Audio Federation - high-end audio blog

February 22, 2006 by Michael

Nordost VIDAR Cable Burn-in Device

Nordost Reference Dealers, like us happy folks at Audio Federation, now have another tool that will make sure that the cables their customers receive now sound even more better, yes, more better, than the competition than they already did before. And what a monster, er, make that kick-ass tool it is.

Physically the unit is about 9.5 inches by 17 inches and weighs, I don’t know, say about 10 lbs.

What does it do? And how does it do it?

What it does, using 44 amplifiers, is:

1. Neutralizes spurious charges that build up around the cables and its insulation.

2. Conditions the conductor core, which changes the way signals pass through the metal using wide-band sonics

3. Conditions the surface of the conductors using ultrasonics

How does it do it?

The VIDAR “uses a proprietary combination of composite and complex signals to condition the cable.” I bet you could have probably guessed that part.

The process involves ultra-low frequencies (to condition the core of the conductor), ultra-high frequencies (to condition the surface of the conductor), bouncing the signal ping-pong fashionup and down the length of the cable. The manual then goes on to describe how the VIDAR conditions the rest of the conductor as well as the dielectric area above the conductor.

Does it work?

Don’t know yet. It was very cold when it got here so applying power anytime soon was out of the question.

But sometime…. we really should do some listening tests; perhaps one interconnect brand new, and another brand new but burned-in / broken-in / conditioned.

Our general experience has been we have never experienced any deleterious effects from burning in anything, and burning in does seem to add some predictability to the sonics, taking some of the edge off that seems to be occaisionally heard with a brand new cable sometimes… [sometimes we are in too much of a hurry to hear a cable and wham bamm out of the packaging and into the system it goes – so we do sometimes experience what un-burned-in cables sound like 🙂 ].

In any case, it at least looks cool – and it is heavy enough that the cables won’t tip it over. About 95% of the time our customers do want their cables burned-in before we send them out – and we are always happy to do so.

February 19, 2006 by Michael

Foiled Again by … Fingerprints

Doh!

We are slowly creating an online catalog of the products we carry in order to provide both a more traditional presentation in this online medium and as a way to show off how awesome some of this equipment is.

But one of the problems with all this nice, shiny equipment is that when one has to move it, adjust it, or do ANTTHING with it, one leaves finger prints. Big honkin’ smudges. This is similar to the dreaded dust buildup problem, except that it is harder to remedy (The hell if I am going to wear gloves to use my equipment, no way no how 🙂 )

For example, in the catlog there is the picture of the Brinkmann Balance turntable. Nice picture I think. Spent the time to remove the background in Photoshop, added it to the webpages and then uploaded them – only to finally notice after all this that there are smudges on the platter where someone was too impatient to wait for it to slow down and used their fingers to force it to stop. [This photo was taken at the HE 2005 show – so it wasn’t me who was the impatient one… this time 🙂 ]

This isn’t the only piece in the catalog that had finger prints that stood out like a sore thumb. But the others I was able to use photoshop to dissapear them.

So, I’ll take another picture of the Balance we have here and redo the picture – but the real problem is that finger prints are all over our equipment, as they probably are all over yours, and all these smudges distract from the visual aesthetic of the pieces and of the overall listening experience. But in reality we are just too lazy and too ‘the visual aesthetics shouldn’t matter – its the music stupid’ that this will not likely change here any time soon at the Audio Federation.

But if someone came out with an audiophile-grade equipment polish – say Walker Audio, it could come with the VIVID CD polisher and the SST silver contact enhancer – then I bet we could convince one of us here (not me) to spend the time and apply the polish very few weeks, and remove the fingerprints so that my photos would not be pictures of equipment with fingerprints all over them.

What do you say, you entrepreneurs out there? Let me know when it ships!

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments

February 18, 2006 by Michael

Audiophile's Guide is More or Less Updated

The Power Cords page is still in woeful need of having a half-dozen power cords added to is list – there are a lot of new very-high-end power cords out there.

The CD Player, Amplifier and Preamplifier pages all now use the same purpose-directed approach as the speaker page does.

The CD Player page might be a little controversial – there are a lot of players that just seem to be competent, but are not otherwise special. ‘Workhorses’ as we call them. Maybe we should rename the ‘Workhorse’ category to something else – but as of now we cannot think of a better name.

This table also clarifies our perspective on the Esoteric et. al. versus the Meitner discussions. Yes, the top end Esoteric may have more detail and tighter bass – but we think the Meitner is QUALitatively better than the Esoteric.

In general, the equipment with the best quantitative performance and/or measurements does not always provide the most magical listening experiences, in our experience. One would think that the memory of the decades of the quantitatively better solid-state versus tube amplifiers debacle or even the quantitatively better CDs versus LPs travesty would be fresh in people minds… but guess not.

