Strictly for fans of Audio Note UK (all things Audio Note UK) PART TWO

@Gjo
Thanks apology accepted.
It might have seemed like an overreaction on my part - and I fully understand why if some of you guys know each other well enough to know when things are said humorously, tongue in check etc.
But having "been burned" too many times one tends to get a little sensitive about it.
And I just didn' want to go there once again.
Too often elsewhere on the web I've been met with: "what isn't known, having the ability to, not being in the possession of by everybody - nobody should know, have the ability to - or being in the possession of" have turned me off to an extent of having contemplated never to participate in any discussions online.
Having lived and breathed Audio since the tender age of 14 - Audio IS the air that I breathe. I've lived, thought, talked about, dreamt about Audio ever since, never wishing to do anything else.
Loved from the beginning if someone older, more experienced would let me in on as much info and secrets on Audio as possible in order to avoid making the mistakes i otherwise would've.
And I have been blessed with meeting people like that - with meeting Peter, PQ, Mr.Q for the very first time, as far back as in 1978 being thee defining moment of my whole life. I'd known OF him some 4 yrs prior to that from audiomagazine adds.
Peter then an avid Lowther and early valve devotee already importing to DK some of the fineste the brittish could offer.
Peter was a very big admirer of the late great audio and hornspeaker pioneer extraordinaire and the inventor of the Permanent Magnet Mr. Donald Chave.
The reason why till this day all Lowther drives are dubbed PM before the model designation. Invented as a more manageable solution to the field coil drivers that'd been the only solution then.
(Life moves around in circles - don't it?!!!)
I had the very good fortune to meet Chave on our way back to DK. Seeing his garden shed packed to the rafters with every original version of brittish made Lowther horn cabinets - enough to make every horn enthusiast drool down himself - of which the Acoustas were Chave's design. Cause in easter 1983 Peter and I went on a combined business and leisure trip to Brighton UK to visit Lowther amongst other while being there. The Lowther drivers for DIY'ers being part of the select few brands PQ carried - besides Tim's EAR - being the backbone of amps, and to start with in 1980 - the finished speakers from DCM TimeWindow fron the US later to be replaced with the speakers from Snell Acoustics of which the Snell A's were a specialc favorit of Peter's - me the "midrange guy" being more fond of the E's and the small K's especially. Why?
Because I'm averse to any irregularities in the all important "time domain". This and the Time Window speakers being the reason for beconing Peter's customer in the first place late summer '80.
For all the Type A's spectacular qualities having one - if not thee widest freq.ranges at the time, I couldn't get around their opaqueness in the lower mids especially.
Couldn't quite figure out what was responsible for this. Could it be their downfiring 10" Becker bass driver causing the lack of transparency in the mids?
Cause the E, J and later K importantly having both their drivers in positive polarity - thus having the best possibilities for delivering one, 1 clean pulse signal - were already then very transparent.
As Peter discusses later on the AN website; it's very difficult to mate two drivers to become sounding as one - and only one.
Mating 3 drivers - like in the Type A and Peter Snell's last ever creation the Type C - becomes nigh on impossible.
Testament to this is being the guy I am with the priorities that I have. Fullrange/ one-way drivers has always been a big thing for me, due to their second to none transient behavior working perfectly in the time domaine.
And back in the late sixties/ early seventies" due to being the only speakers I could afford - later to discover their unparallelled coherence making the "entire" (HA!) or be it narrow freq.spectrum sounding like cut from the same cloth.

 

