Audio Federation - high-end audio blog

December 26, 2005 by Michael

NEW PICTURES OF THE MARTEN DESIGN COLTRANE SUPREME SPEAKERS

Yummy.

These pictures are found on the Swedish Statement website and the new Marten Design website.

Every time I close my eyes I see these speakers. I do not know about all of you – but I like eye-candy. A lot. And some things just imprint themselves on the minds eye and won’t let go.

Hmmmmm… Is this my mind’s way of trying to tell me something? I could get into a LOT of trouble following this line of thought… 🙂

The actual system to be shown and heard in Las Vegas at CES 2006

The subwoofer tower and the main speaker tower

December 26, 2005 by Michael

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments

December 22, 2005 by Michael

KHARMA OWNERS, KEEP THOSE LAMM AND TENOR AMPS! (Part II)

We’ve received a number of emails regarding the first post on this subject from Kharma owners who are considering changing their Lamm or Tenor amps – wondering just who to believe. I say, believe everybody! But make sure you pay the most attention to people who have sonic goals for their system similar to your sonic goals (and similar systems!).

I mean, there are lots of people who sincerely believe Bose makes the best speakers. So you can believe them – but it would be unwise to do as they suggest unless you are looking for that Bose sound.

That is just an extreme example. Usually, like in this instance, it is a case of Vanilla versus Chocolate.

Know your sonic preferences!

Many of the emails go like this: “Somebody is saying that the little inexpensive Kharma amps walk all over the much more expensive Lamm hybrid amps.”

The Kharma MP150 amplifier (it comes in your choice of several colors)

Well, I think the people in question mean and hear what they say. At least, it is nice for us to just assume thy are not trying to justify their buying decision by convincing others to make it too. But do they use any vibration control? And do they use high quality (more on this later) powercords as well on their amps. So, if you read the previous installment of this thread (aka part one) you know that we think the Lamms (and Tenors) benefit greatly from these two things.

The Lamm M1.2 Reference amplifier

I’ve heard both of these amps a few times. What can “walk all over” or “better” possibly mean? Kharma better than the Lamm, for example? With respect to what? Bass? I doubt it. Bass detail? Maybe, but use some vibration control, man, and the difference will be very hard to hear. Weight? Authority? Not on your life. Airiness? I believe it, most solid state amps have more air than most tube amps – and the Lamm are especially guilty of not having a lot of extension on top. Coherence? Am I supposed to laugh? Continuousness? They are so different in this respect – it is hard to compare. Engagement/Involvment? This is what I pay the big bucks for, and why I would chose the Lamm.

But maybe that is just me. I can go on and on and on… but the point is what are YOU looking for in your system? What are you missing that you want to switch to an ENTIRELY different kind of amp and sound? This is a radical change – and indicates that you think the system is far from the way you want it to sound. If this is not the case, then maybe some less expensive tweaks might be in order to tune that system that final little bit to make it perfect for your own ears.

And if the Kharma amps really sounded better than the $20K Lamm amps, would they be selling them for $7K? And similarly for powercords and everything else on the planet. If something is priced way below what it is worth – isn’t it kind of ‘bad Karma’ to take advantage of the poor soul slaving away building the thing?

“But, but…” I hear you saying “they tuned the amp to Kharma speakers and so it sounds great on them, and who cares if they sound good on anything else because I have Kharma speakers! And hey, at least these are LESS expensive for a change!”.

It is a good story. I wonder which of their very different types of speakers it was tuned for. And for what sound. The Tenors and Lamms both sound great on the Kharmas. But these are very, very different sounds. Which sound do you like? I personally like the Lamm ML2 and Tenor 75 much better than the Lamm hybrid amps on the Kharma speakers. I also like the Edge NL amps better than the Lamm hybrid amps. But that is just me – the 5 or 6 other people who has actually heard the shootout here has preferred the Lamms. No accounting for taste I say to them (the losers :-)).

Anyway, decide if you like your current sound. If not, how do you want to improve it? Then decide which component needs to be tweaked or replaced to get this improvement. Then find the tweaks or components that will do the job. Just don’t take your system out back and shoot it (unless it deserves it) because there is a new component that might sound better – unless you already have audio nervosa (the insatiable desire to change your hifi system very week or so) in which case why are you wasting time reading this? Go out and try the thing already and report back about the way it sounds!

But for those without audio nervosa, there is only one component that we know of that is unquestionably better than any other component of its type – that I can recommend without reservation – and that is the Acapella Triolon Excalibur speakers. Everything else has sonic tradeoffs – everything else we only recommend to people who indicate that their sonic preference matches the component’s sonic signature.

