I was emailing with Yoav of YG Acoustics about Spintricity earlier this month and he mentioned that the Japan Audio Show was the same time as RMAF this year.

Well, I did not realize it falls on EXACTLY THE SAME 3 days:

Japan Audio Show

We hope to get some photos of this years show in Japan, but the scuttlebutt is that many exhibitors at that show discourage people taking photographs… can you imagine? A show with a policy like that would make me feel… nauseous.

Traditionally, everyone who drives to RMAF, including us, wants it to be early October (or Sept) because that means that the probability of snow is less. Loading and unloading in the snow, trying to get over the snowed in mountain passes to the show - it just ain’t all that much fun.

But next year RMAF is on Oct. 15th. Oh boy oh boy.

But at least it would allow people to attend both shows if they want to.

The Audio Note M9 Phono preamp is still at the shippers… and 2 of the HRS M3 platforms are still coming in to a different shipper - but hopefully by driving all over Denver we will have everything together for our 9030 and 9026 rooms at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009.

Everything except… a turntable for the big room. With the arm not arriving until tomorrow in Denver, with the crates to take the rack we would use for the turntable not arriving until tomorrow down in Denver - it is just too much…

Also, we really wanted to use an all Nordost ODIN system - although we love our 10 meter Valhalla (which runs from the rack with turntable that we usually have near the rear of the room) and we even had it converted to balanced for this show - it would just not be the ODIN.

So this means the entire system will be in the front of the room. This means going up in front of everybody to change a CD. It means just one source so we can’t swap quickly between them, leaving some time where No Music Is Playing.

So it sucks. But we hope the small size of the resultant system, it ability to be optimized with the 100% ODIN, and our better dispositions because we are not dead tired from lugging tons of equipment around - will all be of benefit to the overall show experience in our room.

Hope so, anyway.

We will be doing live reporting from the show - as usual. If they take the internet out of our exhibit room we will just make them Put It Back. Hopefully a few new features we added to Spintricity will let me put up more than the maximum 26 photos - which is usually all I have time for [which took about 1.5 hours]. I am hoping to double that… maybe even more than double.

We’ll see…

[OK. Here are the official list of features. Pretty impressive.

See the full brochure on Spintricity.]

o One gain stage from DAC to output with fully discrete Class A circuitry
o MDAT™ signal processing technology
o Provides 2x DSD upsampling for SACD and PCM playback
o Preserves phase, frequency and dynamic integrity of waveform
o MDAC™ discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit
o MFAST™ technology for instant signal acquisition, jitter-free performance
o High-isolation resonant mode power supply for silent, green operation
o Exclusive aerospace-grade composite laminate circuit boards
o Silky smooth Esoteric™ drive
o Sculpted, brushed aluminum chassis
o Low resonance, internally braced design with thick, machined sole plate
o Available in silver or black
o LCD display with four brightness levels and a display-off setting
o New precision-machined aluminum multifunction infrared remote control
o Remote-controllable polarity inversion performed in the digital domain
o PCM inputs via AES/EBU and Toslink

For those of you with a monitor wider than 530 pixels…

Emm Labs XDS1 CD/SACD Player

Audio Note PALLAS interconnect

Several videos from CEDIA 2009

Milan Show coverage by Audiophile Bob

Milan Show coverage of Audio Note by Dave Cope

Our first exhibitor in the Online Audiophiles Show: Kevin’s Place

(we will put up the ‘turned on’ series of Emm labs XDS1 photos and some Nordost ODIN photos in the next day or two. And then it is off to RMAF!)

OK.

I am not sure what good it will do. And it is not like I think the entire Audiophile press is corrupt - which I don’t.

But we have been the only ones doing a show report that talks about the sound for a long time - and, like the very very few honest news programs out there that have actual real facts [you know, from Reality] and lots of bad news - people just do not know what to think about our ‘odd man out’ show report so to speak .