@Gjo
Thanks apology accepted.
It might have seemed like an overreaction on my part - and I fully understand why if some of you guys know each other well enough to know when things are said humorously, tongue in check etc.
But having "been burned" too many times one tends to get a little sensitive about it.
And I just didn' want to go there once again.
Too often elsewhere on the web I've been met with: "what isn't known, having the ability to, not being in the possession of by everybody - nobody should know, have the ability to - or being in the possession of" have turned me off to an extent of having contemplated never to participate in any discussions online.
Having lived and breathed Audio since the tender age of 14 - Audio IS the air that I breathe. I've lived, thought, talked about, dreamt about Audio ever since, never wishing to do anything else.
Loved from the beginning if someone older, more experienced would let me in on as much info and secrets on Audio as possible in order to avoid making the mistakes i otherwise would've.
And I have been blessed with meeting people like that - with meeting Peter, PQ, Mr.Q for the very first time, as far back as in 1978 being thee defining moment of my whole life. I'd known OF him some 4 yrs prior to that from audiomagazine adds.
Peter then an avid Lowther and early valve devotee already importing to DK some of the fineste the brittish could offer.
Peter was a very big admirer of the late great audio and hornspeaker pioneer extraordinaire and the inventor of the Permanent Magnet Mr. Donald Chave.
The reason why till this day all Lowther drives are dubbed PM before the model designation. Invented as a more manageable solution to the field coil drivers that'd been the only solution then.
(Life moves around in circles - don't it?!!!)
I had the very good fortune to meet Chave on our way back to DK. Seeing his garden shed packed to the rafters with every original version of brittish made Lowther horn cabinets - enough to make every horn enthusiast drool down himself - of which the Acoustas were Chave's design. Cause in easter 1983 Peter and I went on a combined business and leisure trip to Brighton UK to visit Lowther amongst other while being there. The Lowther drivers for DIY'ers being part of the select few brands PQ carried - besides Tim's EAR - being the backbone of amps, and to start with in 1980 - the finished speakers from DCM TimeWindow fron the US later to be replaced with the speakers from Snell Acoustics of which the Snell A's were a specialc favorit of Peter's - me the "midrange guy" being more fond of the E's and the small K's especially. Why?
Because I'm averse to any irregularities in the all important "time domain". This and the Time Window speakers being the reason for beconing Peter's customer in the first place late summer '80.
For all the Type A's spectacular qualities having one - if not thee widest freq.ranges at the time, I couldn't get around their opaqueness in the lower mids especially.
Couldn't quite figure out what was responsible for this. Could it be their downfiring 10" Becker bass driver causing the lack of transparency in the mids?
Cause the E, J and later K importantly having both their drivers in positive polarity - thus having the best possibilities for delivering one, 1 clean pulse signal - were already then very transparent.
As Peter discusses later on the AN website; it's very difficult to mate two drivers to become sounding as one - and only one.
Mating 3 drivers - like in the Type A and Peter Snell's last ever creation the Type C - becomes nigh on impossible.
Testament to this is being the guy I am with the priorities that I have. Fullrange/ one-way drivers has always been a big thing for me, due to their second to none transient behavior working perfectly in the time domaine.
And back in the late sixties/ early seventies" due to being the only speakers I could afford - later to discover their unparallelled coherence making the "entire" (HA!) or be it narrow freq.spectrum sounding like cut from the same cloth.

 

Aaargh!
Something went terribly wrong while posting - to delete the rest of my already very long write up.
When I've recovered. I might write the rest once more
Have a nice weekend all!
Cheers Henrik

 

Thanks Nige!
I'll have to look into the Oreas still recovering from the impact of the Gaia IIs.
- Foundations having been an important issue for me for the last 15-20 yrs and counting.
With experimenting with everything I could lay my mittens on.
Mixing hard and soft decouplings to suit any given sound character my systems may had.
Most of it DIY.
Everything from bicycle inner tubes to the inflatable air bladders construction workers use for keeping e.g. new doors and windows in place securing them while fastening their frames to the rest of the building.
Transforming the sounds of non-suspended TTs offering them a black bottomless abyss of a low end - being most notable.
These days running very heavy plinthed idler whell TTs I've instead opted for the Still Point-like decoupling feet from a guy in the UK called Kridon. They consists of a height adjustable two part aluminum construction separated by a singular ceramic ball. And costing a paltry of the SPs, being able to transform amps, cd players and TTs alike - benefitting from the right decoupling to come along. Sometimes even becoming make or break for a piece of kit to sing.
All to become a crucially important part of "voicing" my systems besides cabling.
Cheers Henrik

 

I have Original Stillpoints on my TT3 player. I think they work great. Elastic, insulating pads can change the resonant frequency of the turntable's suspension uncontrollably, and that's why I think the conductive structure (like Stillpoints) works well.

