I think these guys have started something new in ‘music’ - it is highly visual, however, and very reference-heavy with a kind of mix-tape approach culled from society as a whole and not just other people’s music.

It is like Funkadelic meets Sun Ra meets Y2K. I do not think audiophiles in general will appreciate this genre so much. Just sayin’…

Yes, I did see them first on Conan [so it does translate to a live presentation… people switching instruments with each other at random during the song, a Michael Jackson looka-sounda-like, etc.].

In case y’all didn’t notice, we are moving to a future where all music content is going to be downloaded, not bought at a store [and not stored on your local computer]. One fundamental way this will change how we buy music that there will no longer be used music available at prices much less than the price paid for new music.

There is [currently] no concept of USED digital content.

I first came across this disconnect when wondering why people were buying Kindles at $79 when Kindle books cost $18 while at the same time they can buy the best books of all time for $1 to, say, $8… used. And then later sell them. Same is true for music - I can buy the best music albums in the world for $1 to say, $3 while kids are buying music at $1 a song, about $20/album [yes, I have to search a bit to find cheap LPs and CDs - no immediate gratification here]. AND, I can sell it later.

Getting albums for $1 allows us to explore new music, find things we might like, and equally valid, things we do not.

In the digital world you can sample music cuts at Amazon and spend $1 for the full cut, or subscribe to Spotify, Pandora etc. and hear music in a hit-and-miss kind of way because of various listening restrictions [the dunderheaded RIAA are as retarded as they are evil - funny how often these two things go hand-in-hand.].

Content will then be moving to a 100% subscription-based service… but will you be able to play music for your friends, or will the RIAA police come to your door and arrest you for illegal sharing of THEIR content? Don’t know.

Spotify wants all your friends to subscribe to their service, and then Facebook wants you to listen to music on Facebook that your friends listen to, but not at the same time. turntable.fm allows you to listen to music at the same time, but with strangers who are picking the music you will hear.

This is all fun and all - and the peer-sensitive teens and 20-somethings are eating it up, but the 1) real solid social aspects of listening to the same music with other people in the same room and 2) the real artistic/aesthetic aspects of actually hearing all of the music the musician is playing, these require 1) a stereo system and 2) a decent source of high-res content aka, currently, a CD or LP.

So eventually the RIAA will figure this out [yeah right, no time soon] and try to outlaw CDs and LPs [I bet they are successful too] or, maybe, try to buy up the entire used CD and LP market [I’ll sell them my part of it for a cool $100M].

At least, that is how I am currently seeing things. Admittedly, things are still in flux out there and Accurate Predictions is an oxymoron

Another sighting of an extreme system [thanks, Florian ].

This time an Acapella Spharon Excalibur horn speaker, their statement speaker, which has the bass horn built into the wall behind the main speakers. These speakers are for sale on Audiodoo for around $173,251.00 (new $400,000).

The amp in the picture is the Unison Research 845 Absolute integrated in a white custom finish. I believe Acapella is the distributor for these amps within Germany.

Love the clean modern look of the room - all the white that perfectly matches the white of the speakers. These speakers are on consignment and being sold by a dealer - but can’t tell for certain if this is a dealer showroom or someone’s home.

I think we can see some of the problems with defining the Absolute Sound by comparing Music Reproduction with Photography.

Both have something real they are trying to reproduce by technical means. Both involve some aspects of art and aspects of science.

I think it makes sense for this metaphor [or is it an analogy?] to compare a digital image file with a CD [essentially a digital music file].

Now lets consider Photoshop

You bring the image in and correct for any color issues that your camera has. You correct for inadequate lighting. You correct for lens aberrations because you were too close to, or at an angle to, your subject.

Then you can do some fancy layering filters to make the subject look more 3D. To make the colors more evident. To hide some of the grain in the original image….

You do all this because you KNOW what the subject [say it is a face] looks like. You know about flesh colors and that the head is a 3D thing. You want to bring out the [Einsteinian] sparkle in their eyes that you know is there. The affect their laugh lines have on people in real life, etc.

