Some photos:

The tops are now on the new Audio Note Kegon Balanced amps. Even with the old $700 used M1 serving as preamplifier, these amps are killer. Very controlled. Very perfect. Like the Nordost ODIN interconnect, it can be hard to find any flaws [we try, it is our job to try, I guess. Haven’t found one yet, unless it is the lack of 211 sweetness. Surprisingly, I do not miss the 211. Not sure why. Maybe the M1 is sweet enough. Or that I have finally outgrown the 211. Time will tell, I guess.]

We are using empty Walker Vivid boxes to hold up the big ELROD power cords [I think it looks cool, but is this kind of like product placement in movies? I guess it is better than using boxes advertising Mastercard and Visa I know what you are thinking. That this is supposed to be a family blog. What’s next? Neon lights? Sorry, I’m in a strange mood today ….].

Also, Nordost ODIN speaker cable is making its way through the photo.

The old high-gain Audio Note Kegon amps are in the background.

A better photo of the Sound Lab U1 system we demo’ed yesterday.

A close-up of the elegantly compact Soundlab system.

We have so many things in the queue … so many things lined up to try, that it gets a little overwhelming. The exact sequence of things gets a lot of discussion and seems to be updated on an almost hourly basis.

We have:

1. Compare the charged ELROD powercord that has been on the Nordost ViDar cable burner to a charged ELROD that has not been on the burner - i.e. How does the ViDar affect performance? We already did the cold (uncharged) Vidar’ed ELROD compared to the hot (charged) un-ViDar’ed ELROD. [Note, ELRODs take about 3 days or so to charge up their capacitors]. While this was ijntersting, and we will report on it, not being the brightest bears in the woods, we finally realized that this was kind of confusing [I bet you are confused, too, by now ], overloading the charged versus uncharged test with the Vidar’ed versus un-Vidar’ed test.

I said it was fun. But it also requires a degree in Research Methods… apparently.

2. Compare the Kegon Balanced with the old high-gain Kegons. We can do this on the Kharma Mini Exquisites - which we anticipate will show that 1) … well, let’s not make any predictions [see, I’m getting smarter. Maybe there is hope…]. But the Kharma is actually quite hard to drive, especially the bass - especially if you want that big open Kharma sound [Kharmas always sound exciting and delicious and big, but not always that room pressurizing wrap-around that many people crave like hot butter on potatoes].

3. Compare the Nordost ODIN speaker cable to the Jorma Design PRIME speaker cable on the Marten Coltrane Supremes. This will be… well, there may not be a winner. I expect the ODIN to be more dynamic, which the Supremes love, and the PRIME to be more detailed, which the Supremes love. But for all I know I am getting it exactly backwards. That’s what shootouts are for. Proving it one way or another [at least with respect to the equipment we have here - we do try to perform part of a shootout on a completely different system to make sure that out results more or less reflect the general case].

4. Compare the Kharma Mini Exquisites to the Audio Note SEC High Efficiency Signature speakers. OK, yes, completely different… but both are 2-ways and, well they were the same price but now the Minis are $60K [seen the dollar lately?] and, well the AN speakers are… we’ll know when Neli gets the price list out [uh, oh, she’s gonna smack me when she reads this… I am already bracing for the impact… hurry up and finish this so I can delete it before she sees it ]. I expect the Kharmas to be more detailed and the AN more dynamic. Duh. AN is almost horn-like and Kharma has that legendary midrange resolution. But what else will we hear?

5. Compare the M1 phono stage to the Lamm LP2 phono preamplifier. OK, Neli thinks this test is stupid too… but I want to hear the difference in character between the two. We’ve had a number of other inexpensive and expensive phono stages in here, so this is not all THAT outrageous.

6. Compare the old EMM Labs CDSA to the new one with the upgraded transport and feet. We should be getting close to getting 700 hours on the new CDSA soon now, one would think [I don;t have a little 700 hours cooking timer on it or anything].