The Acapella Triolon Excalibur loudspeaker

in Sounding Off 0 comments

December 19, 2005 by Michael

THINGS WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING AT CES 2006 (MARTEN COLTRANE SUPREMES)

Another CES is upon us. At CES we are not exhibitors and get to play tourist – albeit ones that take a lot of photos and write a lot of notes about what we are hearing – but this is much more relaxing than being exhbitors. And fun!

This year we ARE going to make it to the main conference center exhibit halls – where CES proper lives. Every year we say this half-heartedly, but this year it is with full heart. We want to check out some of the new high-definition video front projectors and a couple of other, top-secret for now (hee hee hee), audio products.

At the usual high-end audio part of CES are a number of new products we are looking forward to seeing and hearing. And at the top of the list has to be the new Marten Design Coltrane Supremes:

Here we see prototypes of the Supremes. This system uses Lamm hybrid amplifiers to drive the speakers, however at CES the Swedish Statement room will demonstrate (in Suite number 2007 at the Alexis Park Hotel):

“Bladelius Beowulf amplifiers: $37,500
Bladelius Gondul version 3 multiplayer: $14,000
Jorma Design Jorma Statement cables: $71,800
Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers: $250.000
Nordic Concept, Artist Signature turntable: $18.000
WOO Design furniture: $11.000

Total: $402,300”

Yeah, this might qualify as a statement system :-). And for those of you wondering why we do not have a quartet of the Supremes here at Audio Federation, well, we just do not have the room:

Seriously, we should do a photo montage of our rooms here at the Belfry – although this is a 4-bedroom house, 2 bedrooms are chock-full I am not kidding to overflowing offices, one we sleep in, and one is our small listening room. Our livingroom and rec rooms are listening rooms. And yes, we (mostly me, I will admit) talk about converting the small dining room to a listening room, as well as the bedroom – at which point we would instead sleep in the walk-in closet. It would work, I just know it…

OK, back to CES…

The Swedish Statement room has its own website

The speakers are certainly something special, check this out:

“…Marten is now the first loudspeaker producer in the world to use Accuton’s 5cm diamond midrange in the Coltrane Supreme. Each of the Supreme’s two main speaker towers employs one diamond tweeter, one diamond midrange unit, one ceramic lower midrange unit and four woofers for the upper bass. The two bass towers employ six 9-inch woofers each, and a 2000W power amplifier. The cabinets are made of carbon fibre laminate and wood. The integral stands are made of polished stainless steel, and use cones and pucks from Black Diamond Racing.

“…The Coltrane Supreme is a four-cabinet system, consisting of two main loudspeakers and two dedicated subwoofers. The cabinets are made of extremely rigid, light, and stiff carbon fibre laminate with a Kevlar honeycomb in between. The main loudspeakers have a frequency range from 100 to 100,000 Hz. The crossover is a fully balanced, active, fourth-order design, with digital room correction possibilities below 100 Hz. The subwoofers have a frequency range from 15 to 100 Hz.

“Each main speaker tower employs four 7-inch ceramic upper bass units, one newly developed 7-inch ceramic lower-midrange unit, the world’s first 2-inch diamond midrange, and one _-inch diamond tweeter. Each subwoofer employs six newly-developed 9-inch, long-throw ceramic bass units with extreme low bass capabilities. All drivers employ neodymium under-hung magnet systems. “

Ah, one of the good things about the impersonal nature of the net – you all can’t see me drooling.

Finally, here is another view of the prototypes:

We already know how good the Jorma design cables are – they are the only speaker cable that we think might be better than Nordost Valhalla (read between the lines of what all the other cable manufacturers say, Valhalla is darn hard to beat). And now they have come out with a statement cable: The Jorma Design ‘Prime’:

Jorma Design (no photos yet)

“The newly-developed cables that Jorma Design will be contributing to this project are made of top-quality materials: gold, copper, transparent Teflon and walnut, all fine-tuned to get their best possible result. The cables have completely new conductors that were developed especially for this project, by a small European producer that really had to push its limits. The manufacturer had to change its machines to be able to make these conductors, and it took more than half a year to test them. The screens are made of extra-sturdy copper, and the cables make use of Bybee Slipstream Golden Quantum Purifiers. “

We have not heard the other components that are used in the Swedish Statement system… but soon, very soon now, just 16 more days….

in CES 2006 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Marten Design / Show Reports 0 comments

December 17, 2005 by Michael

SAYING GOODBYE TO AN OLD FRIEND (the Sonus Faber Extremas)

We decided to put our Sonus Faber Extremas up for sale… and they are now SOLD. Gone. Speakers that I swore I would keep for all of my days…Well, I’ve learned to not swear that anymore about anything after letting the Levinson 20.6 amps and the Extremas go.

