Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

AUDIO AERO PRESTIGE MONOBLOCK AMPLIFIERS

We have a pair of the yummy Audio Aero Prestige monoblock amplifers here on loan. We’ve had their baby brother, the Audio Aero Capitole 50 watt stereo amplifier here for a few years and loved it – so we have high-expectations for these puppies.

Here are some pictures…

Audio Aero Prestige amplifiers

Audio Aero Prestige amplifiers

Audio Aero Prestige amplifiers

Audio Aero Prestige amplifiers

Audio Aero Prestige amplifiers

More on how they sound later (they are however, largely unbroken-in, and we need to fit them in between auditions… too many things breaking in at once makes for not-so-nice listening sessions)….

Meanwhile the Prestige SACD/CD player in continuing to break-in quite nicely.

in Audio Aero / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 1 comments
 by Michael

THE AUDIO NOTE CDT3 THREE TRANSPORT (PROTOTYPE)

We got this in last week. Still breaking in… and just a prototype, but right away it sounds better in almost every way than our older CDT TWO – much more engaging and of a whole – and we are eagerly waiting to see how breaking in improves the sound and just how far it leaves our older (discontinued) CDT TWO in the dust…(!) Dontja just love the high-end?

Some pictures:

CDT Three Faceplate
In order to preserve the beauty of the transport for the final owner, we are leavng the protective plastic over the display.

CDT Three, side by side with CDT Two
Side-by-side with the older CDT TWO

CDT Three rear panel
The CDT THREE rear panel.

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

THE NEW AUDIO AERO PRESTIGE SACD/CD PLAYER

Got the new player in… was it yesterday?

Here are some pics:

Prestige Top
The player is sitting on an HRS Isolation Base and has a HRS damping plate on top.

Prestige Front
You can see here that the Prestige, like the Audio Aero Capitole, comes with three Black Diamond Racing Cone feet, two ‘4’s and one ‘3’.

Prestige Back
The Prestige has a built-in preamplifier, also like the Capitole. The powercord is a Shunyata Anaconda Vx, the interconnects are the Stealth INDRA.

Our first impressions are very favorable. Our expectations were low, switching from the warm Meitner, which had been on for a week or two since the show, and has been broke-in in for a year now, to a cold Prestige with no time on it . But we were very pleased… out of the box, CDs were actually very enjoyable – as we couldn’t help but play about 10 different CDs to check it out (naw, just like most people, we can’t stand waiting until the player is warmed up and broke-in in more than a few hours like we are all supposed to….).

Burn(in) baby, burn(in)!

in Audio Aero / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 44 comments
 by Michael

WHEREIN THE BATTY COUPLE GO ABOUT THEIR BATTY WAYS

Obsessive? Compulsive? In need of serious therapy?

You bet!

Here is where we will post lots of pictures and detail the crazy goin’ ons here that occur between tours in pursuit of extracting every last nuance and artistic merit from each track on each album… pushing the state-of-the-art using the finest audiophile-grade off-the-shelf home hifi stereo amplifiers, cd players, loudspeakers, cables, equipment racks, turntables, and vibration control components we can find [ok, it’s true, that last phrase was just liberally sprinkling google-friendly keywords around all over the place].

Wht bats? Because our nominally 3-story house in on the edge of a minor cliff, making it seem like a 5-story house as the bat flies… and so they l;ike to nest way up there in the rafters.

OK, onward!…. to the next track!

halloween bat

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

KHARMA OWNERS, KEEP THOSE LAMM AND TENOR AMPS!

It has come to our attention that a number of you Kharma speaker owners are selling your Tenor amps (both the 75’s and 300’s) and perhaps even, *gasp*, your Lamm amplifiers in exchange for other amps, most notably the little Kharma amps and darTZeel amps, both solid-state.

Now, far be it for us to get in the way of anyone’s expresion of audio nervosa, but… Why?

Why breakup one of the most synergistic combinations known to high-end audiophiledom?

The answer we hear most often is ‘well, the bass wasn’t as tight as it should be, or there wasn’t much detail, or the sound was muddy, etc.’.

But before any of the rest of you sell off your tube amps, often at a significant $$$ loss, ask yourself one thing: what are you doing to isolate vibration away from those oh so sensitive to vibration tubes? Do you have them on a decent amplifier stand, one commsurate with the amp and your investment in your system?

We see so many people disparaging tube amp sound only to find out that they are using little better than furniture underneath their amps. Those rave reviews you read about how Tenor and Lamm goes so well with Kharma speakers are with the amps on a good amplifier stand.

Jonathan Tinn of Blue Light Audio uses custom Silent Running Audio (SRA) platforms (all SRA platforms are custom) underneath the Tenors at CES and the Stereophile Shows. We use Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS) Isolation Bases under our Lamm amplifiers (and, actually, just about everything else we pump music through) with amazing results.

Using a world-class amplifier stand for your world-class amplifiers makes a world of difference.