I think the parallel is the Miss America contest [or Miss Universe, or Mr. Universe for that matter, although Schwarzenegger in his day was the clear winner]. An audio show for 99% of the press and attendees is a Miss Universe contests with no ‘talent competition’.

She walks out in a bathing suit, people vote on looks and their preferred measurements, and that is it.

At an audio show, people vote for what they think sounds best with respect to their preferences. That’s it. A beauty contest that is all about the eye of the beholder.

It is like a car magazine where everyone takes a test drive and they all vote based on appearance and their experience about which is the best car. Who cares to talk about what the car will be used for. Or safety. Or reliability. Or price/performance. Or suitability for the average person. Or maintenance costs.

It is a very shallow ‘opinion’ by someone with no vested interest - they will not have to marry Miss America nor purchase the car with their hard earned money.

Yeah, so maybe the press is populated by shallow people and shallow people read what they write and all is as it should be in a shallow world.

So where is the place for people like us, and I sincerely hope, some of you?

People who want to know what is the best - REALLY, HONEST TO GOD. People who want them ranked and their weaknesses and strengths pointed out in a clear, straight forward manner.

I mean, audio is so much easier than cars. A car might be ruled out by many people because the driver’s seat is just too uncomfortable for some unknown reason, that the head room is just 1/2 inch too low, the suspension is just a wee bit too stiff.

Things like this is audio: the speakers too heavy to get up the stairs, the design requires too much space and your room is too small, whatever are easy and obviosu for us all to deal with AFTER we know which is the better speaker and which is not.

Given a kind of an average over types of sound, a sound that is not so over the top in some areas that it will be off-putting to most people, what room sounds the best. It will have very high if not the highest marks in what makes a good sound reproducing system - and doesn’t do anything so bad that invalidates all the other high scores.

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OK. Two thought experiments.

1.

Imagine an art show occurring in the Marriott. Each room has works by a single artist.

The press does not know the names of the artists. One of the rooms has a few unknown pieces by Picasso, a few unknown by Leonardo Da Vinci and the rest of the 100 rooms or so have art by local artists, some of which advertise in the magazines the press represents - so they are familiar with and know the artists and recognize their work.

Who gets best of show? What percentage give best of show to Picasso and/or Leonardo?

2.

Same art show. The names of the artists are posted on the doors to each room.

Who gets best of show. What order are the best of shows after the first 2?

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What does this mean?

It means that show reports are by and large useless [and I would expand this blanket statement to reviews as well].

The only cases where they are useful is when a reporter (when they have the ability to understand what they are experiencing) gets really excited about something they see [hey , that local artist COULD be the next Picasso].

As someone who came from the outside, thinking that as press I should report an accurate and honest account of what things sound like, well, I was the first one at the time (and I was clumsy and inexperienced) - and still the only one now.

A lot of people read the show reports, but they do not really like hearing bad news. Those real new channels only get 1%(?) of the listeners, and that is for presumably the same reason. Sure, I could accuse all the bad sounding rooms of being terrorists - and probably get my own cable channel - but I doubt if I could do it and keep from cracking up [laughing I mean ] at the blatant absurdity of this world.

So, do I continue bring bad news to people about how things really sound? It is not really ‘bad’, it is just that there is usually some bad and some good and some ho hum. It is not all BEST EVER like people have been trained to expect by the press.

Or do I put the real poop here in the blog, and let the masses see and learn about what is at the show without any independent coverage on Spintricity? I do like helping the ’small guy’ get the word out - one of the reasons I do not talk much about the sound in their rooms unless it is actually better than expected - and this approach of segregating the show report would probably help them….as Spintricity show reports would probably get even more visitors that would then see the small guy’s wares.

A little rambling, I know.

But, as you might expect, this is a subject that I think about quite a bit.