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

February 14, 2006 by Michael

Re-recorded the Speakers Page in the Audiophiles Guide

… to the Galaxy.

I think the new page more accurately reflects the general types of sounds people are searching for when they choose and/or like a speaker’s sound.

Our personal penchant has been moving from emotional to real to, now, magical and during this move the number of recommended speakers kept dwindling in numbers. The new table no longer recommends speakers, per se, but hopefully helps a person decide what kind of sound they are interested in and then provides some of the best (oops, there is that word again) examples of the state-of-the-art speakers that produce that type of sound.

Most people who are not hardcore (aka crazy, nuts, obsessive, … need we say more?) want an impressive speaker – and as one can see from the table, most popular speakers are impressive… and unfortunately they have little else going for them.

The speakers that can do multiple things, like communicating emotion and produce a convincingly real presentation, as well as being impressive at the right times, would seem to me to be speakers that both women and men might like as well as providing enough depth and sophisitication to allow their owner’s love of music to grow deeper and wider over the years.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 2 comments

February 12, 2006 by Michael

Communicating Anticipation & Suspense

Thinking about the added suspense that the music on the SACD version of Dire Strait’s Brothers in Arms seemed to have (see last post), I wonder if and how this might be artificially produced by a system.

When humans talk to each other, at least in English, they can communicate to a listener that they should expect something to follow a particular phrase by at least three methods:

1. raising the frequency of the last word of the phrase, near the end of the word
2. drawing out the last word of the phrase (saying the word very slowly)
3. adding a lot of ‘uh’s or ‘um’s after the phrase

It seems like music also uses these same techniques (a background beat might replace the ‘um’s to mark tiime after a phrase).

So why are only a few systems able to communicate this ‘suspense’? Are so few able to render the characteristic raise in frequency at the end of an anticpatory note? Or is it that LPs and CDs for the most part do not have a high-enough resolution to contian this kind of subtle information?

At a CES a few years ago, there was a system with Joseph speakers, Joule amps and Audio Aero CD player that had oodles of suspense. It was great fun and seemed to communicate the musician’s desire to be suspenseful with both the listener and their fellow band members. So now one can wonder things like: did this system have a tendency to raise the frequency of the sound at the very end of major notes, just a little, to artificially add suspense?

What about the recording engineers who made the Brothers in Arms CD? Did they do the same? Do they have a little knob in the studio that says “suspense”?

I don’t know. I do know I like suspense and anticipation in music. It adds to the excitment and highlights the webs of communication going on both between the individual band members (for example, think jazz and one musician prompting another to play a few notes, who does the same right back at them, back and forth) and between the band and the audience.

The audience can also communicate suspense and most other emotions back to the band and to others in the audience though crowd mutterings and clapping and shouting and whistling. This is one of the things that can make live shows and unprocessed live bootlegs that are recorded from the audience so involving.

[I would like to talk some more about this ‘muttering’ another time, by which we are refering to the largely involuntary sounds an audience in response to what the musicians are doing – and how this is a large part of the (near) instananeous feedback loop between the audience and the musicians which is a whole nuther communication channel being used that is almost completely disjoint from the actual melody being played. The ‘suspense’ added by a musician is almost a bridge between these two channels; one channel being of sound and the other one is .. a deeper message about being human and alive at that moment].

OK, it is time to start composing these posts in somethng that has a spell checker… 🙂

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

February 11, 2006 by Michael

Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms": XRCD vrs SACD

Last weekend, K.O. and I listened to the title track of these two CDs back to back in order to hear the differences between them, if any.

This was on the following equipment: EMM labs / Meitner digital running into Lamm ML2.1 amps on the Triolon speakers, Stealth INDRA interconnects and Shunyata Anaconda Alpha powercords, HRS isolation bases and nimbuses, the CDSD transport resting on an Acoustic Dreams rack.

We both agreed that we liked the SACD version better.

Of course there was more detail on the SACD version, but it also had more suspense, which I found to be an unexpected difference. Or maybe one can call it anticipation. This refers to that feeling you get, which this album does so very well, at the end of a loooong drawn out note when …you …know …the …next …note ..is …coming… …it …is …almost …here… …YES!

Imaging was also better and there was more solidity and presence.

Everything was better, though stepping back from the music a bit, mentally, one might say they was a slight artificial taint to the whole thing. That the ‘whole’ was not blending together as it might.

My interpretation of this was to reflect that the XRCD, being a very smooth, almost tube-like presentation, was also just as artificial, it is just that most of us are used to it because we grew up with that kind of artificiality.