 

The TT3 with it's already perfectly suspended design, doesn't come into play here.
More thinking about all of the stiff lightweight Regas of which I ran the P25 some 15yrs ago.
Having a partly inflated bicycle innertube suspending a slab of mdf carrying the P25 was a big improvement. Later by accident discovering the possibilities of the inflatable air bladders while having substited a broken door to our garden.
The air bladders carrying the immense bone of far easilier balancing e g. the TT by using a triangle of three bladders for easy peasy adjustability. With the single innertube a pita to get just right due to weight irregularities.
Kit not weighing the same side to side back to front. Think transformers on an amp!
Cheers Henrik

 

The TT3 if located in a room with a wooden floor can be susceptible to footfall and sounds best if wall mounted. Concrete floors do not allow this issue. I use vesicular basalt as an isolation platform and will try the Gaia feet under the TT3 and let you know. I have timber floors by the way.

 

Mounting my turntable to the wall is still the best 25 euro “upgrade” I ever did!

 

I haven’t posted anything for a while here but I read a lot of the writings here with great interest as there is more REAL experience shared here regarding all things AN than any other place I know.
I’ve been playing round with different tubes in my Paladin as of late. I am usually running EML Solid plate 45 tubes. As I am writing this I am listening to NOS Cunningham globes. Previously I was under the impression that I prefer the EMLs due to their greater bass extension and seemingly higher transparency. Yesterday I felt that after having stopped listening (it was getting late) the musical experience lingered longer in my mind. With the NOS tubes there is more of that tranquility, more of that drug-like-melt-on-the-couch-type-of-feeling. Now that I am thinking about it: EMLs are more like a modern television, that sense that everything is ultra sharp. Yet, I prefer less sharpness but warmer colors instead (like an older Ridley Scott movie). They bring more tonal density - Exactly! All too often higher resolution does not make it more true. Colors, life, and emotional engagement is what I am really after …

 

Very well said.
It could seem like there's a limit to detailing.
I view it like this.
There are details - and then there's information.
With detailing you can have more than you asked for. But you can never have too much INFORMATION.
How's that?
Because "details" can often be taking lesser information, and enhance/ overdo it to make everything sound clearer parodying to be high information. And that's not the same.
Think of this telly analogy.
You can have endless adjustability options.
You can enhance contrast, sharpness,color and brightness no end trying to achieve a true to life result on a lesser resolution TV screen, with the end result of making everything look uttely wrong overdone and distorted.
This will not bring you the desired natural picture quality of a high INFORMATION Ultra HD OLED screen - done right.

 

I can relate to this distinction. I describe it as the difference between “hifi spectacular” sound vs “density.” An example of “hifi spectacular” sound is early 1990s Audio Research hybrid electronics. It had (subjectively) a rising response in the treble which highlighted reverb echoes and ambience. ARC said it was like turning on a spotlight to illuminate the back row of musicians. Everything sounded fast and squeaky clean. Unfortunately the “lean and bright” sound was also unnatural and it was quickly fatiguing.

Ironically “hifi spectacular” gear can be, in my experience, actually less detailed than the very best electronics with a more natural tonal balance. I describe this other gear as having “density” by which I mean a rich musical tapestry with nuances and subtleties that are not overshadowed by a skewed tonal balance. It is no coincidence that a system with “density” often has dynamic swings that catch you by surprise—the sudden blast of Thad Jones’ trumpet or Curtis Fuller’s trombone—as well as subtle micro-dynamics such as the faint brushed cymbals barely audible way in the background.

I haven’t experienced top-level AN electronics in my system at home but I am pretty sure it would fall squarely in the “density” camp.

 

You're absolutely right.
I believe we're hearing much the same - only described differently.
The overly bright high strung sound you describe with practically no silent parts leave no place for dynamics.
Being loud all the time.
Dynamics described as being the span between the quietest and the loudest parts in a piece of music.
What you're describing is the equivalent to the "singing" of Celine Dion belting out from start to finish. If it weren't for her song from the movie Titanic I wouldn't have been able to stand listening through a single one of her songs. Instantly bringing listener fatigue.
Audio Note UK sitting comfortably in the "density" camp, with blacker backgrounds and lots of downright scary dynamics given the right program material.