The point is two fold:

1. All this touching up is to make this technical artifact look more like the Real Thing. It flies in the face of ideological pundants that say “You MUST NOT Tinker With the Flaws in the Material”. Or “digital images just are going to look bad so don’t you do anything to make it look more real / better”.

Those pundants are silly, right? And so I think that the things people do to their high-end audio system are likewise OK if they bring out more of what reality is all about: 3D, rhythm, harmonics, etc.

2. The Real Thing is hard to define. Just how 3D is that face you saw last [imaging] ? Just how evident WERE those crinkles [dynamics] ? and those color blotches [harmonic color] ? And could you really see each hair on their head if you had the desire [and temerity to be OK with looking a little wacky while peering intently at someone’s hear follicles] to actually look at it and focus your attention trying to see each hair [detail and resolution].

So deciding whether something is the Absolute Sound or not is difficult if not impossible [another recent post on this topic posted about how all the room issues at any real Absolute Sound recitals making sure that no one has ever heard the Absolute Sound in all of history ] .

* Often, the Absolute Sound these days has become an ideological pursuit and has more to do with the technology and brands used and the means [looking at things like THD and progeny] by which sound is reproduced, whereas the Real Thing is a musical event, where being ‘like the Real Thing’ means that you create a musical event that is both musical(!) and in several important [to humans, not to some clunky measuring device] ways very closely resembles the Real Thing.

This attitude annoys me.
Many people believe “The better it sounds the less Real it is”.

Another say to say this: “The better a system is, the worse it sounds”.

That the ‘Absolute Sound’ produced by a audio reproduction systems [aka hifi] should usually sound aggressive and unpleasant and, conversely, if the music produced by a sound system is enjoyable and engaging - it must not be the Absolute Sound, it must not really be sounding like the real thing.

This sentiment has been a commonly held doctrine since solid-state mugged audio in the 60s, and wildly expounded and pontificated upon [albeit implicitly] since digital smashed into audio in the 80s.

It has two underlying extremely pessimistic assumptions:

1. that the current state of high-end audio reproduction is so poor, that if it actually attempts to be accurate, it will of course sound unpleasant most of the time, and

2. that the quality of the source material is so poor, that even were the reproduction to be flawless, the sound would not often be all that pleasant to listen to

There are many, many people who believe this, people in important positions in our industry, and they are a very vocal group. In a large sense, they are the ones who, after selling this idea to themselves to explain all the horrible sounding gear that passed for ‘the best’ for so many years - they then proceeded to sell it to everyone else.

This is not just “Krell on Wilson”, that was only a symptom. This is JV’s snidely comments about ‘As You Like It’ systems that actually [can you imagine?] sound good. This has even impacted JA and Mike Fremer, as one looks at their choice of systems over the years. [HP has been less infected, IMHO]

What does it do to an industry when the most prominent figures think that, by-and-large, the goal of the products produced by that industry should NOT be enjoyable? Maybe it does to that industry the same thing that, uh, has happened to ours?

Seriously, if we somehow just sent all the press, dealers and manufacturers who think this way to Tahiti for 5 years and only presented and sold systems that actually sounded good [and, I would argue, actually sounded like music], it would be [I hypothesize] the start of another Golden Age for our hobby.

[in the next post, we will talk about how it is perhaps the misshapen and gnarled misinterpretation of the Absolute Sound that has kept the industry in this cul-de-sac, sonically if not economically]

In this corner, weighing in at about 200 lbs [well, that is what it FEELS like - leaning over to get this on a rack is no feat for the timid. Neli was able to do it, but not without a few remarks ], but really at 68.4 lbs, the Esoteric K-01. And in the other corner, at 37.5 lbs, the EMM Labs XDS1.

We have been dealers for EMM Labs for about 7 years, if I remember correctly. We would like to be dealers for Esoteric someday, when we expand our operations, [in the not too terribly distant future we are fervently hoping!].

That said, the shootout did not reveal any serious surprises that a skeptical reading through the current voluminous content on the web does not already point out.