7. Oh yeah, we still have to do the interconnect shootout where the signal is quite large, between the preamp and the amp. We actually point to a system periodically and say ‘oh, this would be a convenient time and configuration to perform the aforementioned test’ [well, we don’t use the word ‘aforementioned’ in casual conversation, sorry]. But do we sit down and do the shootout? Noooooooo. It does take about 6 or 7 hours of focused concentrated listening, so it is hard to find the time. But soon….

8. We want to compare the high-power ELROD powercords to the low-powered ones on the Lamm ML2.1. At what point to low-powered amps draw high-power? Just what IS the difference in sound between the two?

9. I am sure there is a 9. And 10….

… and system Three has none.

Both RixRax equipment racks are now over on the second system. We wanted the added capability to compare two turntables, two phono stages, and the Audio Note Ongaku to the Kegon Balanced to the Kegon.

We put the Kehon Balanced amps on the Kharma Mini Exquisites.

The tops have been off so we can stare at the internal electronics for awhile But the tops will be back on soon enough… 1) they take up a lot of room just laying around, 2) the safest place for the tops of the chassis is on the chassis, and 3) just to get the aesthetic effect of a system that does not have exposed tubes.

Since our Audio Note M9 Phono preamp is still to arrive, we are using the Audio Note M1 phono preamplifier to drive the Kegon Balanced. We also had the M1 on the Ongaku integrated for awhile, to get a feel for the sound of the M1 in the system that we are so very familiar with.

The M1 is a very nice pre and I, personally, want to keep it here forever. At the price it sells for on Audiogon sometimes, $700, it sounds more like a $5K to 10K pre - and it always surprises me.

All the low-end AN gear surprises me - I keep expecting a more discordant and harsh sound - like the low end of every other line of equipment. But nooooo, this has more harmonics and warmth than the top-of-the-line, which is more neutral and detailed and transparent and realistic.

The end of the rack is now ALFULLY close to the speaker. But we figure the trade-off is worth it - that we can configure some great sounding systems that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to hear.

The Audio Note Kegon Balanced on the Kharma loudspeakers.

The Audio Note Kegon Balanced. On first blush, the M1 pre + Kegon Balanced amps is very, very competitive with the Ongaku integrated amp.

I would say more neutral [OK, nothing has that 211 sound except 211-based tube amps and the Kegons are 300B-based amps] and more transparent - more separation …and solidity?

We’re still listening…

The Soundlab system without a rack looks pretty darn cool itself. The Audio Aero Prestige is sitting on a Rix Rax amp stand.

Yes, that is a Nordost ODIN between the Prestige and Edge Signature One amps.

The Ongaku is now in System Four in Listening Room Three (L3). We haven’t hooked it up yet - this is still a AN Oto integrated-driven system.

The last few days I have been serving on a Jury in a very minor criminal case here in Boulder County. It was certainly an interesting and all-absorbing experience - a randomly selected 12 people who were all very well educated, white, 8 men, 4 women passing judgment on a Hispanic’ woman’s complaints against a Native American man. But after 7 - 8 hours of deliberation - I think decisions were reached that were accurate based on the available evidence - the combination of so many prejudices canceled each other out leaving the distillate truth [I believe].

WAY too much responsibility for me to want to do it again anytime soon.

Sonically, the little 20 minute jurist orientation video by Ed Sardella [a local newscaster] sounded screetchy and was recorded at way too high a level - but the microphone/speaker system in the court room itself was actually not too bad - serving more as a supplemental voice amplification system - and not needed by the louder-speaking lawyers in the room

OK, back to shootouts and… unfortunately, updating of lots of price lists that have rolled in in the last couple of weeks.

The Audio Asylum Critics’ hangout had some gossip. I haven’t noticed HP’s marginalization at TAS - it seems like his copy grows and shrinks at random anyway. It does have a different feel than the ‘corporate’ [is that the right term? Rah rah. Lacking depth. etc.] feel of the rest of the magazine. But rumors of HP starting another magazine… he doesn’t seem hungry or interested enough in what is happening in audio anymore in my opinion… Theyalso mention in this thread that it is common knowledge? that TAS’s circulation numbers are falsified. Maybe so, but it certainly keeps getting fatter and Stereophile keeps getting skinnier… for whatever reasons it appears like TAS is doing better and better these days.

