After months of persuasion, your significant other agreed to a new speaker system. The catch (and yes, there is almost ALWAYS a catch): elegant design and a small footprint are paramount.

At first, you feel a flutter of fear and disappointment. What options offer the visual appeal of a soundbar with the performance and expandability of a true component system?

Cut to GoldenEar Technology’s SuperCinema 3D Array (SC3DA) speaker system. Easily mountable and less than three-inches deep, the 49-inch-wide SC3DA is an space-conscious audio lover’s dream come true. Combining the aesthetics and low profile of a soundbar with the audio quality of larger, floor-standing speakers, the SC3DA is a nearly perfect compromise that doesn’t force you to sacrifice sound for design.

“Most soundbars don’t do a very good job with music. When we showed this at CES, two writers gave it ‘Best Sound at the Lowest Price’ for two-channel music,” boasts GoldenEar Technology co-founder Sandy Gross, offering fantastic news if you value music over movies.

Of course, home theater and surround-sound buffs are still sure to adore the SC3DA.

Unlike most powered soundbars (which sport built-in amplification and a tendency toward lackluster performance and expandability), the SC3DA is passive, allowing you to connect it to an amplifier of your choosing.

While Gross admits that the SC3DA is easily powered by most entry-level amplifiers, GoldenEar Technology finds that many customers are pairing it with more powerful, high-end amplifiers.

“You’re not limited in terms of electronics, the quality, or the power,” notes Gross, pointing out that the SC3DA gives you the opportunity to design your system to your own specifications, even when working within a modest budget.

This approach also allows you to enhance your setup by including a ForceField subwoofer for some added “oomph” in the low-end, and even a set of SuperSat satellite speakers for a true surround-sound experience.

But sometimes, space is an issue; GoldenEar understands that, which is why the SC3DA was developed using inter-aural crosstalk cancellation technology. This prevents your left ear from picking up stray sounds from the right speaker – and vice versa – resulting in a vast soundstage and three-dimensional playback.

“We conceived [the SC3DA] to be used with surround speakers, but if you turn off the rear surrounds, it feeds that surround signal into the left and right front channels,” says Gross. “Because of the crosstalk cancellation, [the SC3DA] still does a really good job of creating that surround-sound experience while giving it a major advantage over other premium soundbars in the market.”

If you’re considering the SuperCinema 3D Array for yourself, Gross insists on only one thing:

“You need to hear it to believe it.”

But you don’t have to take his word for it. Wired, Home Theater Magazine, and Sound and Vision all give the SC3DA rave reviews, with Wired rating it as “Nearly perfect.”

As for what’s on the horizon at GoldenEar, Gross says, “We’re always working on new products,” mentioning the upcoming ForceField 5, along with the new SuperSat 60 and 60c – bigger, better versions of the existing SuperSat 50 series.

Check out GoldenEar Technology for more information, or visit us at our locations in Broomall, Jenkintown, and Wilmington to audition the SuperCinema 3D Array for yourself.

In this week’s Hifi Meditations I wanted to share my thoughts and impressions on the new Sonus Faber Venere series of speakers, before I get started  I feel that I need to be upfront and let you know that I have been incredibly excited about hearing these since I first heard about them. As some of you may know I am a Sonus Faber owner. In my home theater I am running the Grand Pianos, Solo and three Walls from the Home series. I have done my very best to be impartial and to be honest, and during my listening sessions I found myself constantly referring back to my system. I typically try to let a piece stand on its own merits and not hold it up to some other product. For example comparing the performance of a pair of $1000 speakers to a pair of $10,000 speakers in my mind isn’t fair. As they say, it is what it is, and I try to keep that in perspective. Due to my passion for Sonus Faber I decided to give myself a cool down period of a couple of weeks between my listening session and writing the review.

The stunning Sonus Faber Venere 2.5

We set up the new Venere series of speakers in our multiuse home theater room. This room typically has 10 to 15 pairs of speakers from a number of manufacturers and several receivers and an amp in it. There isn’t a switching unit in the room so if you want to hear something different you do it the old fashion way and move your speaker wires and or speakers around. I like this as it removes a layer of electronics and I feel it gives a more honest representation of what the system will sound like in your home. For this listening session I connected the Sonus Faber Venere 2.5 towers, the Venere Center and a pair of the Venere 1.5 speakers acting as surrounds to an Anthem MRX700 receiver running it’s preouts to an Anthem MCA50. Speaker wire was a straight forward 14-2, nothings crazy or exotic.

I did not personally set up the speakers and things move around so much in this room that spending time to properly toe in and adjust a pair of speakers is usually a waste of time. Setup is usually quick and based upon experience with a particular manufacturer’s idiosyncrasy. Some speakers NEED to be toed in or raked severely to properly image, some need subtle adjustments to lock in and some you can randomly drop in a room and they sound great. I bring this up because as much as I love my home system I spent a good deal of time getting them to image well in my room. I went through the, tape a grid on the floor and listen to the same song over and over and move the speakers until it is perfect, routine to get things sounding great. When I sat down to listen I didn’t expect good imaging let alone great imaging. You can imagine my surprise when I popped in ”Too Much of Nothing” from the Peter, Paul and Mary Ten Years Together album and the imaging was spectacular! Peter and Paul were just to the outside of the speakers, it sounded like the bass player was behind and to the right of the drummer and there was a true sense of vertical space. It took me a long time to get that kind of imaging from my system, and I have heard other, much more expensive speakers image better, but the level of detail in space and openness of the image was stunning!

