Audio Federation

November 7, 2006 by Michael

Reviewing the Reviewers

We are going to start another category…

In this category we are going to discuss some of the reviews that are being published, and discuss them in the context of the reviewer’s tastes, systems, and rooms.

This will not be critical, or nasty, or flame ridden…

It will try to put some of what many people read into a larger context, as we see it anyway.

Since I am the one writing this (I try to talk Neli into posting on the Blog until she starts waving divorce papers in my face [not really – but I bet you know EXACTLY what I mean]) I am going to limit this proess to just a few of MY favorite reviewers:

HP, Jonathan Valin, Mike Fremer, and Srajan at 6moons.

Why are these guys my favorites?

Maybe because they are so powerful they can say what they want (but not so powerful they can say it the way they want to – a steady paycheck [how nice it is!] is a difficult thing to throw away).

MF buys his own equipment and, although erratic and idiosyncratic, he does let the truth slip out once in awhile.

JV has seen the light after the Walker Tenor Kharma experience and now knows what good sound is. What willllllll he do?

HP because he is HP.

Srajan because he is tryoing so hard to do the right thing.

However, none of these people put their reviews into the context of what the rest of their system is doing to color their interpretation of what they hear. Their bright sounding amp on a revealing speaker? That speaker is too bright. A reasonably priced laid back system on a revealing speaker – what do you know: that speaker is too laid back.

We’ll ignore Art Dudley – mostly because I think he is very open about his likes and dislikes – is probably the best reviewer because of it – and, well, there isn’t much to explain about his reviews.

Marja & Henk at 6moons have done some good reviews, IMHO – but I have read too little of their stuff…

Danny Kaye has retired… or graduated… or escaped… whatever you want to call it.

What a good reviewer SHOULD do is be self-conscious [well, first they have to be conscious, but let’s say that is a given], they should keep wondering if they have it right, keep wondering if they have the gist of what is going on with the component, the system, the music. They should keep trying to explore what it is that makes people like music – what makes them like some sounds and not others – what causes cyclical pressure waves to somehow communicate the great ideas and the nature of the human condition to all peoples of all generations.

Just like a good dealer.

If they start talking about how it “has a flux capacitor and therefore has to sound great”, or “it has 6.5 gigawatts of charm, these measurments can’t be beat, this is and will always be the best” then turn the page, hop into your Delorian, and try out the sequel.

November 7, 2006 by Michael

Showroom 4 – the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers…

… in a small room.

The Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers, Audio Note Kegon amplifiers and Audio Aero Capitole CD player.

This room is 10.5 x 20 x 9 feet tall.

The sound very much reflects the sound of the Capitole, ultimately musical, a little sweet, a touch of raspberry and tobacco – oh, wait, I mean a little round and luscious.

It sounds quite good – though the room can be overloaded at about, I would guess to be 90dB or so, unlike our larger rooms. In other respects the system interacts very little with the room, so little in fact that it was a little surprising.

We know that the Coltranes were designed to be able to work well in small spaces – but were still unprepared for the results. Very much like the Audio Note speakers, which were designed to use the room’s acoustical properties to best advantage.

I mean, most of us play our systems, our speakers, in a room, right? And most if not all speaker manufacturers know this, right? And only some manufacturers expect audiophiles to live in a padded cell… [unlike society at large 🙂 which is probably quite happy yet mystified to see us building our own padded cells. Self-incarcerating lunatics. How conveeeeenient.]

We are currently running with Nordost Tyr speaker cable, which is very good but not quite as good as Valhalla – lacking some finesse and truth in comparison. We hope to optimize this system quite a bit before we are through.

The Acoustic Dreams equipment rack with… yes, the Kharma MP150 amps.

We were only able to try the Kharma amps for a few minutes, while a pair of balanced interconnects flew in and out of here.

You see, the MP150 only come with Single-ended OR Balanced connections. This one has balanced. We do not have any balanced cables here (long story, suffice it to say that very little of the equipment here is balanced).

So, when our 2m Valhalla balanced interconnects arrive (we sell a lot of Nordost here – might as well have a balanced cable around) we will get to hear these little big amps again.

Two questions:

1. Is it improper for us to put these amps on the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers (there is something of a friendly rivelry between Kharma and Marten)

2. How many people besides us and Steve want to see pictures of the Elrod Statement power cords – the LARGE Elrod statement power cords hooked up to these guys? Power cords that are about the same width as the amplifiers?