————————

Summarizing:

*Preferences of the reporter have no place in a real show report - some sound is REALLY better and some is not for 90% of the listening public
*99% of the Press does not do their job
*Every system has some things it does not do perfectly
*Most people do not like to be reminded of reality
*Some people, however, will suffer facts in order to make informed buying decisions.
*All people are so inundated with lies and hype that they do not know what to believe
*Our show reports, now on Spintricity, is the only one [although Stereophile does darn good] to cover the small manufacturers

Our goals are two-fold: bringing audiophiles and manufacturers together (especially small ones, Musical Fidelty does not need our help). And to help our readers make informed buying decisions.

Perhaps these are best served by bifurcating the show report, putting analysis here on the blog, and leaving Spintricity to focus on helping connect audiophiles with cool equipment.

Opinions anyone?

When I wrote last year’s report, I had just finished reading the Watchmen graphics novel. I really liked the way the Rorschach spoke, and it was with his voice that I wrote the commentary of the report.

In the graphic novel, he was still a wacko, but he had this kind of cool, clipped, adverb-less way of speaking that I thought would be great for describing the rooms at the show. The movie -which I finally got around to watching - didn’t really capture the voice very well.

In any case, I meant it to be kind of CAMP and a tongue-in-cheek kind of over the top detective-speak more like Joe Friday than the Rorschach character in the movie.

The feedback I got however was that it did not go over like that with a lot of people,and I apologize if it seemed rude or psycho.

Maybe if I put up a little Joe Friday icon next to each comment, people will get the humor of it all….

It really was fun to write. Leaving out adverbs. Cool. Quick. To the point. Neli says still mistakes in XDS1 post. Argh. Perhaps kill self first. Then fix post.

As you all probably know by now, Rix Rax decided to sell direct a little while ago.

To that end I finally got around to removing it from the lists of products we carry here scattered through the little website of ours.

I will however leave this link:

http://www.audiofederation.com/dealership/rixrax/index.htm

which has some photos we have collected over the years of these beautiful equipment racks.

For those in search of an attractive, do-no-harm style rack (that can support, for example, HRS M3 vibration control platforms under the components as funds allow), we recommend you consider Rix Rax as a viable solution.

We spent some time comparing the Emm Labs XDS1 single-box player to the older Emm Labs two-box CDSD transport DCC2 DAC combo. From this comparison we can deduce some differences between the XDS1 and the two-box Emm Labs TSD1 transport and DAC2 DAC (which we spent quite a bit of time with previously and with which we did this comparison with the older pair many times).

Whew!

The one sentence conclusion is that the XDS1 is a evolutionary improvement ‘in kind’ with the improvements the TSD1/DAC2 brought us compared to the CDSD/DCC2 - taking it another step in the direction of blacker backgrounds, control and separation - with unexpectedly, a few additional evolutionary improvements in the bass and dynamics areas.

By evolutionary, I mean you don’t immediately wince when you go from the XDS1 to the CDSD/DCC2 [it is not like going from an ODIN power cord to a ordinary top-of-the-line power cord]. You won’t immediately wince - but you will eventually.

Going from the CDSD/DCC2 to the XDS1 it is much more apparent. There is a greater ease to the presentation: dynamically, details, harmonics - it all makes the other player seem like it is ‘trying hard’ whereas the TSD1 it just happens effortlessly.

Personally, I think these are all related. The greater control over each note of the XDS1 lends itself to having greater ’slam’, along with the blacker background to be able to pick out individual violins instead of it sounding like just one with a lot of ‘noise that could be other violins’.

We could play the XDS1 louder than the other pair - it had greater resolving capability and whereas the older pair as not able to disambiguate the individual sounds, making it kind of bloby and overwhelming at certain frequencies, the TSD1 sounded just fine. All the instruments could be heard correctly so at the higher volume, it just sounded louder [i.e. the slightly confused rendering of the notes was always there in the older pair, they just didn’t overwhelm us with their unpleasantness until the volume was turned way up].

The UNconfused rendering of the notes of the XDS1, the significantly enhanced control over the notes, the deeper, more round and 3-dimensional bass, the blacker background, made a more immediate and significant impact than the TSD1/DAC2 did over the older CDSD/DCC2 - lending us to conclude that the XDS1 is at least one-step-beyond the TSD1/DAC2 pair.