This implies something interesting about the younger CD / DVD / MP3 / SACD generation, but I do not think I care to speculate right now on what that ‘something interesting’ may portend. No reason to think about tomorrow’s problems, we got enough right here today, thank you very much.

By the way, in the past we have compared the LP version to the XRCD version – and the LP was laughably (or very distressingly, depending on your point of view) better. It so out-classed its digital counterpart that I really felt ripped off that I had paid the $35 for the XRCD. Oh well. I think the day of the XRCD is over – it was great when most CDs and CD players had a strident edge . Now most CDs sound pretty good and the playback equipment either rolls off the treble a little or just plain sounds pretty darn good [or at least the playback equipment no longer sounds so bad as to require CDs like this that roll off the midrange and treble in order to make the music halfway listenable].

I guess we should next compare the SACD to the LP, but I am thinking that altough the SACD is closer now to the LP in quality, it will still be no match. Well, when the new HRS MXR equipment rack gets here (gloss black, ahhhhhhhhhhh. Yes, like that pictured in the post below this one. Oops, can’t let Neli see me drooling all over the keyboard or she’ll never type on this thing again) we will move the Brinkmann Balance upstairs and try this very thing. You want to be here for this, K.O.? 🙂

in Music 4 comments

February 9, 2006 by Michael

We are Remastering the Website

The Audio Federation website is always trying to maintain a balance so that it serves equally well all the different kinds of visitors we get: customers and audiophiles, the hobbiest and the merely curious, those looking for information and those looking for audio por*n/photos.

Finally happy with the look of the home page, and we’ll probably keep it until at least June, if not longer.

We added a Site Map page accessible from the home page to make it easier to get around – which I even find myself using more and more. The links at the top of each page in the dealership now let one easily get back to the home (top) page.

The Music page will evolve to become an annotated index into the Blog’s forthcoming posts of audiophile-relevent music reviews. Our emphasis will be somewhat different than other music reviews, focusing on the quality of the sound more than the history of the band or how the album fits within the bands other work, or fits within the genre as a whole. Not that this other information isn’t interesting – it is that it is already done quite well by others in the industry, and no reason for us to duplicate or detract from their good work

The Hifi’ing Magazine will evolve into being not only a list of recent show reports but an annotated index into the Blog so that people can more easily find ‘major Blog posts in history’.

The Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy will be updated, both visually and content-wise. Finally.

We’ve added a number of photo galleries to the dealership product pages, and these will get fleshed out a lot more with both pictures that we take here and those we have taken, and will take, at shows.

We’ve also started adding ‘experience reports’ to the dealership’s product pages, which collect and display information about our experiences with the various products in several situations. The HRS vibration control product line is the first of many products we will do this for.

Neli will start working a lot more on the website; she knows a lot more details about most of the products than I do.

This means letting Neli have access to the website. I can just see it now. If you notice some descriptions going back and forth between say “lovely and detailed” on the one hand and “rich and detailed” on the other – you will know it is one of THOSE types of discussions going on here on the other side of your computer.

This is kind of like lending your spouse the keys to your Lamborghini (well, let’s just imagine we all had a Lamborghini, OK, and thatmost of us hadn’t spent all our money on audio equipment and $30 a pop LPs). How many times can you say ‘pleeeeease don’t break it dear’ before you get one of those matrimonial Death Ray looks? Once? Yeah, that is the way it works here, too.

I do try to get her to post her ideas on this blog…at least once a day, (and sometimes hourly. This nets me another kind of look). She made her own trip to Planet Abraxus, and to planet [whatever opera Mike Lavigne was playing the last hour of CES in the Swedish Statement room] and I am sure people would like to hear what she has to say about it.

But she is more comfortable talking about audio than writing about it, the opposite of her way too softly spoken husband. So it will still mostly be me who is posting stuff on the Blog about the ‘goings on’ here at the Belfry – with hopefully some occasional posts by Neli, and perhaps even some special guests, from time to time.

If you have any other ideas, please let us know. Thanks!

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 2 comments

February 4, 2006 by Michael

The Mating Dance Between an Audiophile and What the Uninitiated Would consider an Inanimate Object

Well, THAT was a long title – let’s see how the Blog software handles it…

One variation of this little dance goes like this:

We loved our Audio Note CDT2 transport. Paired with the Audio Note 4.1x Balanced DAC there was not the slightest digital etch or hardness to the sound – and whatever slight imperfections that it did have, well, it did not detract from it being definitively state-of-the-art nor did it impact our enjoyment of the music in any way.

Then we met another transport, the CDT3.

“Hi transport” we say with low expectations dripping from our test CDs. Yes, it was an enjoyable time we spent together, it was certainly a very nice transport and was admittadly better in everyway – though in some ways it was more better than others ways where it was only slightly better, it was especially better in the areas of PRaT, harmonic content and continuousness/flow/momentum – we were glad to have met it.