Thought so.

Kharma MP150 amp with smaller Elrod power cord and Nordost Valkryja speaker cable

This last picture was hastily taken with the smaller, one might even say reasonably sized, Elrod power cable attached to the amplifier.

Finally, this system will have the Audio Note M8 phono on it for a few days this week, and with the Brinkmann Balance turntable running through it. THAT should be interesting. Hopefully we will get time to put the Audio Note cartridge on the Brinkmann, and with the Audio Note S4 stepup transformer, see what THAT sounds like.

This is what they call F-U-N.

November 6, 2006 by Michael

Updated Our On-site Equipment List found in the Tour

Still need to update the Tour photos…

But it was time to update the Equipment List.

Much of the text that we had there (and some of it still is there) was written in the first year of our store, some 4 years ago.

I had included stuff like This Magazines Award and That Magazines Award.

I thought I was sceptical at that time of the Reviewer community… hah! Now it is all but ludicrous.

I can just see the budding reviewer as a child on career day…

Politician? Reviewer? Politician? Reviewer?

Hey, at least it keeps them away from the nukes.

We try hard to ignore that part of the industry… really we do.

The equipment page was fun to redo – we have some cool stuff here – and some cool pics:

Audio Aero Capitole amplifier. The colors! More larger pics

The text describng our equipment here has a ways to go – to sort of migrate from the advertising copy approach which we kind of cut and pasted from various manufacturer’s copy to the “What Neli and Mike Think” approach.

For example:

Our Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeaker. More larger pics.

What we say now is:

“The best 2-way speaker technically and perhaps the most magical 2-way as well.

Ours here, pictured at left, are in aubergine – which is kind of like an eggplant purple. Subtly hallucinogenic – just like the way they sound.

That 1.0 inch diamond tweeter provides an amazing amount of resolution, seemingly much more than the 3/4 inch, and it just seems to be able to project the music from the speaker into the listener’s head.”

This is all to say that the speaker functions excellently in a technical sense from the perspective of a listener compared to all other 2-way loudspeakers (for the sake of argument please ignore the ‘stone knives and bearskins’ that J.A. et. al. use to measure sound quality).

It also is trying to say that there is something going on that is hard to describe, but revelatory and pleasurable – that the mind, while focused on and enjoying the very high resolution of the one inch diamond tweeter, is penetrated on other levels which at this time there are no words for.

So we call it magic. Or hallucinogenic. Or “don’t know what it is but I like it”.

It would be easy to kind of cop out and borrow lots of terminology from some religion or another, or Terrence McKenna, or New Age Hermetics, or…. .or Cheech and Chong.

But, although once in awhile borrowing phases from Star Trek TOS (which is simultaneously both tongue in cheek and strangely technically relevent), we try to avoid letting the ‘magic’ of muscial experience be drowned by the hyperbole, nomenclature, stifling hierarchical bureaucracy or consensual irrelevancies of these other pursuits.

We have our own hyperbole and consensual irrelevancies, thank you.

Oops, got side-tracked.

So, trying to explain each component we have here in a few words to someone checking out the list to see if we have something worthwhile listening to… What to say. What to say.

If they are just looking around at various dealers to hear what has received rave reviews – well, that is not going to narrow the list at all. Everything sounds great, haven’t you heard?

So, hopefully just putting down what we think is going on, in halting English, putting it out there – exposing our stumbling around in the dark, for everyone to see, as we try to figure out just WHAT this speaker, and a few other components here and there, do that is so darn AMAZING – that this will tempt people into comimg here to hear and experience the whatever-the-heck-it-is for themselves.

[Oh, and now I see in the TAS we just got that Wayne Garcia just raved the Mini Exquisites. Don’t know whether to giggle or scream. So I guess I’ll just go to bed. G’night everybody.]

[P.S. Hope everyone had a peaceful night. The problem with a rave reviews from most reviewers is that it puts a potentially really great speaker or component on the same level as all the mediocre speakers and components that the reviewer also gave rave reviews to.

Yes, many dealers just point to the recommended lists in Stereophile and TAS and grunt a little – and so random raves do spread the sales around to a wide variety of products – but it does a disservice to the consumer interested in the sound of their equipment. Why must this industry treat audiophiles like ‘marks’ at a carnival – like they were just wallets and purses with credit cards for arms, industry sanctioned ‘recommeded lists’ for eyes, and without any ears? We can do better.]

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

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