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

At last I got hold of some Mullard 5U4G

 

An afterthought. I realize that this video only explains what to do if you have an earthed connection. If anybody knows how to do it properly if your wall outlet only has two connectors--live and neutral--please feel free to chime in

 

At 28:10 in this video, very convincing demonstration on why to use gas tubes for regulation in PSU:

 

Now this is a serious ply count for a baffle. I (like NapaBob) had to pull the woofers on my SEC-Sigs to have them refoamed. I was surprised at both the ply count and the thinness of the plys. I don't remember it being like this in my SPE-HEs when did them.

 

Impressive. John, did you refoam them yourself? If not, did you send them off to Peter or had it done locally?

 

I had them done by a guy near Sacramento. He had done my SPE-HEs and several for Nick Gowan's customers.

 

Question - Power Fuses?

Has any one experimented and had success / or not, with changing the Fuses (what and which make of fuse) on thier AN equipment?
A lot is talked about power cables - especially Sogon and Sootto., so why not fuses?

Cheers and Happy Listening...

Nige

 

I have Synergistic Research Orange fuses installed in my Conquest Silver amps. Can’t say I hear a difference.

That opinion goes against the tide, for sure.

 

Hi, thanks for the reply, well not entirely, as i'd tried some (can't remeber which) and I couldn't honestly say I heard any real difference either - but the 'theory' (if you can call it that) does make sense, especially when there is so much talked about how the last meeter or two of power cable can make so much difference, of which I'm about to find out for real...

Thanks.

Nige.

 

Hello Don,

Did you have this feeling that the music couldn't come out of the speakers?
It's been over 350h now and it's still not free, relaxed and punchy like the AN-J LX.

 

Both my SPE-HEs took almost 1,000 hours before they were fully settled in, and about 500 hours before they sounded really good.

 

i love these HE-Spe speakers but yes these speakers are detailed but a bit "plain/restrained" (i have these speakers and they are new from around 23rd december (one month) and have at best 200 hours on them). they do not move as easy as my previous ANK Lvl 3 speakers and do not "boogie" yet. it will open up one day (possibly more than once as per @John Mee ) and i feel this as i heard the ANK Lvl 3 do the same.

whenever you get a chance running them loud with dynamic bass centric music has to help.

 

My SPe-HE sounded great out of the box and improved from there. It makes me wonder what's different on the new production speakers that's responsible for the observations in this thread? New/different crossover parts? Anything else?

 

As @John Mee has mentioned, they just take a long time to break in. My AN J/SPe Hemp too well over the 100 hrs. suggested in the manual. Probably closer to 300 hrs.

I've had my E SPe HE's for about a month now. I have no idea how many hours but they're sounding good to my ears.

 

I have had a habit of buying "gently used" AN-E models over the years. I am on my 4th iteration of the AN-E currently (LX Signatures). That could be the reason I have not ever heard huge differences or improvements over time. Maybe they were already broken in when I got them? On Audiogon "200 hrs" likely means "2000 hrs". LOL. Not complaining. Saved some mega bucks to buy better amps, sources and cables. And received broken-in speakers to boot.

 

Even after just refoaming my SEC-Sigs, it took about 15-20 hours get them back on song. Additionally they had been out of commission since the end of October.

 

The irony, @Footsurg, is that those folks might have sold the speakers to you because they lost patience. Double loss for them, double win for you, no?

 

Fred, that could be the case. If it was, then the sellers were just plain deaf. Every pair I ever bought came out of the box sounding incredibly good. Could have also been poor amp and preamp matching. The E always sounds it's very best when paired with AN amps and preamps. Anyone who bought the AN-E and paired it with solid state amps or cheap chinese tube amps? Only a matter of time before the garage sale begins.

 

That's definitely my experience regarding Es and Audio Note amplifiers...and I've experimented with about a dozen highly rated amplifier alternatives...OTL tube, Parallel SET (these were pretty good, have to say), SIT solid state, GAN chip (also pretty good, but lacked the AN midrange magic).

As far as preamplifiers are concerned, my experience has been less dogmatic.

 

I present to you all my gratitude Gjo!!!
Thanks to your recommendations, I was able to get the speakers out of room mode.
It's amazing how well it works!
Really, thank you

 

@Chris.p.l, thank you for your post! I'm thrilled to know the tips helped.

Good listening to you.

 

My venerable Dac-3 Signature is currently down for the count, a couple extremely early mornings ago I was woken by two loud sounds a few mins apart. I didn't realize til that evening it was, we believe, one of the bridge rectifiers failing, causing some caps to explode and the power transformer to fail. Or some combination thereof, Deja Vu has the Dac and say it's certainly repairable and are consulting with AN.

At 26 years old I can't fault the Dac for having an issue, component failure over that amount of time seems reasonable. They were nice enough to give me a Jolida Glass FX Dac to listen to in the meantime it's a pleasant sounding cute little unit.

 

If your DAC repair is anything like my recent Conquest Silver amplifiers repair, then the DAC 3 Sig will return sounding better than before because of newer/improved Audio Note capacitors and transformers.

I hope the repair is timely.

 

Thank you Gjo and I think that will be the case they already mentioned getting some better caps in there, also some regulators are needing replacement. It should be a pretty thorough refurbishment.

 

@jonwoody
Sorry to hear about your DAC troubles. Hopefully it will sound even better when you get it back.