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.

So, the Rocky Moun’tane Audio Festivities are soon to begin - well a couple of weeks seems like ’soon’ to me.

We will be in our usual two rooms: 9030 and 9026. One big and one small [medium size seems just not the d’rigor for show hotels].

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Tentatively we will be showing, in the large room:

* Audio Note AN/E SEC Signature speakers (we’ve shown with these before, but not in the big room!)

* Andio Note Gaku On amplifiers (Audio Note’s top of the line 211-based monoblocks)

* Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier

* Audio Note TT3 Reference turntable

* Audio Note digital: DAC 4.1x Balanced and CDT-3 transport

…and…

* EMM Labs XDS 1 reference-level single box SACD/CD player (product debut: about $25K)

* Nordost ODIN cable (everything ODIN but our 10 meter Valhalla and the Audio Note Sogon hard-wired to the speakers)

… and …

* HRS MXR and SXR equipment racks and M3 isolation bases

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And in the small room:

Audio Note ‘Zero’-based system:

* I Zero integrated amplifier
* R Zero phono section
* CDT-Zero CD transport
* DAC 0.1x with USB input

… and …

* TT2 turntable with IQ3 MM cartridge
* AN/E SPe HE loudspeakers

… and…

* Rix Rax ‘Robbs Report’ equipment rack

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We’ll have photos of the XDS 1 and Gaku Ons before the show - both here and in Spintricity.

Hope to see you all there!

You still have a few weeks if you want Neli to walk you through the many, many details of having Rix Rax build a unique equipment rack that suits you per-fect-ly,

But after that, they be taking your orders directly at the factory. The goal, as I understand it, is fewer sales, higher margins. I am sure we can all relate.

We still love the racks and are not sure what to do for a platform-neutral furniture grade solution priced somewhere between cinder blocks and an HRS MXR [OK, SXR, but I like to keep my eye on the ultimate solution, … if not us then who? ].

The advantage to RixRax is that it comes at what has become in this market a very reasonable price - and to which we can add HRS M3 platforms one at a time, at our leisure, as we can afford it, to up the performance one component at a time.

Most other racks try and ‘do something’ to artificially improve the performance, most of which fail miserably [i.e. they hurt performance]. The Acoustic Dreams’ racks work well, but are more expensive [when you take into account all the shelf space on on Rix Rax], and if you plan on putting vibration controlling HRS platforms on all the shelves anyway [which not everybody does, of course. And it certainly can take several years to afford one for each shelf. We ourselves ain’t there yet after five years.Then again, we got a LOT of shelves to fill .] , it seems like some amount of the purchase price will be wasted on their built in vibration control. Although, nude, they do sound better than nude Rix Rax.

Mapleshade is the only rack that seems to have the same approach, but at a more modest level and I am not sure about putting 60lb M3 platforms all over one of them. And furniture grade it ain’t. This *is* however a rack that we recommend to people with a very modest budget who want to keep things up off the floor.

But Rix Rax it ain’t.

Anyway, we wish the best of luck to Rick Cox and you will start seeing Rix Rax slowly being removed from the site as we figure out just where are all the places are that we mention it. Ugh.

… 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.

It was actually warm and sunny out yesterday… but the photos did not come out so great. Will try again on the next sunny day. Should be one coming up … sometime.

It is also hard to show just how BIG the amps stand, and amp! are. We;ll try to fix that for next time too.

Anyway… there are some HRS couplers under the amp, but in gernal we have not done extensive listening tests to test the HRS or the system itself in this configuration… yet.

These speakers, this system, actually does fill up the room with sound. It is amazing.

Not quite the easy open bass the Triolon bass towers had- but few systems have THAT large of a sound.

But the bass goes down on both this and the previous system to about the same frequency, and with about the same resolution… so there ARE similaritities.

And here, the soundstage is a more reasonable 6 or 7 feet tall, instead of 20 feet - so it is, as always, about tradeoffs. And at about 1/4 the price… we are happy with this being the primary system… for awhile.

I will have to take more photos of the Ongaku on the Rix Rax outpost amp stand. It was just a kind of accident that this got set up this way - the HRS going out on a local audition this week - but this looks really … farout man.

The two are about the same size and it is as if were made for each other. And Neli polished up both of them, which doesn’t hurt the visuals either.

Sonically… we are playing with power cords and have a $2 OEM cord on the Ongaku to establish a frame-of-reference… so can’t say anything yet.

Oh! What hard work! Whew!

Please, no more!

Well, maybe just a little….

This is the first post with our new Category scheme - This is what we are calling “Showroom 2″ although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).

The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.

We have a tendency - like most people who really enjoy this hobby - to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.

There is also two of us - so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.

We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound - which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation - and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve - and you can match that against what you personally prefer.

[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is - I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I - but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].

South side of listening room two - the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps

Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.

Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background

Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs - so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.

It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-

So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…

This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact.

As far as breaking in - the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.

The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…