Chance Encounter

Back in March I wrote a bit about my frustration with trying to find good, live, un-amplified, inexpensive music to go listen to. Well, it seems I have found my answer. I am visiting my Alma Mater this weekend and while wandering through the fine arts building I noticed a flier advertising a Senior Recital concert that afternoon performed by a solo soprano. It was free and open to the public, so I went. It was quite quite good, just this one woman accompanied by a piano. No amplification. It was only a little more than an hour long, but the performance was wonderful. If you are looking for some good live music, I would say you should look to your local colleges and universities. Who knows what you might find.

Ponderous

I have been spending some time recently pondering where next to go with my system. The possibilities as I see them are to add the integrated MM phono stage to my VTL TL2.5 line stage, upgrade to a new CD/SACD player, add an external DAC to my system connected to my Squeezebox to process the audio from that, or just replace my current zip line speaker cables with something better.

I am pretty sure I am not going to go with the phono stage at the moment, since most of the music I listen to is still digital. Along those lines, most of the music that I listen to is through the Squeezebox. Therefore, adding a DAC to that seems to make the most sense. I am currently auditioning a pre-owned DAC that I found at one of my local Hi-Fi stores. One problem I am having though is that it is pretty old. 17 years old in fact. It really does sound good, however it does not have many of the features found on more modern DACs. It is only 18bits and maxes out at a 48khz sample rate. It was a pretty expensive piece back in the day, but that day was a while ago. It is an Anodyne Adapt DAC. I have found very little info about it online. One of the more interesting features is that it has a tube output stage, and as we all know I like tubes, particularly in the pre-amplification stage. So I am still evaluating it to see how well it would fit into my system.

That brings us to speaker cable. I do feel that changing cables can improve the sound of my system. I do not, however, feel I need anything like these. A friend of mine has Anti Cables and they sound great. When he got them we spent some time comparing the new cables with the old cables he had before, and there was a pretty distinct difference. Anti Cables are quite affordable too. I do kind of want to get something else just to experience something different. I have been looking into some cables from Kimber Kable, but I just don't know if they would be worth it.

So I am pondering my options at this point. If anyone has any comments, I would love to hear them!

History Lesson

While I was at my local HiFi store last week listening to the Marantz gear, someone happened to put on a record by a man I had never heard before. His name was Robert Johnson, and the album was King of the Delta Blues Singers. Of course, many people I talked to after "discovering" Robert Johnson for myself had heard of him already and werefamiliar with his work. But I figure if I wasn't maybe there are one or two out there who will benefit from my mentioning him.

Robert Johnson has been called the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll". In some ways I find this appropriate, because as I listened to the album I found myself recognizing many of the songs that Robert Johnson originally recorded. These songs were known to me because of artists like Eric Clapton and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. As I continued to learn more about Robert Johnson, I was surprised to find how much music led back to this one man. As I listened to the record in the store on the Marantz gear I felt as if I was in a sort of time warp, looking to the beginning of musical revolution. I of course bought the record, as to me it is a wonderful history lesson.

Visitors

I had another HiFi filled evening this evening. One of my local HiFi shops hosted a visit from the Marantz Reference Series. The setup included a SC-7S1 cd/sacd player, a pair of MA-9S2 mono block amps, and the SC-7S1 pre amp. These were hooked to a pair of B&W 801Ds and it really sounded great. The imaging was good, and the sound was very pure. There was at one point a problem with the right channel, I am not sure if it was the amp or the speaker. The rep thought that it was the amp, but I was not convinced. It sounded to me like there was something loose in the speaker, but I really don't know. I am no expert. But even when we went down to just one channel it sounded fantastic. There was of course no imaging or anything, but the sound that was coming out of that one speaker was very clean and very pure. It sounded very alive, both with the SC-7S1 and when we were using a souped-up VPI Aries 3. After listening if I had to choose one word to describe the sound I would call it pure. It was clean, but not clinical or harsh at all. It sounded quite good; a very enjoyable evening.

DIY

I just got home from my local audio society meeting. It was very cool. Our presenter this evening was a company that sells speaker component parts. They sell drivers to enthusiasts and businesses who want to design and build speakers. They also brought some examples of speakers built using their parts for us to listen to. One was a horn loaded speaker with a full range main speaker and a super tweeter that only takes over at about 15khz. There was another made with a concentric driver, and a third mini-monitor with a passive bass radiator mounted on the rear of the enclosure. All sounded quite good.

My favorite was the monitor with the concentric driver. It sounded very detailed, and had great imaging, all for $450 for a pair of kits. It is pretty impressive the quality of speaker that you can get if you are willing to do some of the work yourself. It is certainly something I would like to learn more about.

Quirky Cool

There are time when a strange coincidence just grabs your attention and you ask yourself "Now what was that about?". I just had one of those when I read two different articles from two different sources discussing two different speaker manufacturers making speakers based off of the same quirky driver. The first article I found was from 6moons.com, and the second while reading through the February Stereophile (yes I know I am a bit behind). Both of the articles discussed speakers made using drivers from Lowther.

I guess that what caught my attention with these speakers was that they both had a unique look to them, and from what I read the Lowther drivers have their own character. I like things that are quirky, don't ask me why. Now I have never heard Lowther drivers, but from what I understand they are wide band drivers and intended to be driven full range. Supposedly they have amazing mid range abilities that really bring music to life, but are lacking on the low end. The articles talk about dealing with these challenges, as well as the whole Lowthar feel. I found them quite interesting.

Local Flair

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about the benefit of local brick and mortar HiFi shops. Yesterday I stopped by one of my favorite local HiFi shops to pick up an album on vinyl to add to my collection (Workingman's Dead by the Grateful Dead, don't ask me why I did not own it yet.). While there I was able to check out some pretty interesting stuff. The store was evaluating a speaker from a company that they were thinking about picking up and I was able to talk to the staff about what we all felt about it. It was neat to feel a small part of their decision. Even though it would only be a very very small part.

The most exciting part of my visit yesterday was that I had the chance to listen to a prototype of a new speaker design that was not in production yet. The dealer knew the designer and the designer lent them a pair of the prototypes for evaluation. (They sounded fantastic, a very high speed high resolution tweeter that is a proprietary design.) It was really fun to sit down with the staff and talk about the speakers strengths and weaknesses on a speaker that they were not trying to sell me and really talk about what we thought about them

In this age of increasing Internet sales, I realize that it is hard to be a local HiFi dealer. And I know there is plenty of incentive price-wise for us as consumers to look to the Internet for deals. But where on the Internet can you sit down and listen to a prototype speaker? Maybe I am a bit of a romantic, but it really demonstrated how valuable it is to have a local HiFi shop.