The equipment of what we are taking is here:
Audio Federation’s equipment list for our room at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2006 in Denver Colorado
It is supposed to rain late tomorrow and snow the next day here…. So it looks like we are going to try to go to the show tomorrow morning…
No we are NOT ready.
or “Round ’em up, Head ’em out”
or “We’re just going to pieces”
or “Break in Two Systems, Two Systems, Two Systems in one”
Breaking in Sound Lab Ultimate loudspeakers and Audio Note M10 preamplifier together – using the EDGE Signature One amps and Audio Aero Capitole CD player driving them over on the floor to the right [Oh, you can’t see it in this picture, but you can see the Nordost Valhalla interconnects snaking across the floor there].
This is all just a temporary setup. We are breaking in each notch on the M10 volume control. We got up to ‘5’ yesterday, but that was driving the little Kegons pretty hard – and the Coltranes were getting pretty loud.
But over here, on the still somewhat inefficient Sound Lab speakers – with a solid state amp… we are doing ‘6’ today and will do notch ‘7’ tomorrow. That ‘should’ be enough, the Marten Coltrane Supremes (which made it through customs, yay!) are much more efficient than even the Coltranes, so notch ‘7’ should be plenty loud enough for the show…?
Every time we up the volume a notch, the M10 sound is bright and annoying for several hours and the pre lets off another waft of New Electronic Component Smell [Yummmmmm. Is this the only reason we buy TVs and computers and $50K preamps, to be able to experience this smell? Nahhhhhh].
This M10 + Sound Lab speaker-centered system sounds surprisingly good. The Sound Labs really like upstream equipment that errs on the warm side (as opposed to the more icey Parasound or Pass Labs soild-state amps, the former is usually shown witht eh SoundLabs at CES and the latter is to be at this RMAF show in the IsoMike room), and even warmish cables help – like the Pranawire Cosmos speaker cables.
The latest Sound Lab upgrade did seem to tighten the bass quite a bit and increase the midrange dynamics as well – adding perhaps 3dB? of efficiency. Still breaking in, but I noticed that the unfamiliar bluring of images in the soundstage that I heard when we first starting playing the SoundLabs after their upgrade has almost completely gone away.
The old Marten Coltrane system, going to pieces Time to box up most of this system, and move the Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers to listening room 3. The Sound Labs are going to go over here, next, after the show – and how we get around them when we go up and down the steps is still to be determined.
The current state of listening room 3. Most of the system proper is going to the show, including the Acoustic Dreams rack.
We want to put the Marten Coltranes in here after the show – but they sound best with the Lamm ML2.1 amps and the HRS MXR rack. But the Kharma Mini Exquisites sound best with the EDGE amps… it will be hard to build a system that is optimized for two different speakers like this… not to mention the Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers.
And then there is the HRS MXR equipment rack problem, or rather lack of problem: we want a double wide on the Coltrane Supreme speaker system in listening room #2,and another one upstairs so we can play a turntable in listening room #1 (it is the only thing that will work on our very bouncy floor) – but we currently only have one rack….
So little time (and money) and such a long Wish List.
Argh.
New and cold out of the box, played quietly, the Audio Note M10 linestage preamplifier was heavenly.
Several hours later, played loudly, there was a harshness / brightness to the upper mids (could have been the Meitner still wamrmng up… people (and you reviewers out there) do know that the Meitner takes about a day to warm up, right?)
The next day, no harshness, but a very tubey tube tube sound.
Today – sounds pretty good. With the purity of the Meitner / Emm Labs front end and the M10, the upper frequencies are very very lovely, the diamond tweeter approaching (and perhaps even supassing?) that of the Acapella plasma tweeters. It WAS very lovely and giggle-inducing.
Tomorrow – who knows.
Break-in darn it. BREAK-IN!
We are thinking about seeing if we can keep all of this plugged in somehow, and then making a mad dash to the show so that everything will only be off for a few hours, instead of the day or so that seems much more likely given that it all sits on and in front of the rack that we are taking.
The Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers are in Denver in Customs. The drivers of the Supremes are broken in at the factory for several hundred hours, as are various other o fits pieces and parts. Cool huh? But we would be a lot happier if they had several months on them.
The important thing now is to get them into the room and just have them sit still for awhile (all that jostling during moves is not good for any component), acclimize to room temperature (it really helps things to sound better if its parts are not both cold and warm and hot at the same time), and get them playing music. And I do not want to argue why all these things are so, just like I do not want to argue why gravity works the way it does – it just does. I mean is.
These things just are. Try and figure out why, if you want to and have the time and expertise. But just don’t deny their existence because nobody can explain why they are indeed so to your satifaction.
Oh, and some of these things people measure, trying to be all ‘scientific’ and using equipment with lots of dials and acronyms instead of nouns. Well, you might as well just the weigh two pieces of equipment to determine which sounds better as to compare them with most of this pseudo-scientific BS. Just because electrons are juicier in one cable than another does not necessarily have anything to so with the quality and accuracy of the sound as enjoyed by a human being. They never prove this casual effect, one way of the other, between what they are trying to measure and the experience that we lay down the big bucks to enjoy. They just pontificate (or assume – and we all know what Felix had to say about ass-u-me-ing something:-)) it is so and awawaaaaaay they go.
Oops, I think that was a soap box. Get that thing out of here!
Anyone know if it Rocky Mountain AudioFest or Rocky Mountain Audiofest or Rocky Mountain Audio Fest… or Rocky Mount Audio Feast?