Otherwise, the amps will sound wonderfull, but nowhere near as tight and detailed as one might prefer after extended listening. One might wonder why they don’t just build the amps a little sturdier, so that we did not have to worry about them vibrating like Tom after Jerry wacks him another one – but they don’t, and they are not likely to anytime soon, either.

OK, ’nuff said. And we can assume you are all using world-class power cords already, so no need to go into that…right?

And you can ignore all this if you really want to get back into the component-a-month club.

in Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ASCERTAINING THE ABSOLUTE QUALITY OF A COMPONENT

The logic goes like this: a component has to be part of a system in order to be heard, and also that every system system has flaws.

These system imperfections can:

* Cover up what the component does best

* Conceal flaws in the component.

* Be counter-balanced by the imperfections of the component (i.e. the component can cover up flaws in the system)

This why equipment reviews should be comparative, for example:

* component A sounds leaner than component B

* component A communicates more detail than component B

and even value judgments are OK here, for example:

* component A sounds less natural than component B

Even better would be to give some context:

* component A has better control of the bass than component B in my bass-resonance-rich listening room and with the X amplifier, which is under-damped is comparison to most amplifiers evaluated here, driving these same speakers.

And finally, and of course these kind of conclusions can be wrapped up in many pages of expository brilliance (no, I am not being catty, I wish I just had a couple o’ them drops of expository brilliance, or even just the time to read them)

* speaker A has better control of the bass than speaker B playing tracks 1, 2 and 3 on the CD that contains lots of information in the 60 – 100 Hz range produced by an electric bass in a studio environment, when driven by amplifier X, known to be under-damped in comparison with most amps, notably the X, Y and Z which audiophiles might be expected to also use with these speakers, in my bass-resonance-loving room of dimensions HxWxD, with interconnects known to less detailed than most, including the more often recommended C1 and C2 cables, which might themselves rob the bass of some detail and control, and with speaker cables that smear information in the time domain causing a lack of punch in comparison with all speaker cables evaluated here, ever….

This should make the obvious even more obvious, that the more perfect a system is, the less excuses and qualifications the description of a component’s sound in that system has to have.

Next: Why oh why do good systems seem to go spontaneously bad?

in Philosophy / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

A SARCASTIC LOOK AT THE RELATIVE NATURE OF QUALITY

If component A is better than component B and component B is better than component C, is component A always better than component C?

Skipping any speculation on the answer to that question, how about the transitive nature of ‘almost is as good as’.

This ‘almost as good as’ is treated as a transitive relation on the web a lot, and it has a tendency to sneak in to all of our thinking patterns from time to time.

It goes like this:

Component B is 95% as good as component A, and component A is the almost universally acknowledged best available component of its type. And guess what, component B only costs half as much as component A. Ignoring the fact that that 5% is what separates great from very good – this logic invariably concludes that component B is a really good deal.

Ok, fine, if it was left there. But then comes:

Component C, when modded by Mr. Mod, is 95% as good as component B, and it is only 1/2 the price of component B.. an even better deal! And this usually fractures into the fact that any modder, not just Mr. Mod, can take component C to within 5%, or so, of component B.

No we are not done.

It turns out that, component D, E, and F, also when modded, are also around that 90-95% as good as component B range. And those can be gotten really, really, really cheap used.

And here is where it gets weird … 🙂

It appears first as a speculation, then as a fact, that, you remember that component A? Is is really all that good? That is really a lot of money they are asking for it. Is anything really worth that price. And….

Is component A really better than component B… or even better than component F for that matter.. Hey, it is all in the Ear of the Beholder, right? And didn’t that fella we never heard of before say that the Sony/Denon/Radio Shack item sounded better in their system (who cares that their system sucked as a review system)? We all know these differences are just all hype, right, put out by the reviewers, dealers, and manufacturers.

So hear you have it, component F, modded by just about anybody putting up an ad on the net, is as good as, and maybe even better, than the best in the world.

Let’s all go out and buy one!

For the final twist:

Then rumors start being posted about the $60 component, that if you are lucky enough to get the one out of very ten units that is better than it has any right to be… just happens to be 95% as good as…

Well, you can imagine where it goes from there…

Next: How can you judge the quality of a component in an imperfect system – and, there being no perfect system, how can you judge the quality of any component ever?

in Humor / Philosophy / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

YOU KNOW IT IS GOING TO BE A BAD DAY FOR A DEALER WHEN

8. A product they invested heavily in has now been discontinued and is available direct from the manufacturer at 50% off …. which is less than what the dealer paid for it.

7. One of the products they carry is rumored to catch on fire… with the added twist that it has to be left on over night before it starts sounding good.

6. One of the products they spent a years profits on stocking their store with has just become the featured item in a major online retailing magazine.

5. A product they bought without hearing it first turns out to be embarrassingly bad.

4. A product they carry is never reviewed….

3. A product they carry is given an unfavorable review.

2. A product they carry is given a favorable review.

and the worst day possible is:

1. They post anything as a dealer on the Asylum.

in Humor / Sounding Off 0 comments