[The CDT2 is slightly more dynamic in the midi-dynamic range – or perhaps it is just that the note envelopes rise faster and decay faster – so I could see some people who would like this more aggressive sound, less analog and less continuous sound better].

But it wasn’t like we were going to abandon our long time partner, the CDT2. The CDT2 was our first Audio Note transport and we owed it some loyalty. Right?

Or is this just loyalty to our emotional investment in our belief that this is a really good transport and sufficiently good for us to be able to enjoy it unconditionally, forever.

Well, now it has been a month since we have heard the CDT3 and …. we miss it terribly. The CDT2 now sounds old and irritable. We now see freckles on our CDT2 that seem to grow louder each day.

Well, you all know how this dance finishes. We hope our CDT3 will be able to move in any day now – and though we still love our CDT2 terribly, we think it will be happier with a more appreciative audiophile.

Been there? Done that? Rinse and Repeat?

People who have been in this hobby for a long time know enough to ask before hand…

“Do I dare to listen to this thing?”

Funny thing is, we almost always say, with trepidation in every fiber of our being….

“Ok….”

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 2 comments

February 3, 2006 by Michael

The Acapella Triolons up on HigherFi.com are NOT Ours

We hear a dealer demo pair of Triolons (and Campaniles and Violons) just appeared there in the last few days.

And since we have the only dealer demo Acapella Triolon Excalibur speakers (the only Triolons of any kind actually) on the American continent, ….

We just think that with equipment this gawd-awful expensive, most people are going to want full-service, not full-discount. They need to have some recourse if something that they spent their hard-earned coin on is not performing to their expectations, they need someone who knows what they are doing and who actually cares about how the person’s system sounds.

This is above and beyond getting faulty equipment taken care of – there is no one in the high-end home audio industry that we know of who will not speedily fix or replace something that is broken. We just thnk there is more to being satisfied with one’s stereo system than just whether the equipment works or not.

[And, as a final note on the subject:

Yes, of course we are very disappointed, we put in a lot of hard work and broke down a lot of barriers between dealer and audiophile over the years, using the Acapella line to explore what could be done. But we are also very relieved – the animosity and … tomfoolery… were frustrating and emotionally hard on us, especially Neli. It is a good thing that we are done with this and it really is time to focus on making sure our other VERY high quality product lines get the high-profile treatment they deserve in the same style that we prototyped using the photogenic Acapella line. We will keep our NEWS page continually updated with the changes to, and expansion of, our website coverage.

Thank you everybody for your support during this transition. We really, really, REALLY appreciate it.]

For those who are curious, our Triolons ARE for sale. Please contact us if you are interested.

Information about our Triolons is here

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

February 2, 2006 by Michael

"Truth and Consequences" or "We got Jacked!"

We are saddened to announce that for the foreseeable future we will no longer be authorized dealers of Acapella Audio Arts speakers. We were the largest Acapella dealer on the American continent and by far the most visible experts on and advocates of Acapella in the world.

Since our first year of business, 4 years ago now, the person who is now the distributor has chafed against our approach to serving our customers and the audiophile community, as exemplified by the candor of the content on our website. After many years of his intimidations and ultimatums we are no longer Acapella dealers.

As our customers and a hundred thousand virtual guests know, we do not shy away from telling it like we hear it.

And we never will.

We just might have to regroup periodically.

Acapella makes some of the best speakers in the world and we will continue to think so and recommend their products, just like we sometimes recommend other excellent products we do not carry when we think they are the best fit for a particular person’s situation.

To our Acapella customers: we still stand by you and your excellent speakers 100% and will not hesitate to support you, with the same dedication as always, in the unlikely event you should ever require it.

The manufacturers of Acapella are some of the very nicest people we have met, are some of the biggest fans of our show reports and website, and are unabashed audiophiles at heart. Their English is not perfect and they are shy around people who do not speak German, and so they have few industry friends here in America who could have provided them some perspective on what is going on. If you see Hermann Winters and his wife Inge at a show, step up and say hello, welcome them to America, and don’t let their shyness discourage you. Through the shared passion for music and music reproduction, you will understand each other just fine, in English or German.

As for us, we are of course investigating a number of alternative speakers.

We are spoiled. Our next speakers have to excel at being impressive, emotional, jaw-droppingly real, and extremely powerful at communicating what the musicians are saying about what it means to be human. And what it means to be Alive.

For us, this is what music is all about.

Should we use this opportunity to continue to push ever farther against the state-of-the-art here at Audio Federation? Hee hee hee! OK, try not to give away the surprise, Neli…. Neli!!! Shhhhhhhhh…….

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News 10 comments

« Previous

Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences