Shiok sendiri

People always caught unprepared for thing and have to confront awkward situation. It is hard to come on top trapped in a tight situation. A compromised solution is inevitable. Perfectly human nature. We are living in infonomic society, you'll be labelled ignorance if you aren't aware of things happening around you. We are not living in an isolated world any more, unless some countries where government deliberately block news from coming in. With a smartphone, information is now at your finger tip. I have developed super sensitive to socio-economy, particularly what is happening in the Middle East. The situation there is worrying, where oil is the sole reason for power grab and chaos.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter influence our life. Sharing is the culture. We read stories with pictures too. So, picture tells a thousand words? Read with a pinch of salt, exercise your judgement because what you read and what you see might not be true. The eyes in many ways make our mouth redundant particularly in audio. Seeing a high end big name system in a nice room image, audio folks quick to draw conclusions. They start singing praises. This is common, you can see it in their eyes. Some even suggest remedial advice, playing Audio God unwittingly. Ridiculous! Without good acoustics, you are doomed. I'd eye for specific acoustic rules and laws I know you should adhere to attain good sound. Acoustic is a consistence determinant in any situation, period.

My acoustic learning curve has been exciting and educational. There is no shorter path but progressive accumulating your experience, it sharpens your hearing too. Well, keep spending time on certain thing, you will eventually good at it. There's no two way about it, unfortunately that doesn't include upgrading of gear. Anticipation is the engine that generates excitement. The reward is handsome, it is seemingly repealing of fidelity window, endlessly. It keeps you thirst for the next "improvement".

Double Take is a dynamic duo featuring Mia Palencia as vocalist and Roger Wang as guitarist. When they are performing in KL, I jumped at the chance to listen to her. I know her voice, well I thought I knew her voice well. Her voice in her early recordings sounded rather "crude" and aggressive. She is a talented singer, she brought us a number of Christmas numbers that night for the occasion. We booked early to get front seats, up close about 10 feet from the stage. She has improved in singing, more silky in her delivery. It was an intimate little performance, we get to chat with Mia. The door charge was cheap for her singing caliber. Look, you pay big money for big name artist and yet you are seated so far away from the stage. There's no intimacy. The PA system is doubtful for the sound quality. Loudness without quality is crap.

I bought "In good company" CD after the show on my exit the premise. Produced in 2013 in Australia the recording quality is obviously truer to life. Of course, I'll be caught lying in broad daylight saying playback is better than live, regardless any high end system. Two elements; life and attack were considerably compromised in playback. However, her voice was packed with emotions, somewhat midrangy voice. It has body, creamy and liquid. Great for a vast genre of music. What's a musical feast! You don't get more realistic than live performance, do you?

Fresh from memory I played my system, the sonic disparity brewed a discontentment. I am harsh on myself sometimes. Know no hardship, sonic excellence fuels me. My gut feeling is that to replace the power cord at  my source with a tweaked YBA Diamond I brought from Taiwan. It has been reported by many users that the tweaked version thrashed the stock cord but I couldn't attest this. No fancy power connector, but terminated with hospital grade connector instead but the secret lies at its termination.

Bingo! The hi fi-ish element is further curtailed, rounded highs, musicality improved, solidity enhanced, the magnitude is subtle but noticeable. All led to lesser listening fatigue. The biggest surprise is YBA Diamond rendered a cleaner bass presentation, dug deep with richer harmonics. I hit the jackpot! Tradeoff is less open at the top for a more musical presentation. Gone is the diminishing of voice line graininess and double bass fog. However, some recordings are obvious than some. "Cheek to cheek" in her album is exemplary. Due to this, I'm not convinced with cable looming.

If you are interested in local artist works, check out Zee Avi (Sarawak) and Yuna (Kuala Lumpur) in Youtube. They are different in their own right and they're equally talented. Pity though, they didn't get to be included in our very own Commemorative CD to add a bit of Malaysian flair. Not to be cowed by inferior complex, seriously guys, they are as good.

