Sucks, I know.
But it was getting out of hand.
And you only have to register once.
Been in effect for a few days now. Seems to work.
Of course, this only affects those of you Who Actually Post Comments……..
🙂
Now for something completely different.
Yesterday around 6:00pm we were putting back together several systems in new configurations when we heard a large bang on the roof, 24 feet above the floor in the main listening room.
Neli said ‘Whassat? ‘ Well, that is more like the way I talk, but l am writing the story, so…
‘A bird’, I say… ‘OK, a BIG bird’.
Then I get one of those looks that women give men when they reveal exactly what they think of the male sex’s cognitive powers.
The day before we had a lot of very large birds [Eagles? Their squak sounds like the noise eagles make on TV. And we just happened to be listening to Hell Freezes Over during that time as welll…. Hmmmmmm…] circling the house during a demo for an hour or so, and when the birds landed on the roof, which they seemed to be doing a lot for some reason, there would be a thump – and this was during an audition, so everybody heard it when the music was not at that moment playing very loud.
But then there was another loud bang on the roof, then another. It sounded just like someone was throwing rocks at the house. And it was LOUD….!
Hey, we didn’t go to college for nuthin. It took only about 20 to 30 wacks on the roof to figure out that we were being hailed.
Chucks of hail on the deck post, deer taking shelter and the streaks of hail still pelting the earth.
The front stairs and garage covered in white
The backyard covered in white
You know, it was June 24th, it was in the 80s and the air conditioner had been running, so in my mind this qualifies as “Snow in the Summer” which from a kid’s point of view counts as one of the best days that there can ever be.
We just got this going. Still doing radical repositionings (i.e. we are moving the speaker a whole 12 inches every time we adjust the placement).
It does certainly seem to have enough SPLs to fill our 15 foot by 25 foot listening room #2.
Stay tuned….! 🙂
We put the Audio Note M10 preamplifier on the main system upstairs today. Things were kind of in a mess after a recent audition, anyway… 🙂 so we took it as an impetus to see what a Meitner front end driving the Audio Note M10 preamplifier itself driving an Audio Note Kegon amplifier would sound like.
[By the way, that white stuff outside, that is a couple of inches of hail. Yes, it is indeed June 24th.]
I mean, instead of using the Meitner DCC2 DAC built-in preamplifier, which can only but be about $5K of the cost of the DAC, we put a $50K preamplifier in the system with its brother $50K amplifier.
How do you think it is going to sound?
Neli is planning on writing a nasty letter to Peter Q. of Audio Note for letting us ever audition the M10. 🙂
We did most of our listening after the unit being on for only 5 minutes, It has now been 3 hours or so.
There are some audiophile-approved attributes that got a big jump up in quality: harmonics, bass, room pressurization, continuousness, imaging, solidity….
But, people, this is not about me devolving, dehumanizing, detaching the sound into its constituent parts.
OK, Janis’s Rachmaninov on SACD is playing – and I am trying to write this during the breaks between pieces because it is too hard to concentrate when the music is playing down the hall outside my office in the livingroom.
For many people, of a certain age and certain life experiences, music and the pursuit of the reproduction thereof, is an attempt to not only experience the music of our youth, but to recapture the feelings and sense of wonder and appreciation of the beauty that life offers us – but which the years and a well-nourished cynicism distances us from; slowly, inexorably, until life sometimes seems like a cold, boring, cruel joke.
But for a few minutes, or hours if the system is very, very good, and most of the time if the system is this good, our defenses are ripped away and we are filled with the child’s sense of the wonder-of-it-all.
[Here we see the Emm Labs DCC2 DAC, the silver-ish box, which is receiving a signal through 10 meter long optical cables from the transport located on the other side of the room. This is connected, by the Valhalla interconnects that are looping through the sky like the St. Louis Arch, to the M10 preamplifier in the center front. The M10 preamplifier is powered by the two, large, black, about 50lb each power supply boxes called Galahads located in the rear. Finally, the M10 preamp is connected, through INDRA interconnects, to the two Kegon 300B single-ended triode amplifiers (whose tubes are plainly visible).]