I bought these speakers in… 1996? This was right after we had the Dunlavy SC-4 6 foot tall speakers for a few years (The Dunlavy was a good speaker, but between the cheap drivers that he used in them, and the fact that we were using Dunlavy speaker cables – Mr. Dunlavy insisted cables made no difference in sound… *sheesh* yes, we were just poor gullible audiophiles at one time too – made the speakers sound hard and uninvolving. Had we put a pair of Valhalla on those puppies… well, history would have unfolded very differently here at the Belfry).

So, to the other ‘extreme’ (he he). A very small speaker with VERY high quality drivers. Lots of involvement and no hardness. A step up to be sure. We had been driving the Dunlavys with the Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (monster blocks 🙂 ) amps and they did the Extremas just fine.

If I remember correctly, the 20.6 aps were Stereophile 1992 amp of the year, and I know that the Extremas were 1992 speaker of the year and the Dunlavys 1994 speaker of the year. Did I mention the word ‘gullible’ in a previous paragraph? Yes, we paid attention to Stereophile rankings in those days – but, you know, they are good speakers. In a sea of so many choices, Stereophile does help wittle the list down (and I can’t help thinking that the modern Stereophile is more, shall we say …. uh, advertising driven … these days, like the rest of our society of late, it seems (notice that we do not have blinking squares of colorful ads on our site – 10 ads to each line of text? That is Neli’s fault 🙂 … Neli wants me to clarify: Although I would prefer to have some tasteful advertsing to help defray the costs of the Blog(s coming soon) and the Audiophiles Guide to the Galaxy), she does not).

Oh, back to the story, then. It was in our pursuit of getting some speakers that had bass again, like the Dunlavys, that, after 2+ years, we ended up at CES and getting the Campaniles (I mean, the 900 lb per side Triolons, for heavens sake, fit in our listening room, how were these little Extremas supposed to fill up that room with sound?).

Below we have a bunch of photos. As always, Sonus Faber makes beautiful looking speakers – and the Extremas were in there the top 3 or 4 best lookin’ (let’s see, we got the Stadivarious, the Amati, the …? OK, in the top 3, then).

We ste up the Extremas for a demo… no place to put them but in front of the Sound Labs.

NO!, it isn’t the Beauty and the Beast – but it didn’t help the sonics any to have the Sound Labs U1 right behind the speakers that way.

We drove them with the Edge NL Reference 800 watt amps. The Extremas, of course, loved the power. Even after all these years, their $5-6K resale value is still competitive with the best the industry has to offer.

These next few pictures are just eye-candy. The Extremas still look better than most monitor speakers out there.

The 6-post stand that came with the Extrema, that you see here, is a monster. About 105 lbs and, I find’ somewhat unwieldy to carry around. We never did get around to spiking the puppies. Hmmmmmmmm……

The back of the Extrema is very interesting. It has a rear-firing 6 x 8 inch (?) woofer, shielded by a matching metal cover.

One of the very few crossovers that has their own external cooling fins! Notice also the bass adjustment knob.

This, and the deepness of the cabinet reveals the philosphy behind the contruction of these speakers: Build a speaker with the wonderful Esotar tweeter and with as much bass as one can possible squeeze into a 50 lb(!) monitor sized box.

Here you can see that rear-firing woofer a little better…

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 1 comments

December 6, 2005 by Michael

POWER OUTAGE LAST NIGHT

We had 90-100+ mph winds here for the last few days. After awhile it always seems to wear down the electrical network here in the mountains and yesterday was no exception.

First the power would go off and then come back on a second later – and it would do this every hour or so.

Then it would go off/on/off/on/off/on… and then stay on for an hour or two, then repeat.

We think “This just CAN’T be good for all the equipment”, (duh), and as time wore on we kept, not just turning things off, but unplugging things from the wall (which means things which have been nicely warmed up and sounding great for weeks now go back to being stone cold, … and sounding like it. But safety first, as they say).

Finally, the power went off and stayed off for 4 hours or so – right after sunset – with the temperature about 23 degrees and the howling wind outside – things cooled off fast. After awhile I just left (Neli was gone the whole time and did not even know the power had been out – though the temp in the house being 10 degrees below usual was a real big clue).

Never been so happy to see the car working, lighted, warm and playing music.

Sometime we’ll have to take SPL readings to determine just how loud 100 mph wind is in a pine tree forest. But outside I would guess 85-90 dB. Inside it is perhaps about 60-65 dB.. what one might call a high noise floor.