Living Siamese twins

Here's an unusual encounter, meeting up a jaded audiophile in an unusual venue, a hair salon. Maybe he has an unfulfilled audio pilgrimage, maybe he has too few people to share his passion, maybe he had been led into the wilderness, maybe he had been to audio nirvana etc, so many maybes, I don't know. But there was so much passion left in him, that's what the impression he gave me.

Well, most audio folks are brand driven. Brand carries weight in audio decision making. It has become synonymous to sound quality, at least that's what the manufacturers want you to believe. Better still, the least learned consumer the better, it is an easy target. "Let's me tell you what you should get, sir". "Sir, you're talking to me? Pardon me, no." To those who know me, I take a customary study on product of interest before spending. My mistake on my hard earned money, I bite the bullet. Never in any other way.

Look, preamp and amp are pretty mature in topology, the current crop of electronics benefited from the employment of better parts. The common scenario is coarse sound with power amp above 100 watt but it didn't seem like the case now. Inevitably, most materials you read on commercial sites are marketing hype. Listening is the best insurance policy. If sound is not the major concern, everything is immaterial.

Prestige, good look and reasonably good sound, brands to be reckoned with, hefty price tag is distancing the brand from mass produced products. These spells good taste, a perfect portfolio to those who are not genuine audiophile. They need something to show off their wealth when a nice house and exquisite furniture is not enough. Brand building requires a huge budget, and we, the consumer who actually fund the budget. Audio sold via on-line doesn't really align to High End spirit. Most products sold via on-line cater for value conscious consumer, and usually offer bang for the buck. I fall into this category, admittedly. The electronics are to be played in a conducive environment, in the best of my ability to attain optimal performance. Not denying high end supremacy, the degree of difference is highly subjective. You pay substantial more for marginal improvement. Indeed, I was often being accused of wearing an invisible convex lens that magnifies sonic differences. Isn't this what high end audio is about, appreciating greater fidelity?

Why not use the money on acoustic? Build a dedicated room. What is fairness? Something just do not deserve the kind of attention as with the others. Acoustic becomes step son. Amp didn't get the limelight as the speaker, power cord did not get attention as the speaker cable, cartridge did not get the mention as the turntable, so do the power conditional and acoustic treatment. And folks are endeavoring to endless upgrades. Sad news is you will never get far. You just migrate from one problem to another. Electronics and acoustics are living Siamese twins, inseparable. In real life, an acoustically sound room can elevate your system than electronics, period. Going completely the opposite with common belief, I hold my view that room acoustics, power, electronics and cables in this order of significance.

Naturally, my controversial views received a lot of ridicule. Truth lies at listening. Before you chew me out, hear me out. Room introduces distortions, colorations, either are not good thing. It is close to impossible to get rid of it. You can't uncolor it, this your guests and you know but nobody brings it to the table. Because it is boring and highly subjective. You just don't talk about highly subjective issue. Religion is such a case. The conflict of religions kills more people than World War One and Two combined? I don't want to die before my time. Suffice to say, we should minimize distortions and colorations of the room. If sound is not the major concern, everything is immaterial.

Suck out, imbalance sound, too lively, too dead, too warm, peak and valley, the list goes on. If you are concern with sound, these have to go. For things they don't understand, I was openly labelled as a practitioner of Shen Gong, loosely translated as mystical art. A strong case is built upon circumstantial evidence. Hear your bass weight, afloat in mid air and doesn't dig deep? Hear your bass rumble, premature roll off? Hear your bass definition, smearing? Hear your bass sustain, shortened? Hear your bass layering, if there's any? Not mentioning tenacity and cohesiveness. If I tell you about fish scale alike bass, rapid fluttering alike which inflicts a short paralytic effect, do you get what I mean? I bet not.

O... please.

Trust me, you are blind like a bat if you are still not positioning your speakers right. Measurement tape is not helping, you need to listen. This also goes without saying that both speakers might not be ideal lining them up on the same plane, even in a room with symmetrical walls. What's more with different wall constructions? Write to your manufacturer to check if they match pair their drivers. Hence, the imbalance sound is a possible. In such circumstances, you need to compensate the deficiencies.

Folks, I don't want to convince you of my audio views, it is plainly a foolish thing. Nothing is in for me. Similarly, I care less about your system, it is your private journey. No, I will not tell you what to do. I keep my views to myself. Now, you watch out for folks who say too much but little in substance. An audition is all you need than be sorry for taking in what he says. Sick people.

With what is going on with my system of late, already I feel like Christmas!

An evening with Kronos

I received a sort of "An evening with Kronos" invitation from a good friend, Victor Pheh. Ganged up with a few audio heavy weights, we went to meet up with Louis Desjardins, the Kronos honcho over a dinner. Kronos Audio is a new kid on the block. Already well received worldwide, sweeping numerous awards in major audio shows, Kronos must be a force to be reckon with. Five awards already this year, snubbing the talk of audio conspiracy. Louis raised his eyebrows to my audio conspiracy, audio world is not without politics but Kronos is real. What high end concerns is merit and merit alone, the sole determinant. Inaccurate audio reviews will be all to lose. 

Wasting no time after a good meal, we went straight to Hifi Creations music room. What's new was the realignment of fixture and furniture, and a new partition that separates the music room from pantry from my last visit two weeks ago. The new partition is said to cut down noise and accidental new found bass. I must say Louis did a good job working the system, he gets my renewed respect. You know, many manufacturers blame others for less satisfying sound and didn't do justice to their products, do little to bring the best out from the situation. In this regard, Louis is a true audiophile in nature. This man got his hands dirty and didn't shy away from telling me which speaker he prefers. His choice of speaker happened to be my dream speaker. This instill confidence, gives me an insight into his sonic preference; the priceless neutrality. End result, the system now became more cohesive, less protruding bass and more expansive soundstage than last heard. The renovation helps the sound stabilized. 

Louis is a fun and easy going guy. He played a track to warm up the system before the real audio starts. Our honorable heavy weights were no average Joe. A quick system run down, top of the line Kronos Pro turntable and XYZ cartridge, Nagra phono and Preamp and Magnet mono bi amping, wired up with Skogrand throughout. Room size is approximately 16' x 20' x 10'. Seating spot is approximately 8' unilateral triangle. Listening volume roughly hits 90s at peak, about right, not overly loud. This too is important.

We were listening to early 60s jazz standards, I must say the recording selection was top notch. Count Bassie mono, Duke Ellington and some other great jazz master were on the playing list. Kronos Pro is one hell of turntable. What Louis did this differently from the competitor is, he fitted a counter rotating platter right below the main platter. And he's honest enough to reveal that the design idea is not his brainchild, but he perfected it. The ingenious counter rotary of bottom platter neutralizes the top platter, did a marvelous job eliminating the torque resonance. No measurable resonance. No rumble, no skipping occurred too knocking the rack the Kronos rests upon. Play wasn't interrupted when jittering Kronos front to back and sideways. This is the second turntable after Clearaudio Statement I had seen with such immunity. With a hefty price tag, it lives up to the claim.

How effective is the counter rotating platter? Louis wanted me to discern the sound without the counter rotating platter in motion. I was all sweat, this was an audible test in public and I didn't want be branded as cock ear. I want to thank my parents, my uncles and aunties, I survived the test. The sound was diffused, laid back and lifeless! Resonance sucks up life! Once you heard the magic, it is hard to go back. Work hard to make money to carry a Kronos home. 

Count Bassie mono LP, exhibits an unbelievable level of tonal richness. So musical, isn't this hifi about? Enjoy the music, be lost in an illusion of space and time. Double bass, bass pitch and definition was immaculate. Concurrent double bass and foot stomping, no masking, it is easy to discern the two. I could see Kronos Pro as front end in a top notch system, in a good room would be unimaginably enjoyable.

Some complained it is too cheap for what's it worth. You know how Chinese are like, low price, big bowl. And you know too that I don't do commercial review. Go check out yourself.

If you're not the problem

The modern world drives pace and innovations. Conventional audio sites are taking the beating, losing out to sites with audio visual aids. Audio review should not be read as a novel. We sometimes take a couple of minutes off from work reading reviews and it has to be quick. We have grown impatient reading long reviews, you know who and could not fully grasp what the reviewer trying to say sometimes. Blame it on interpretation. Thanks to the power of internet which brings things closer to us with audio visual aids. For the first time, audio visual aids eliminate hearsay, guesswork and biased opinions. Despite the limitations, namely reproduction of soundstage and bass, I believe audio visual technology will continue to improve its delivery in near future.

Spending is a big part of audioing, the fun dies when the funding stop. However, most of us are not blessed that we could buy whatever we want. We don't print money like US Federal Reserves. But sometimes, we need to go through a passage like some wise men to be a learned. Look beyond what you see, being tight forces us to improvise. A blessing in disguise?

Resting on my laurels, certainly not. I am in a quest to find the balance of high fidelity and musicality. Basically, all tunings are centered at first reflection points. Things settled nicely for me, though I do feel having little clues to move in. O yes! Audio is built upon a trinity, hardware, acoustics and yourself. Given the assumption that you're not the problem and all things being equal, hence, this makes an open game. A world class system meets a bad room, what do you get? A world class system in a first rate room by a lost audiophile? Hypothetically speaking.

For long, audio folks could not agree upon the thin line that separate hi fidelity and musicality. The issue lies at the highs. Technologies enable us to 100 kHz, a territory far beyond our human hearing. That's not a problem if the highs are well behaved in 3 kHz to 20 kHz range where and when the tweeters kick in. But the markets now offer speakers with over enthusiastic highs, somewhat splashy in nature in order to establish greater fidelity perception. And if care is not taken to select a suitable cable, you can imagine the catastrophe. Losing face for Asian is a big thing. Harsh highs make me uneasy, especially on violin. The screeching of the bow sawing the strings, the sterile sound sends chills to my bone. Acceptable standard is a minimum 30 minutes listening at the sweet spot. Short listening always gives non comprehensive system depiction, therefore by default, show goers must not drop sentence and straight away reject the systems.

What is musicality? In my own word, a sonic property that trigger the release of endorphins and make one response to music. You could be nodding your head, humming along, foot tapping or even doing some dance moves, all kind of behaviours that deemed a little off by ordinary folks. Music stirs emotions that is the language of music. Naturalness is the key ingredient, a smooth decay requires a lot of work. Surgical precision is uncalled for, it will then becomes mechanical. Unapologetically, I fall into an unorthodox school of audio, a strong emphasis on overtones articulation. As such, I worked my room to preserve optimum overtones wholeness. Harmonic richness paints the sound.

Musicality weaves sounds in a single piece of fabric, a quality of continuity. It has colours and it has depth too. The rounded highs I deliberately tweaked are not at all loss. A gain in texture department is a delightful surprise on saxophone, keyboard, percussion and voices. All these instruments sprung to life from the backstage, with intangible oomph.... with mass. This is good news though the shrillness of my brass as if has been shortened, is still acceptable though. Nursing musicality back into my system has marked an important milestone in my audio pilgrimage.

Objective technical superiority doesn't always guarantee emotion evocation, that why most audio equipment requires subjective listening as the final inspection before placing them on the shelves. Similarly, it isn't hard to explain some folks still holding on to vintage gears for their golden hue of inoffensive sound.

Tori Amos's debut album, Little Earthquakes 1991 is mostly out of audio folks' radar. What can I say; this is a non audiophile label recording gem. Piano and drum take centerstage in this album. And yet, this album begs you to crank up the volume. Track three, "Silent all these year" is a hit song. Tori plays Bosendorfer piano exclusively, the magnificence of Bosendorfer couldn't better exhibited. The tone, the weight and prowess, ahhh........... brilliant. Piano is deemed to be a difficult instrument to replay due to the complex harmonics. Even mixing engineer could not lay a hand editing it. The reverberations of strings does not pose any out of this world's problem, but the wood resonance of the piano body, the majestic of grand piano. The piano body breeds assuring notes, it too stamps the authority. The somewhat holographic piano there-ness before my eyes get me excited all over again.

"Precious things" is a pop rock. The ferocious drum play is electric, my heartbeat ran away with the tempo of the drum. The accorded resounding harmonics, a complex blend of sub harmonics resonating in a barrel with each drum skin moving front and back. I could almost hear the Qi, the air motion.

Overtones distinguish a Bosendorfer from Steinway or Yamaha. Yamaha is the most popular piano in pop music for its bright and vibrant sound. Bosendorfer is totally a different beast, the highs might be slightly dull but the tone weight is far more fervent.

So, room tuning is my poor man audioing. And I enjoy every minute of it. Wrapping up this, enjoy the amazing brush play.

KLIAVS 2105 day 2

This is to continuation of KLIAV 2015 in random order.

This is HIFI Creation room. Low light makes taking picture difficult. Kronos turntable attracted a lot of attention. Louis Desjardins, the Kronos man was explaining his creation. The boys at HIFI Creation has come up with Ocean Five Pacific Reference loudspeaker, painted with blue automotive paint.

Kronos flagship limited edition turntable.


Soul Note and Adam speakers. Sounded analogue, sweet.

A lot of thought going into this design. Can you see the white damping compound on the caps? A giant R core transformer on the left. 

Soul Note was making its presence at KLIAVS. Soul Note favours R core transformer.

Sim audio electronics and Canton Acoustics joined hands.

Nagra electronics and Verity Audio, match made in heavan.

Karan electronics teamed up with ASI Tango speakers. This is your ticket if value microdynamic.

Primare audio driving a pair of Pro Ac.

All Brit system, Audiolab teamed up with Mission speakers. Best value.

Jeff Rowland tag teamed with Dynaudio Confidence speakers. No nonsense sound.

East meets west, Spatial audio (M1 Turbo) and Clone Audio.

Guess what, Verastarr speaker cable.

Crayon Audio CFA 1.2 integrated amplifier, 64 watt at 8 ohm.

Teac TN300 turntable, anyone?

Clarity MP is debuting Mark Levinson No 585 integrated amp.

200 RMS per channel into 8 ohm.

Italian assault, Audia Flight and Rossa Forentino Siena. Digital is from Chord

Cayin amp driving Wharfedale black speakers.

Cayin M-845i single-ended Class-A integrated amplifier.

Audio Note horny setup.

Focal studio monitor

Vertere turntable

Furutech accessories

Acoustic Arts power house from Germany

Acoustic Arts mating pre amp

North Star Supremo DAC from Italy

Real sound?

Red hot amp from Japan

Naim is out to make a statement with flagship NAP S1750W, three blocks pure power amp.

A peek at the Naim Statement

FM811 driving Focal No 2

France delight, Sopra No 1

Look at here, Focal Infinite horn loading.

High End Research star stunned products, Wilson and Goldmund.

Frankly, the sound from this system surprised me with immense musicality.

Japanese retro look Leben CS600, 32 watt with 6L6GC, or 28 with watt EL34

ATC SCM 50 active speaker, call Kenny if you are interested

DCS Vivaldi + Constellation amp + Opera Grand Callas, Great Britain, American and Italy allies.

 Bryston and PMC, the usual display by AV Design

McIntosh XRT1K 

A look from different angle

McIntosh XR100

Marten Coltrane 3 powered by Vitus, Mother of all amp. Feed by Sperling turntable, the highs is like bell like. Impressive.

Apogee rebirth under the name of Clarisys

Premium components used in Clarisys

Lampizator Big 7 DSD dac, direct heated triodes and copper caps meet.

Do you like Audio Research new look?  Speakers shown are Sonus Faber Venere 3.0