The system was for this shootout was:

Hansen Prince speakers
Lamm ML2.1 amps
ARC Ref 5 preamp
Nordost Odin speaker and interconnect
Elrod Statement Silver power cords on pre and amps
Bybee power distributor
Harmonic Resolution Systems SXR equipment rack, M3x platforms and Nimbus
Jorma Design Prime (single-ended) interconnect on the CD players
First Synergistic Hologram D then Nordost Odin power cords on the CD players

A photo of the Esoteric K-01 remote

A photo of the Esoteric K-01 remote

A photo of the EMM Labs XDS1 remote (we forgot to bring it to the shootout [it’s always something], so this is a photo from this morning)

Here are Neli and P. configuring the Esoteric K-01 to generate output on the single-ended outputs. We also tried both the 4X oversampling and DSD filters [I thought the DSD filter was more digital sounding, Neli and P. thought it had more resolution and liked it better]. Previous tests had shown little difference in performance between balanced (XLR) and single-ended (RCA) interconnects [irregardless of the ARC reportedly being a balanced architecture].

[The Fluke multimeter was used to bias the Lamm amps after their recent move to this location, with presumably a different wall voltage than the previous location across town].

That Odin interconnect is kind sticking out of the rack at an odd angle, isn’t it? All I know is that *I* was out of the room at the time .

The Esoteric K-01

Both the K-01 and XDS1 were put up on HRS Nimbus Couplers - significantly better than the sound with the standard feet.

The Esoteric K-01

The EMM Labs XDS1

The EMM Labs XDS1

The EMM Labs XDS1

We played mostly light Jazz, large scale classical, and the 1st cut off of Radiohead Amnesiac. All told we spent about 5 hours at this shootout.

We first did a round of shootout with the Synergistic power cord on the players, and then a round with the Nordost Odin power cord.

The Odin brought the performance of the 2 players MUCH closer together [bringing subtlety and imaging to the K-01 and more slam to the XDS1] but their differences were still quite evident.

Esoteric K-01
[Note that other power cords may do as well here in place of the Synergistic - not just the $$$ Odin, but just note that this player IS power cord sensitive, more so than the EMM Labs I think]

* More authority [in the end, I thought this the most compelling aspect of the sound of the K-01]

* More HiFi sounding [sounded more like a stereo than music - a lack of subtle information made each note stand alone as opposed to forming a whole. 95% of this went away with the Odin power cord. There was little or no imaging(!) either until we replaced the power cord]

* A little leaner [but not in such a way that detracted from the music, IMHO]

EMM Labs

* More like music [for many reasons, I think. Voices had more information in them, allowing us to hear emotion. Notes had more information, allowing us to string them together into songs. Much more listening to music as opposed to listening to how each note sounds]

* Softer, more laid back [The K-01 was more forcefully dynamic]

—————

This shootout really revealed the strengths of these 2 players: The XDS1 sounding like music in spite of being solid-state , and the K-01 having great powerful midi- and macro-dynamics [and not just in the bass], in spite of being solid-state

Strangely enough, these 2 players were closest on the track I played, the Radiohead. Notes are coming from all over the place anyway, so the K-01 did great, and the XDS1 really brings out the voice of the singer and his longing to be left alone. On this track the K-01 was more like a kid running around in a candy store, listening to this note, then that note…the XDS1 more holistic, more drug-like .

I also want to say that, contrary to what I have read elsewhere, the K-01 does NOT have more resolution - in fact it has less - the K-01 does emphasize the main body of each note more than the XDS1 however, and that might be interpreted as detail by some, but the overall information here is really is less because the subtle, more nuanced parts of the notes are quite a bit less prominent.

[… and here we are starting a new category - cool Sightings, in the wild, as it were. People often point us to extreme high-end systems they run across. Finally it dawned… maybe we should collect them here - let people see that we, and they, are not the only ones with the vision and passion. Thanks go out to Florian for this one]

Hiendy: Impeccable home visits

[The system components are listed below. These would run about $1M USD. The speakers are by the previous founder/designer at Sonus Faber (who left when they were bought by a hedge fund)]

CD player: Esoteric P-01 VU version + D-01 VU version + G-0Rb Master Clock
vinyl combination: SME 30/12 + Simplicity + Thales Air Tight PC-1 Supreme + Boulder 2008
Pre-Amp: Audio note M10
Power-Amp: Audio Note Gaku-On $
speaker: Ktêma
Power Processor: Shunyata Research Hydra V-Ray + Shunyata Research Hydra 2

cables:
Siltech Royal Signature Ruby Double Crown PC 2M x 3 (turntable, mono- block after the class)
Siltech Royal Signature Empress Double Crown XLR 1.5M x 2 (CD decoding - the former level, Phono-preamp)
Siltech Royal Signature Empress Double Crown XLR 2M (before the class - after class)
Siltech Golden Eagle 75 X 3 (Clock Cable, Clock - turntable, decoding)
Tara Labs The Zero AES / EBU 2M x 2 (CD turntable - decoding)
Shunyata Research King Cobra CXZ filling sand version x 3 (mono decoding, Master Clock)
Shunyata Research King Cobra CX x 2 (Phono Amp, Power processor)
Audio Note Sogon PC 2M (Pre-Amp) x 4

attachments:
Finite Elemente Cerabase Compact x 3 sets (after class)
Finite Elemente Cerabase x 3 sets (Boulder Supply device)
Air-Tight Carbon Block graphite block (Pre-Amp)
SYMPOSIUM (Master Clock)
Vibraplane’s Active Air flotation pads x 2 + pump
in box Tripoint Audio TROY
audio frame: Venture HiFi Rack x 2

At this time the current plan is to duplicate all of our past show reports and convert them to the new website look and feel.

The first one we did is of the most recent show, RMAF 2011,

RMAF 2011 Photo Gallery

This is all brand spanking new, so please be patient with the little gremlins…

This also commences the start of the creation of our Show Photo Database - something I have wanted to do for many years [but got talked out of it for some reason each time ].

Show Photo Database

Only 50 photos have been indexed so far, and we have at least 30,000, so there is a ways to go.

Speaking of which, we will be adding better navigation tools for the Show Photo Database as well as the show reports - to more easily jump around in the galleries.

Our plan, for CES 2012 anyway, and at this moment in time , is to do the show reports both here on the blog and in the show galleries.

Updated the website last night.

The old website is and will remain available at the link in the lower right-hand corner of most pages on the new site.

Still quite a bit to do, but after borrowing from some of the best luxury and shopping sites , we are hopefully more fully representing the quality and wonderfulness of the few extreme high-fidelity products in the world [obviously there is more to come].

Now YOU have a friend in the high-end audio porn business.

This new design requires a lot of photos. Although we have over 100K photos of audio equipment, finding the best ones, and showing them in this no-holds-barred bald manner, is laborious and really somewhat intimidating.

The deep dark secret is that although I work really hard long hours compared with most, and I have a passion for the subject , I know almost nothing about photography and just a wee bit more about Photoshop [though I am learning more each day]. Though sheer quantity of the photos I can find nuggets with quality.

But this has got to change, and I need to step it up a notch or two in the ‘get cool photos but with quality lighting, perspective, and detail’ department. I would just so LOVE to really present awesome visual eye-candy for this equipment that were commensurate with how awesome the equipment is.

Somehow I just just need to channel Danny Kaey AND Albert Porter … and myself… and At The Same Time [can you IMAGINE the type of person that would then be me? ]

—–

Anyway, lot of products are missing from the Components menu, and a lot in the menu have no pages yet, and no Galleries except the home page is up yet,… and Systems? We got plans for that category that should be pretty cool….

We’re going to be updating the blog over the next few… time units.

We’ve been getting a lot of spam, that I have to keep deleting, and it is annoying.

In order to prevent bots from submitting spam the question on the Comment form has changed. Please be aware of this and don’t just type ‘human’ .

The Twitter feed on the right will now display the feed from Audio Federation on Twitter, not Spintricity. Now we just have to think of what to say over there that is not completely redundant like what everyone else says over there….

Many more changes coming, but mostly to make the blog a little more modern, more upbeat, more groovy