Picture Medley

Just some fun pictures we had laying around on the hard disk…

Closeup of Marten Coltrane
Closeup of the diamond tweeter and ceramic midrange of the Marten Coltrane speaker. This is the walnut version of these speakers and the wood is starting to take on a nice rich patina as it ages.

Edge NL Reference
The Edge NL Reference 800 watt ‘pyramid’ amplifier. This picture really captures the sleek metalic look of the amplifiers.

Closeup of Edge NL Reference
Closeup of the top of the Edge NL Reference 800 watt ‘pyramid’ amplifier. Here you can almost see how nice it is to touch these amplifiers, the powder coating feeling very nice, almost soft, to the touch. The cap on top and the way the sides are fastened makes the amplifiers water tight (and maybe even dust tight, which would be nice… see below).

The EMM Labs Meitner DCC2 at dark
The EMM Labs Meitner DCC2 at dark on an HRS M3 Isolation Base. This picture captures the color-coding of the buttons nicely, as well as showing a how the volume knob is so much fun to turn by hand.

The Lyra Titan cartridge
The Lyra Titan cartridge on a Brinkmann tonearm. This picture does not show it perfectly, but there is this feeling of the loooong tonearm snaking out fron the depths at the back of the turntable, the head ready to strike with it diamond tooth into the platter.

Closeup of the Brinkmann tonearm
Closeup of the Brinkmann tonearm. Ah, engineering. Lovin’ it.

Closeup of the Lyra Titan cartridge
Closeup of the Lyra Titan cartridge. Dust. There are lots of little dust particles, perhaps hairs from the wool carpet. They do not look serious enough toimpact the sound. But they are everywhere…

The Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm
The Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm

The Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm
Closeup of the Blue Magic Diamond cartridge on the Walker tonearm. More dust particles.

The Brinkmann Balance turntable control buttons
The Brinkmann Balance turntable control buttons. Left is 33 rpm, right is 45 rpm, center is OFF.Sometimes we turn it on and off just for the fun of touching the buttons.

The Nordost Vidar cable burn in device
The Nordost Vidar cable burn in device. More pictures from the post a few days ago.

The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers
The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers. I like the reflections of the cables and binding posts in the shiny carbon fiber on back of the Coltrane.

The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers
The Nordost Valhalla cables on the back of the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers. More reflection. These are the EU-safe WBT binding posts.

The Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight
The Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight. I like the pattern of shdows the various layers of conductors make. When this picture is blown up large, this looks like a work of abstract art. Or maybe industrial art.

Closeup of the Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight
Closeup of the Nordost Valhalla cables in sunlight held against the blue sky. You can really see how the cable is constructed. As desribed on the Nordost website:

“Each conductor is made from optimized diameter solid 99.999999% oxygen free copper that has 78 microns of extruded silver on the surface. The surface of each conductor is highly polished before a high precision Micro Mono-Filament wrap is applied.

The Micro Mono-Filament is helically wound over the conductor. A precision FEP jacket is then extruded over the conductor. A number of proprietary methods are used in this difficult and extremely precise manufacturing technique that reduces dielectric contact by a factor of more than 80%. Extremely mechanically stable, the conductors are effectively suspended in inert air, preventing oxidation. ”

Well, hope this all was as fun for you as it was for me!

It Takes a System

Well, it DOES take a system – otherwise no music comes out of them speakers.

And building a great sounding system takes time. It is not something everyone has the patience for, or the skill for, or desire for, or the time for.

I was remonded of this when a commercial came on TV for some, what I presume to be special in some way, brake pads. Yes, I am sure there are lots of people who shop the Auto Parts store and like to install custom brake pads on their automobile.

But I am not one of them. And I think the vast majority of people are like me.

So where does that put the ordinary person who does not want to put together a system a component at a time anymore than they want to put together a car a brake pad at a time?

We’ve talked about the system approach before, on both our Classic Systems page as well as our old Turnkey Systems page.

There are actually very few systems that really sound great – and they take awhile to find – but there are some. And most can be tailored a little bit one way or the other to suit the type of sound to suit the buyer (do you want all-season or performance tires, do you want a sunroof, do you want a nav or a dvd player, …).

To this end we are creating a Recommended Systems section that will list the systems we set up here that we think are killer in some way or another – and we will try to categorize the system’s sonic goals in the same way as was done in the Audiophile’s Guide’s sections on speakers, amps, CD players and preamps.

We are just starting the construction of the Recommended Systems pages – so if anyone has any ideas on how they would like to see the systems arranged or what information they would like to see about each system – please let us know!

Thanks, and Enjoy!

P.S. Oh, so it looks like Sonic Flare also mentioned selling complete systems this week as well. This meme must be getting around. Good.

Updating the Look and Feel of our Price Lists

Not sure how many people realize it, but we are one of the few dealers who put the prices of everything up on our website (whenever our supplier permits it). I know I always like to know the price of something BEFORE I call about what I think is a $500 thing only to learn it is a $5000 thing and am going to have to save up a few months to get it.

We still have the monolithic price list, and it will be here for a little while still.

But we have added another price list section, with one web page per product line, with little thumbnail pictures (so far, only Edge, Audio Aero, HRS and Marten have pictures) for each product and links to other parts of our site where there is more information. This will be the lower bandwith approach of the three views we are building:

* The old ‘product page’ for each product line accessible from the Products page and now the Site Map

* The new glossy Catalog pages (under development)

* The Price List pages (still being flessed out)

We hope these various views that each celebrate the excellence of the prouduct lines we carry in a different way will help people enjoy the site even more than before.