see…
It just might be too boring to take many photos anyway – Audio Federation does not do installation or trunk slamming…. and for good reason. I mean, yes, there is good money there – great in fact….But HT does not focus much on good sound – at least not much beyond the basic ‘impressive’ stage. Enjoyable? Emotional? Magical??
Hopefully, we’ll get around to setting up a Home Theater system here sometime soon – with all of those things. But, fair warning, it will likely have out-wall speakers and out-of-closet equipment racks and cables strewn across the floor, …. 🙂
No, not us.
Well, yeah, I guess we are finicky too… But this is about finicky audio systems.
I’ve heard a recent $200K system sound like my old $3K (Adcom / ADS / Toshiba first generation CD player) system when a different transport was introduced into it. Slow, atonal, washed out, muddy, etc.
I’ve heard a different but similar system brought to its knees with an unbroken-in powercord was introduced on the DAC. Bright, glaring, headache-inducing.
I could go on, and you know that I do, sometimes, do go on. But I will spare us.
So, what does this mean that highly tuned systems can be detuned so easily?
1. That systems are highly dependent on each and every piece of equipment and cabling to sound their most optimally very best
2. That there is some level of instability involved in system configuration
3. that system optimization may be quite similar to optimzations in other fields, that there are locally maximum configurations and that to get from one to the other one will likely be ‘detuning’ the system along the way. That similar to Simulated Annealing optimization techniques, many people more or less randomize their system configuration and then let it settle, after which they test to see if the system is better than it was before. Unfortunately, I think this ends up to more of a Random Walk for many people – who use faulty scoring to determine what ‘best’ is, as well as what to ‘heat up’ to get to the next better configuration. [For those of you in Math, Engineering, Operations Research or Computer Science – this will all be wonderfully illuminating, humorous, and not really very useful as far as I can tell… at least not right out of the box].
4. That many people (aka reviewers) who seem to put random pieces of unbroken in equipment in their system – and like it – have very strange and chaotic interpretations of ‘better’ [unless this peice of equipment is either WAY better than the piece it is replacing OR the piece it was replacing wasn’t broken-in either and theis new one just sounds bad in a different way that is Oh Such A Relief because the old one was driving them crazy].
OK, Summer is over. It is cold here (55 degrees F here Saturday afternoon). It is getting dark around 7:30-8:00. Time to go back inside with a good sack of CDs/LPs/?s. [AKA the Blog will get updated more often]
Picture of entire system with Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers, Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers and Audio Aero Prestige CD/SACD player on HRS M3 isolation bases and MXR equipment rack. Cabled by Nordost Valhalla and either Elrod Statement power cords or Shunyata Anaconda Alpha Helix power cords.
Kharma Mini Exquisite from above.
Sonically, this isn’t a blow-us-away system compared to the same system with the Marten Design Coltrane speakers. It is very nice and enjoyable – but not surprisingly so. Maybe our expectations were too high. Is it wrong to be so spoiled? At what point does our addiction get so out of hand that we no longer represent the average guy or gal? Oh, you are saying we passed that point a long, long time ago? Oops.
We still have to work on the positioning – and we are planning on moving the EDGE solid-state amps over on this side of the room – they being so successful on the other side on these Mini Exquisites, and switching back and forth.
Speaking of switching back and forth….
The power cords powering the ML2.1.
The power cords are the Elrod Statement III (the big ones) and the Shunyata Anadonda Helix Alpha (the red ones). The speaker cables are the Nordost Valhalla. This could be abstract art if it wasn’t so functional.
The Shunyata lends the system detail. The Elrod body and bass. If we are being picky we switch them for each song, depending on what we think will sound best. Though waiting for the Lamm amps to restart after switching power cords – waiting through their 90 second power-on cycle – is long enough for husband and wife to get a chance to talk to each other……
TheHRS MXR equipment rack is looking a little empty. And missing the top shelf. That Audio Aero is doing source and premaplification duties – what used to take four shelves now just takes one.
The top isolation base was out on loan – and now that it is back it is being repurposed elsewhere we are going to move the Brinkmann Balance turntable over on to the MXR equipment rack…. leaving just the Walker Proscenium Gold Signature TT on the RixRax / SoundLab system.