Checked out Dagogo for the first time in awhile. They seem to have a ton of reviews listed on the front page of cool looking stuff. For all you web developers out there, if your target demographic is older people, you need to use a large text font - because we are near as to be blind [although with the FireFox browser, ctrl + or ctrl mouse-scroll-button makes all the text larger - but I happened to visit using Internet Explorer, which I think a few people still use …or is it ].

The Marten [previously Marten Design, the guys who make our Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers. Yeah, them.] folks have just finished their new demonstration studio - the Marten Center. Extensive photos and commentary in Swedish is at the Swedish Euphonia AudioForum [anyone else noticing that Audiogon ad at the top of the page on that forum? Now that our country, and by inference everything in it, is worth half as much as it was 7 years ago, This is really a good time for Europeans to shop on this side of the pond for used gear.]

Notice how the bass towers are on the inside? Just like we had ours until about 3 days ago…

OK, we are NOT the Avantgarde news channel. For one, I can barely spell it. But here is the photo of the latest version of the Duo Mezzo:

Well, we finally decided our experiment of having the bass towers INSIDE the main towers had gone on long enough.

The speakers were fairly easy to move, though both of us participated in a you push you pull fashion. The Black Diamond Racing Cone pucks slide pretty easily across the carpet - but, especially in the case of the heavier bass units, the relatively high friction of the plush wool carpet sometimes causes the cone feet fall off of the pucks and the speaker tips a little bit and Neli accuses me of reckless driving [it IS kind of dangerous when the towers are close to each other, we really, really (add more reallys as you see fit) wouldn’t want the two titans to tip one into the other!].

The main towers are about 6 inches closer together.

The original reason the main towers were positioned on the outside of the bass units was to try and get a wider sound stage than what we had before. And it worked.-
But over time we worried that we were loosing some coherence, solidity and stability in the imaging and soundstaging. It was really pretty darn goooood, don’t get me wrong, but we felt we had reached a limit as to what we could do. We want more, MORE!

So, the initial impressions? Well, we have more positioning to do… BUT… the soundstage is perhaps even wider than before - so we are good to go on that front. But solidity etc. was perhaps a little worse than before.

Darn! The just-plopping-them-down-somewhere-near-where-we-thought-they-should-go technique failed us once again [you know, it DOES sometimes work, and, seriously, rolling the dice this way does lead to some discoveries about specific room-speaker interactions that the strict-placement methodologists would never discover].

Anyway, I am hopeful that having nothing between the main towers will improve imaging. Makes sense, right, because the bass towers were acting like some kind of really strangely configured equipment rack between the speakers that are generating all the music’s location cue frequencies.

However, that said, we sure are tempted to at least put SOME of the equipment on a rack between the speakers sometimes - so that [most likely the digital] part of the system can be cabled with pure, 100%, high-octane cables like the Jorma Design PRIME [who needs to imbibe anymore?], Audio Note PALLAS [who needs Carnegie Hall anymore?], and Nordost Odin [who needs components anymore?].

Well, I exaggerate [a little ], but hopefully have also communicated why we are tempted to put a rack up front sometime - the heck with imaging [well, the rack WOULD be pretty far back from the main towers …so its impact WOULD be really minor, right?].

But the 2nd-rack-in-the-center would probably be turntable less, and have us still run the turntable from the side of the room. Why? Because stepping over maps and around cables and power cords is annoying at best, and with turntables, it just makes putting on an LP more about tip-toeing through the equipment than ‘Oh! Let’s hear THIS!’. I guess CDs are just so Slam Bam Play that it is not quite as perverted of an experience. Maybe it is because everyone has their preferred position to stand in when putting on an LP, and we just feel more comfortable when a $30K (or $80K) amp is not bogarting in our fav-o-rite location. Anybody else feel that the usability of centrally located racks is a little less than desirable?

