Audio expert Warren Jarrett, local dealer for Audio Note UK Ongaku Jinro using the mighty 211 tube!

Warren lives in Fullerton where he is the Orange County and Los Angeles dealer for the Audio Note, UK gear. He's been hanging out at my place bringing the Ongaku/Jinro integrated 211/VT-4C amp and AN-E-LX-HE hemp speakers to sit along side the TT-2 Deluxe turntable. It's all Audio Note this week at my house. Good times.

At any rate, here's the scoop about him, trust his ears: There are dealers and then there are dealers. I was expecting nothing and got everything when Warren came over. I mean his taste in music and his audio sense are close to mine which is good but his ability to actually HEAR differences (in wire, tubes, VTA alignment, etc.) is on expert level, which I think is rare in a high-end dealer. Not just hype but real expertise.

I'll give you one example and then I'm off to work.

When Warren was setting up the Audio Note turntable for a demo, I brought out my "torture test" disk, which is a lacquer that Kevin Gray and I made back in 1995, basically to test inner groove distortion and levels of weirdness that might happen with different brands of carts in any given turntable.

So, it is a one-sided locked groove three band 33 1/3 lacquer test cut of the most unlikelest of test pieces, Merle Haggard & The Texas Playboys doing "Cherokee Maiden" from the 1970s. It has that typical 70's country sound, no mids, very dry, dynamic, but almost lifeless studio sound. It's good but nothing to write home about, played back without mastering.

The first band on the lacquer is the song, full level, cut flat from the 30 ips Capitol analog tape. The second, I added 1/2 the mastering EQ that it needed, the third, all my mastering EQ added, turning the third track into a real nightmare for most carts to track accurately.

So, I use it to hear if a system shows the tone accurately, and how the final track is so different sounding from the first. If a system plays it back so all three tracks sound basically the same, it's a sucky system. The more changes one can hear, the more resolving the system. The more the third band sounds amazing, the better the system can reproduce it and (stands to reason) everything else one throws at it.

Of course this is all based on my personal taste in mastering in the first place but I'm usually right about stuff like this..

So, I play Warren the first track on the disk when we get my system up and running, Warren listens, I play the last track on the disk, Warren listens. I play the first track again and then the last track. Warren turns to me and (much to my surprise) accurately spits back at me what I did EQ wise on the third track. But I mean, accurately. This surprised me very much, that he could hear my little EQ changes and name the frequencies that I altered to make it a more pleasing performance (-3@125, +2@40, +1@3k, +2@8k). Now, Warren isn't an audio engineer but he does know his stuff, that's for sure. This showed me that I could trust his opinion and that his expertise was real and it also showed me that the system as we were listening back to it, was accurate and true to my original mastering of the song.

It's hard to find people like this in my life so I'm glad that Warren is around to advise! In his ears we trust.

Below is the Audio Note UK Ongaku/Jinro integrated 211/VT-4C amp that Warren brought me to play with, 18 watts a channel, new, right out of the box. Basically an Ongaku (as created by the legendary Hiroyasu Kondo but with copper instead of silver insides for a warmer sound) I have an amp that I can use my gigantic 1935 RCA Radiotron valves on, yes! And for those of you who care about such things: Pure class A operation. Zero negative feedback. Single ended output stage. 5R4WGB Valve rectification. Directly heated triode operation. For making the Jinro more to my personal liking, I'm removing the 7044 and 5814 input tubes and installing a Tung-Sol 5687 and a Mullard or Amperex "Bugle Boy" ECC82 (12AU7). The amp will need several hundred hours of bedding.

Here are the tubes I'm using in this beast. Only 80 years old!

 

Just got the amp last night.

The system (turntable, amp, speakers) was over at my business manager's house a few nights ago and I was impressed.

 

Just got it here last night, haven't hooked it up yet. It sounded great at another house I heard it in. For $32,000.00 list (or something like that) it ought to sound great. Very sensitive to tube brands.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

This guy I know on Facebook has a contrary opinion:

George Kopsaftopoulos: Too much colored amplifier and dark sounding....gets boring after a few minutes-hours (depending on listener's live music experience).

 

Who knows? Don't know if he ever even heard one or just talking about single-ended in general. Sometimes people just spout off without actually having heard the product in question..

On FACEBOOK, everyone has an opinion (just like here!)

 

No, long term loan. I don't have any speakers in house that the Jinro can drive with any authority. My loaner Audio Note AN-E-Lexus-HE speakers can but they are not set up yet. Warren will be back to do that this week..

 

If I like something enough to use it in my work, it has to be for a long-term loan. I can't switch in the middle of a project, I'll be lost. I won't accept anything unless this is understood at the start. That being said, I turn a lot of stuff away, I could be buried in it here if I accepted everything that was requested to come my way.

 

It's happened, of course. I wouldn't have it on long-term loan if it wasn't awesome to begin with. Life's too short.

 

Two rooms, a smaller one and a bigger one.