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

December 3, 2005 by Michael

SHUNYATA ANACONDA HELIX vX

A customer ordered a cute little 1 meter Anaconda (the back of his amp is right up against its wall outlet).

Here are some pics:

See, I told ya these little 1 meters are cute…

To my eye the Anaconda Helix seem to look pretty much exactly like the old Anacondas.

We got a couple of longer, but not as cute, Anaconda Helix’s with this shipment, but haven’t heard how they sound yet. Our old method of breaking in powercords by chaining them together and plugging the refridgerator into them doesn’t work as well anymore with the humoungous, dare we try to move it out can we move it back, subzero fridge. Yet another reason why remodeling sucks…:-)

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 4 comments

December 1, 2005 by Michael

AUDIO AERO PRIMA CD PLAYER

Here are some pics of the player…

Sorry for the blurry text (Oh. Wait. With my glasses on it is actually more or less readable). The player has both analog out (RCA and XLR) and digital out (Toslink and Coax at 16 bit/44.1 Khz).

On the newer player, one can chose to lift ground or not. Haven’t had any need to use this feature yet… but hey, you never know…

The controls on the left side…

… and the right.

We only heard it a little while – and it needed to be warmed up and to be played awhile and broke-in in. Given all this, it sounded pretty darn good.

Wish we had got to keep it here a little longer – but it weren’t our player for very long (Thanks, T.A. !).

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

November 30, 2005 by Michael

BURNIN' IN THE CABLES

Neli finally found a happy spot to burn in new cables: hanging off the back of a DVD bookcase in the middle of the second listening room.

One of the problems is finding a place so the cables hang down naturally – twisting them up UNnaturally tends to affect the sonic qualities, seems to take them longer to relax when the finally get put into use.

Another problem is keeping them out of the way of foot traffic – stepping on the cables ain’t so good for them either.,.. not to mention tripping over them and sailing into the Walker turntable… or something…

Seems to work really well.

The cables, interconnects and speaker, have both ends connected to the burn-in device – which sends a number of signals through the cables, simulating music – but presumably at a very high volume with lots of dynamics and lots of frequencies. all in order to speed up the burn-in process by a factor of 10 or so.

We use the Nordost burn in device for our cables. There is a newer model that may now be available…

Unfortunately, we did not get to hear these new cables (the Nordost Frey) before we sent them out on audition… so us cats still have a big curiosity that needs scratching.

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

November 29, 2005 by Michael

The 10 METER OPTICAL CABLES ON THE MEITNER

We use 10 meter optical cables to connect the EMMLabs / Meitner transport to the Meitner DAC.

This is so that we can have the transport near where we sit and the DAC (using its nice built-in preamplifier) within 1 meter of the amps so that we can use a very expensive interconnect, the Stealth INDRA, between the DAC and the amplifiers. These optical cables cost about $50 for the 3, all told (10 meters of INDRA would cost about $57,000.00 – assuming you could get them to make you a pair).

There are 3, bright orange 10 meter optical cables that connect to the DAC. No, this would NOT be our first choice in colors!

You can see we have to label them so that we can tell one from the other. The cables that we decided on only came in one color.

The other sides of the cables are connected to the transport – also labeled, of course.

Yeah, not quite audiphile grade labeling – cheap masking tape and crude pen markings. Hmmmmmm…. Maybe someday we will upgrade to using…. *gasp* colored tape and no pen scriblings?

Here is Neli’s description of how and where she found them:

“The emmLabs ST interface cables are 125/62.5u (micron) multimode simplex ST to ST optical patch cables. We ordered them from GoCables — http://www.gocables.com/

Here’s the category listing here:
http://www.gocables.com/Fiber_Optic_Patch_Cables/
/index_multimode_simplex.htm

And here are the specific cables here:
http://www.gocables.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=G&Product_Code=GCFA1TT

When I researched cable sources, I wanted a high quality connector — not plastic connectors — GoCables says:

> SC, ST, LC, FC, MT-RJ, E2000 and MU connectors have polished ceramic ferrules for precision and durability.

This is one of the reasons that I selected these cables, even though it would be more convenient to have 3 different colors, or 3 different color terminations at the end — we marked ours so that we can tell ’em apart when they’re all laid out. We have not heard a difference between these and the stock 2-meter cables that emmLabs ships with the pair. Sometime, I should order another set and have ’em cryoed, and see if that makes an improvement.

I remember looking through a number of network equipment sites before settling on these cables.

There was also some talk some weeks ago on Audiogon regarding audiophile-grade (and audiophile-grade-expensive) optical links. Haven’t tried any of these.”

in Emm Labs / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments

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