Anyway, time for the speaker location tweaking process - which usually takes awhile… argh.

Anyone else bored by after surfing around trying to find something interesting on the Net?

Me. Too.

Things might appear kind of slow here too, the way we have been having to stage the introduction of new equipment into the systems in order to facilitate a number of shootouts we really, really wanted to hold - so that we can really, really understand what the advantages and disadvantages are of one thing compared to another.

But between shootouts… we are largely just playing music and holding auditions.

So… we will try something new. I wanted to do this for awhile - it is kind of like reviewing the reviewer’s reviews - but wider in scope.

And that is to post news items about what is happening on the Net. Not ‘Musical Fidelity releases version 124.1 of their 206 watt amp’, but rather ‘Fremer reports on failings of Grand Prix Monaco Equipment Racks at Audiogon’ kind of news [I messed this thread myself - but I *heard* all about it.].

And it would help if some of you helped out by posting comments to these News Posts about threads and news about the goin’s on out there.

To start… we will have a little catching up to do.

At CES, Positive Feedback’s Danny Kaey teamed up with Josh to help restart and grow the SonicFlare online magazine. Lately he has been popping out reviews left and right, which, interestingly, are simulcast on Postive Feedback as well.

Audio Circle continues to have an impact, at least on some of our local audiophiles here, larger than their modest membership would indicate. Mostly this means people cycling through Red Wine, Omega, some lower-end PC audio gear, etc. Some ModWright-modded equipment too, but not so much the ModWright-branded equipment. Similarly equipment like Odyssey is left out - seemingly in response to the ever-hopeful search for champagne on a beer budget…. thereby leaving some damn good beer on the shelves while drinking some champagne that might be mislabeled.

SixMoons continues to hang in there - though it is mostly Srajan doing reviews these days. I have no idea why more people aren’t doing reviews for 6moons - and why the number of advertisers keeps fluctuating so much. For those of you who don’t know, Sixmoons has the best online news stream, although to appears to be published only once a month, about the releases of new high-end audio products.

Otherwise, flame wars on Audio Asylum, threads disappearing on Audiogon, Stereophile getting smaller, TAS and HiFi+ slowly losing their edge, the 20,000+ AVSForum is the only high-end forum but still, somehow, largely content free… [except for outing the rumor that there is a new super-Meitner player due to arrive in the 2009 time frame ].

… yada yada yada… same ole same ole.

Let’s see, Globe Audio Marketing and Brinkmann North America have announced that they are bring back Avantgarde Acoustic to the North American continent. This line was previously so mismanaged that it kind of killed the line here for several years. It is of my opinion that European manufacturers just do not understand that some American distributors are just out for a ‘quick buck’. The concept seems to escape them.

Well, it looks like Avantgarde is now going with some reputable organizations and, as much as we think there are problems with their speakers, they are starting to look awfully good compared to the … stuff… that has been flooding the market these last few years. This was something I was going to talk about in the show report as well - that there is a natural percolation up towards the Best of Breed for some brands who just hang in there as every Tom, Dick and Harry puts out yet another new under-performing $40K speaker.

Anyone who knows of anything else, anything else at all, please post about it in the comments section.

We have to jury rig the Vidar in order to burn in power cords.

The Vidar passes a very complex sequence of low power signals over cables when it is burning them in. We have run two full cycles, about 8 - 9 days, s far.

How this works for power cords, which one might think would like to be broken in with, say, a monstrous 10 amp signal, we’ll see in the upcoming shootout between this and the exact same powercord that has just been sitting in the system on a transport.

We will probably have to do two shootouts, because it takes about 3 days for an Elrod power cable to full charge up, because they have a large amount of capacitance.

So two shootouts, unless the Vidar’d powercord is obviously better: one with the Vidar’d power cord straight off the burner,. and one with the Vidar’d power cord sitting in the system somewhere charging up for 3 days so that both it and the UN-Vidar’d powercord are BOTH charged up.

Hard work these shootouts…. or maybe just hard work sometimes explaining them