What we want our systems to do, what this system does for the both of us:
To communicate with our hearts and minds so well, so powerfully, that we are defenseless against it.
Neli says: “Yeah, Neli hates almost all preamplifiers … finally found another one she likes, 3 big boxes, 2 of ’em heavy boxes, $50K. Verrrry nice linestage. Ack!!!”
Check it out. It is run by the previous Audio Note distributer, ‘Triode Dave’, in the hopes of being able to both provide information on the Audio Note product line as well as insight into The Mind of the Designer.
Believe it, this is going to be interesting.
Why?
Because it is focused, unlike the magazines out there, and
Because it is about high-end audio, unlike most of the forums out there.
It arrived right before we left for the HE 2006 Show and we left it playing while we were there, and for the weeks we have been back.
Still changing on a day-to-day basis…
It looks great on the piano black Harmonic Resolutions Systems’ MXR rack with the gloss black Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC and matte black Lamm L2 linestage and power supply.
Soon now we are going to tear apart this very synergistic, or is it synerblisstic, system replacing the front end with the Audio Aero Prestige CD / SACD player.
Why?
1. In order to be able to put the Brinkmann over on the HRS rack with the Lamm LP2 phono preamplifier
AND
2. to put together a 100%, well 90% because we do not have any Audio Note cables here right now, a 90% complete Audio Note system:
Audio Note CDT Three transport
Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC
Audio Note M10 preamplifier
Audio Note Kegon amplifiers
Audio Note SEC Silver Signature loudspeakers
and eventually we will have to find a way to get a turntable into listenng room #3 in order to add:
Audio Note M8 Phono preamplifier
Audio Note AN-S4 step-up transformer
All this to ‘Hear What it Sounds Like’.
Ain’t life fun?
Ha! No we didn’t go.
It does seem like every blog post these days is about yet another of our show reports. Whew!
Maybe Munich next year, though. It looks like it was a very high-end and well-attended show.
Here are some links to a few domestic reports:
EnjoyTheMusic Munich 2006 Show Report
SoundStageLive Munch 2006 Show Report
oh, just found a nice one at:
Munich 2006 Show Report by Maria and Henk at Six Moons
And some links to a couple of reports with most of the comments in other languages These have lots of pictures(!) , and help one get a real feel for what it was like there:
[There is some English at the bottom]
HiFiForum Munich 2006 Show Report
and
[in 5 parts]
HiFi Musik Munich 2006 Show Report part 1
HiFi Musik Munich 2006 Show Report part 2
HiFi Musik Munich 2006 Show Report part 3
HiFi Musik Munich 2006 Show Report part 4
HiFi Musik Munich 2006 Show Report part 5
It looks like the Swedish Statement room with the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers was even smaller than the one they had at CES 2006.
It also looks like the Kharma room with the Kharma Grand Exquisite loudspeakers was not only a larger room, but made quite an impression on the HiFiForum show reporter. The room also featured the Continuum turntable with both WAVAC amplifiers and the new Kharma MP350 amplifiers [perhaps in a bi-amp configuration? or perhaps taking turns at amplification duties during the show? I don’t know].
This show is a little smaller than the Stereophile Show that was occuring simulatneously down the street, about one seventh the size in fact.
But we have photos and reports on what we thought were the better rooms early in the show.
About 250 photos in all, also in 3 different sizes each (sorry you people with 1024×768 resolution monitors, our medium resolution is still 1000×800 pixels). Also with slideshow capabilities, just like our Home Entertainment HE 2006 Show Report.
Anyway, here it is the Audio Federation Vacuum Tube Valley (West) VTV 2006 Show Report
Enjoy!
… is more or less complete except for minor (I hope) corrections.
It is at Home Entertainment Show Report HE 2006, but you might have to hit refresh on your browser (if you have visited the report earlier today) and it does take awhile to load because of all the options on the main page.
as is Part 1 of 6 of our report on the Home Entertainment 2006 show sponsored by Stereophile and Primedia.
All photos in 3 different sizes. And each with slideshow capability.
Please let me know if there are any errors of commision (and I just do not want to hear about errors of omission right now thank you very much good night).
The new Metronome turntable with Lyra Titan cartridge in the Lamm room.