 

I’m running an Oto phono SE Signatur with AN J Lx Hemp speakers, bi-wired with Lexus cables.

In the not so distant future we’ll be moving and I’ll require longer speaker cables.
Has anyone compared bi-wired Lexus vs Isis (not bi-wired)?

I will have to demo things for myself at some point. Just curious if anyone had experience already.

 

Appreciate all of you chiming in. Tonal density is the description that stuck with me. I think that’s also why I love the OTO Sig. So much. It does that so well. The Paladin is more “see through”, transparent to what comes before. It’s a lot more complicated to get “right” I believe. The pre-amp appears to play a very big part here. I think most that describe 45s (or especially the Paladin) as lacking in the lower regions, have never heard it with a a proper pre. Of course the speakers matter greatly as well (obviously). Matching speakers to the room and amp to speakers has always been paramount in my book, but I never thought that the pre amp would play such a big role. I might have an M3 here to compare to my M8 soon. That should be fun to say the least …

 

I'm not quite sure about the density description or details vs information analogy. But I will take the analogue vs digital television analogy one step further. As it happens, this is the area I'm working with on a daily basis.

I remember some two decades ago there was a lot of discussion in the television and movie industry about digital cameras coming in and doing away with a lot of the problems resulting from using analogue equipment. Greater sensitivity, greater sharpness, greater possibilities for postproduction and fiddling with digital effects, smaller equipment, possibility to shoot very, very long takes without worrying you run out of film in the camera etc. Very quickly it turned out that digital shooting has its own set of problems connected with the character of the image your receive. A lot of people felt it looked too sharp, not film-like and too much like some weird tv theatre programming (do you remember Michael Mann's movie "Collateral"?) Step by step the cinematographers, the production companies and the producers of equipment and software started working on making sure the digital material looks closer and closer to what the analogue shot-on-film material looked like decades ago. (In a way, pretty much a mirror of solid state / transistors revolution in audio and the following come back of tubes.)

One of my favourite examples of that is the grain that had always accompanied film stock. It used to be considered an inherent fault or the analogue medium which digital technology was supposed to finally get rid of. After all, grain is simply visual noise that decreases the sharpness of the image. But soon it turned out that razor sharp digital films, where every single detail was clearly visible, did not feel like you were actually watching a movie. Too much detail. Too much information. Too sharp. They felt weird. Step by step the postproduction houses and software companies started to work on producing software that emulates various forms of film stock grain in order to add it to the perfect digital images to increase the feeling you are actually watching a movie. Today it is very well developed and an absolutely normal part of movie postproduction that at some point the director choses the grade of grain he wants to use to make the material feel more film-like. So, in reality, they degrade image quality and introduce noise to make us feel we get something film-like. Sharpness and detail lost to what the brain perceives as "naturalness".

I see the same analogy with my audio system. We all can have different preferences and paradigms. If you want to go for absolute detail over everything else, seek out those silver plate Siemens tubes, those G73Rs etc. Probably even give up on tube gear and go SS. My preference is musicality, which is possibly the most difficult feature to describe. This is why it's difficult for me to make a decision about a piece of equipment, a new cable, a new tube etc. in one listening session. I want to take at least a few days to see how my brain (and often my body) reacts. Do I enjoy the music more and get more emotions from it or is it less engaging? In AN I found a set of components that start from very high up on the musicality scale. Even the basic Oto SE sounds like a great music machine able to glue me to the speakers for hours. Then step by step in your upgrades you can get closer and closer to the heart of the music without losing the musicality factor.

So that would be my take: what I care about is not detail, not information, not density, but musicality (which, I suppose, could be simply distilled down to emotions). That's why e.g. when I tried Siemens silver plates in my Oto SE Sig, I felt that despite a much greater amount of detail and information, there was less music coming out of the speakers. Instead of exciting the listening session was stressful.

 

Very interesting post as it exactly mirrors my experience in my profession. The onset of digital. Then, the gradual process of making the digital images look like film. It was pretty funny (in retrospect, but not at the time). And, non-linear editing which was supposed to make the process faster actually made the process take ten times longer because of the infinite choices it offered.