Finally, we are anxiously awaiting the conclusion of our Jorma Prime interconnect burning in on the Nordost Vidar burner.
Tick tock tick tock….
… but with components instead of people and equipment racks instead of chairs…. and the music starts instead of stops when it is all over…
In this case we swapped the Audio Note CDT-3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC (with the Lamm L2 preamplifier) withn the Audio Aero Prestige CD / SACD / Premaplifier.
The Marten Design Coltrane system with the Audio Aero Prestige CD / SACD player as source. Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers on HRS Isolation Bases.
A lot of empty shelves on that HRS MXR rack…. THAT situation can’t last for long 🙂
I can’t help thinking of the Audio Aero as young and energetic and full of enthusiasm – at least in comparision with the Audio Note digital. HRS MXR equipment rack. Swapping back and forth between the El-rod and Shunyata power cords.
The Audio Note system with the Audio Note as source and Lamm L2 preamp as source. Lamm ML1.1 amplifier on Acoustic Dreams amplifier stands. Acoustic Dreams equipment rack.
The $20K (plus the $14K Lamm L2 preamp) Audio Note is more refined, and well-balanced in comparsion with the $13K Audio Aero…
Kind of the opposite of the speakers… Where the Coltrane is more refined and well-balanced in comparison with the very musical and very energetic Audio Note speakers.
We try to both strive for a balanced system as well as take advantage of each components strengths… which is a lot easier said than done…. 🙂
Sounds strange, I know.
But when we have people up hear[sic] for auditions – we learn about the kind of sound they are looking for.
This kind of lets us listen through the lens of their personal preferences.
We could go on and on about preferences – most audiophiles seem to have them.
And most non-audiophiles don’t.
Besides the ‘does it play loud and have a lot of bass’ that non-audiophile men seem to look for first – their overriding concern is ‘does it sound good’? The problem these folks have is they have to judge if it ‘sounds good’ in comparison to other things they have heard, usually in the screetch-and-thump stores they know of- and so their life soon sucks, sound-system-wise.
But at least they are looking for something that sounds good, something that lights that fire of musical involvement, as opposed to a set of audiophile criteria gathered through years of reading and debating that are labeled ‘personal preferences’ but are perhaps have more to do with personal history than what we are really going to like, in the end.
For example, most people look for a new sound that is either very similar to the one they are used to, just ‘better’ in some specific attribute that they have decided that they now ‘need’ .. [Maybe for good reasons]
…….or something that is completely opposite from what they are used to – because they are sick of it ….or now just plain hate it. [Also, maybe for good reasons]
We used to do this. Cost us a lot of money, …..and grief, too. [Sonus Faber Electa monitors -> Dunlavy SC4 6 foot tall monsters -> better Sonus Faber Extrema monitors -> Acapella Campaniles 8-foot tall hybrids.]
[Of course, people might just think we now cheat and get one of everything… :-]
We just needed to listen…. with our ears and not with our eyes (what people write and say, like …this… blog), nor with our brain (the technical specs and what some people SAY the technical specs should be and the technologies used and what people SAY the technologies should be ….)
But hey, it is not just us. French wines cost more because…. everybody… ‘knows’… that… French.. wines… are…. better…. Right? Who needs to taste the stuff anymore? It has already been decided, said and done, for wine connoisseurs .
But me? I want to taste the stuff – see for myself.
So, to help us out here, please send samples to:
Yeah Right,
One Dry Mouth Road,
Boulder, CO
or… “Running Out of Room Here at Audio Federation”.
or… “The Beauty and the Beast”
or… “It really sounds pretty darn good, considering…”
or… “So, we keep stacking speakers choo-choo style like this and we are going to find ourselves to be sitting nearfield”
These pictures were taken right before a demo of the U1 electrostatics moved the Kharma loudspeakers to the side.
The Mini Exquisites sounded really good with the EDGE Signtaure One amplifiers – even though the Sound Lab loudspeakers were right behind them… more or less.
But we have no choice; we’re running out of room here unless we do something radical.
And Neli has her eye on getting in some MORE speakers…..?
I liked it better when she was collecting amplifiers….
Wide angle view of Listening room #2 – with the Sound Lab U1 loudspeakers behind the Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeakers in a demonstartion of the 27th kind of positioning hell.