And now I want to talk about the more psychological aspects of the sound of the XDS1. This is the most fun part for me - both to experience (!) and to write about. But it is also sad because it takes a $25K player [as well as a decent system. This system is quite good - but its optimization is still an in-progress thing] to get to this state-of-mind I am going to TRY to describe.

When you first get the XDS1, it takes some amount of time of concentrated listening [for me] but eventually I got to this space where it I was feeling so much joy listening to one track after the next, one CD after the next. I think a lot of it was because I could just relax ‘in-between the notes’. The awesomely deep black background [without attenuating detail. This is important. This is different than most other ‘blacker backgrounds’ and seems most similar to the Walker Turntable black. But it is even blacker.] combined with resolving capability that we really do not associate with digital players, combined with the control to make the notes do what they the music says they should do and the dynamic capability to make it all seem easy resulted in….

.. an ability to relax and ‘Trust the Music’.

.. to let the music wrap all these strands of melodies around and around you as you listen…

.. picking this melody or that instrument to follow or focus on … but the others are still there(!), doing their thing, not competing with each other, but complementing each other

.. to marvel at the wonderfully rich complexity and beauty of the notes down to the smallest aspect of each note and how it fits into its strand of the melody

.. how it becomes an almost tactile thing - an almost physical experience… ‘touching the music and being touched by it’

Anyway, I had these experiences with the TSD1/DAC2 on a almost perfectly optimized system [Coltrane/Ongaku/ODIN and sometimes some PRIME (which additionally allowed us to experience decays of amazing beauty)]. Now the XDS1 is allowing me to have them on a less optimized system [Audio Note speakers|Kegon Balanced|DAC2 Preamp|ODIN|Valhalla|AcroLink].

Already I am an addict. Pursuing these experiences is about half of what I devote my personal system ‘I Really Want That’ energies to.

[The other half is more amorphous right now - in the direction of a purer Audio Note approach combined with big open well-designed horn speakers. Yeah, amorphous because we don’t got no horn speakers here (and the ones that we did are moving in a direction untenable to us).]

Ergo, almost all my personal audio desire/passion/addiction is for these systems fronted by the newest Emm Labs gear and the high quality systems that are able to do what I want them to do - to provide these kinds of experiences.

Jeez, and I told Neli this was going to be a short write up.

[People seemed to enjoy the previous photo shoot, so here are a few more - with the power on]

Breaking in the XDS1 player on a system that… sort of resembles the one we are taking to RMAF. We think. Today.

Haven’t done any serious shootouts yet, but seems to be less digital [how can you be less digital than something that doesn’t sound digital? I don’t know - but it does] and have more separation than the CDSD/DCC2 pair [we are using the DCC2 preamp for the XDS1]. I think I remember saying the same thing about the TSD1/DAC2 when we first heard them too. Emm Labs is steadily progressing toward digital nirvana.

One thing we can say - the player responds to the remote control very quickly. Switching tracks takes about 1.0 seconds. That, by itself, is almost worth the $25K price tag.

Several shots here of the Esoteric transport with the metal tray

The drawer opening during the photo.

On power up.

There are several websites that list used equipment for sale. Here is a new website that makes a list of equipment, in this case McIntosh, that is for sale on Ebay:

http://www.mcintoshstereoamplifiers.com

I am curious how much people use sites like this. We thought of doing one, even of making it a page in the magazine each month, one that would display components for sale for all brands of equipment.

But then we thought that nobody would be all that interested in yet another classifieds page - and it would likely antagonize all the other sites that do this: Audio Asylum, AudioXSell, Audiogon, etc…. especially if we screen scraped them like Oodle does

You also got:

# eCoustics.com.
# Audio Video Marketplace
# Audio Shopper
# Avmarket
# Canuck Audio Mart
# HiFi Classifieds
# HigherFi

and every forum and forum wannabe has associated classifieds ads it seems.

Everyone wants to unseat Audiogon - but no one has made much headway as far as I can tell.