I am presently demo’ing a SW1X DAC. Man, it sounds like 95% of every other DAC I’ve heard in the past two years. Accurate, accurate, accurate. But not warm or natural. What’s next? Merason DAC 1?

 

i followed your advice this evening and I cannot thank you enough. The stage is definitely deeper and wider. I will post photos tomorrow when at my Mac downstairs.
Essentially I changed the angle of the speaker which was sharper (to have the virtual meeting point one meter in front of my listening position). Angle now is less than 20 degrees.

 

It will be fun for about 30 seconds then some part of your brain will go “yeh...nah. ......I need something salty. While you’re up, get me another beer .....and I need to use the bathroom....and the dog looks hungry and wants to go for a walk....”

 

Having chosen AN some forty odd yrs ago - and for a limited period of time (mid to late nineties) doubling for PQ determining the precise versions of a given product were to make it to market. After many a careful listening session between the various versions Andy would come up with. The text book perfect solution seldom the one sounding the best, most real and natural.
(The A23 SUT for the DL103 also springs to mind. The success of this little trafo comes from Keith A. actually having listened to the product, rather than blindingly go with what his calculator or measurenents showed him)
This not to put too fine a point on it - other than to remove any doubts as to where I stand in these matters.
Some of you may even still own or have listened to some of those products.
Which goes to stress I'm firmly in the "musicality" camp bringing emotion, being able to alter moods, send chills down my spine - NOT wanting the thin, etched, bright, and sterile rendition that parades as uncolored neutrality.
That'll be a no thanks from me, - or what ever Simon Cowell & Co.ends an act on TV.
If talking cartridges other that AN's IOs and IQs. I'm firmly in the Decca, SPU and DL103 camp as opposed to for instance the (other) Ortofons which to me feels more like colorles dispassionate measuring devices being more about an intellectual exercise than actually playing record for your enjoyment. Of the kind that makes you wanna reach out for yet another vinyl.

My bad was for the lack of another better way to describe things the way I hear ("see") them - went with a useless analogy.
What you write is going on behind the "new' digital scenes I knew nothing about.
Other that having heard the old odd war stories about special lenses and camera filters, to smooth and gloss over actors faces wanting them (mostly) to look more "dreamlike" attractive and beautiful that is otherwise the case.
Seeing them later on TV for an interview or such, they look quite differently. The lighting and detailing is much different. Another kind of make up sure.
But now showing up "warts an' all".

I'm impressed with your huge insight into film/Movie matters. I've always been a sucker for people who know the way around their stuff

(This is not some lame excuse - just info:
English not being my native language - lest you haven't already figured that out, LOL
I will occassionally write some rubbish.
Because not to make writing a too long and tideous process. I've stopped checking back and forth with the dictionary to see if I'm using the right words, hahaha)
Sorry
Cheers Henrik

 

Brilliant! So good to hear
- Being glad to be of service
Cheers Henrik

 

@rappaport

I am enjoying all the information given by you about all things AN UK, history and more. Thank you so much.

 

You're welcome
There's lots more history to add.
But having already 'swamped" this thread - I feel more than a little embarrassed.
Cheers Henrik

 

Hi Henrik,

One option is that is you use HiFiShark.com and search what is for sale it is crazy what comes up for sale, as people upgrade or what ever. Yes a bit of due-diligence is needed when purchasing but you can get some great deals out there... oh and a lot of patience

Oh and sorry if this is telling you something you already know

Best of luck and would love to hear what you end up with

Cheers nige.

 

Hi, a slightly off topic question - but how are you getting on with the Ramar Record Brush?

I ask as for it seems to generate even more static that it removes. I still get better results with a very simple goat hair brush but still have some static issues, so now thinking about the Furutech ASB-2 as an option. Either that or some kind of ion discharge device...

Thanks,

 

I have had no problems with static. However, I do occasionally use the Furutech Destat III.Have you tried holding the disc in your hand while you brush it?
I also have a Furutech ASB-1 brush, but for one reason or another I have preferred the Ramar brush.