Moving on to other music, I thought I would see how the Veneres handled low frequencies, in went Paula Cole’s This Fire. The first cut starts out with Paula front and center and the Venere 2.5 made it seem as though Paula was singing right to me. The intensity and intimacy of it was wonderful, her voice was clear, precise and open with no coloration. Sonus Faber has always had a reputation for doing a great job with mid range, but when Tony Levin’s bass came it was quickly apparent that these speakers are more than capable of handling low frequencies with grace, precision and power!

I moved on to film content next. I like to use the third chapter from “House of Flying Daggers” when I want to know how well matched speakers are. This scene is challenging because there is a lot going on for every channel towards the end of it. Yet in the beginning of the scene there are many subtle things to listen for. A pair of front speakers that image well will make the water fountain sound as though it is  up and to the left, far outside the physical location of the speakers, and in a small room with a great system I have heard it sound as though the trickle of water is running down the wall of the room! The Veneres did a fabulous job with this however when the beans started flying the surround channels were very weak. I even stopped to make sure that I was in the correct surround mode and that I had the correct speakers plugged in. After some investigating I discovered what the issue was. The Veneres are a 6 ohm speaker and are not super efficient for a modern speaker.

Venere 1.5

Because we change things in this room so much we typically leave distance and channel level settings at the factory default for the receivers. After I took the time to adjust the Level setting for the surrounds everything dropped into place and the soundstage for surround was easily as good as or better than the two channel imaging was! After reading the spec sheet I discovered that the issue was that the 2.5 are 89db of sensitivity and the 1.5 is only 85db. Where 89db is reasonably typical, 85db is pretty darn low for a modern speaker, particularly a 6 ohm speaker. Having said that modern receivers have more than enough flexibility to overcome this issue and modern amplifiers have more than enough horse power to power a system of Venere. I always recommend using a separate preamp/receiver and amplifier for any system, but I highly recommend it for this Sonus Faber system, could you use a well powered AVR? Certainly, but you would be sacrificing a great deal of detail and impact by not having a separate amplifier. To be fair this statement is true for ANY speaker system. More on this next week…..

Outside of this issue, the Venere look and sound amazing. Sonus Faber, at least around the shop, have always had a reputation for being difficult to setup and tough to drive. It appears that Sonus Faber has built a speaker that is very easy to set up and just needs a bit more power to get the best performance out of.

Sonus Faber also has a reputation for building beautiful speakers and the Venere live up to that expectation in a remarkable way. If you haven’t seen them in person please rush out and take a look! They are elegant, modern and beautiful.

All in all, I was impressed with the new Venere, the image and soundstage is impressive, they are tonally well balanced and will add to your enjoyment even when they are not playing music. I wonder if I can get a trade going………

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Yamaha is consistently one of our favorite AV receivers

Audio Processing and Room Correction

A receiver needs to be able to accept and process all or most of the audio formats that are available. It also needs to be able to take older formats and turn them into surround sound. For example if you are watch Casablanca on Bluray you can tell your receiver to either use the original format, Mono. Or you can tell your receiver to convert the Mono to a manufactured Surround sound format. I tend to be a purist, if I am watching a movie that was filmed in Mono I want to hear it in Mono. If I am watching Avengers I want the full lossless audio experience. While a receiver is handling these duties it also needs to be able to equalize the audio, more on this later, and send the proper frequencies at the right time delays to the proper speakers. When you set up a receiver and tell it that your right rear speaker is twenty feet away and your left rear speaker is five feet away the receiver needs to delay the info going to the closer speakers by the correct amount of time so that the sounds get to you at the same time. All of what we are talking about now is JUST audio processing. Already we are talking about a ton of processing which also opens up a lot of opportunity for mistakes. Earlier I mentioned equalizing, most modern receivers offer some form of room correction.

Room correction typically involves a microphone and a lot of noise. The receiver sends out audio information and listens to the responses via the microphone. It then uses the data to create the most neutral response that it can. If you have ever been

walking around someone’s theater and the bass suddenly got really loud or the higher frequency became painful you have experienced what the receiver is trying to correct. The receiver is also trying to correct for the reverb in a room so that it doesn’t sound like you are watching a movie in an empty gym! As you can imagine we are talking about a lot of math and a ton of processing. Some receivers and preamps do a remarkable job fixing “bad” rooms. Others not so much, unfortunately there isn’t really a quantitative way to tell what system works the best.  We tend to use experience rather than specs to decide which system will really help us solve a clients room issues.

Amplification

After all of this processing and math is done it is time for the receiver to do the job it was originally designed to do, drive

A separate Amp/Processor will typically give higher performance

speakers. Once again we enter a world where there are HUGE differences in performance and technologies. There are a ton of amplifier topographies out there from the tradition class A/B to class D and H designs that seem to be all the rage with some manufacturers. I have been telling clients for years that if they really want great sound they should buy a standalone amplifier and use either a dedicated preamp or a receiver with preamp outputs.  If you don’t have the space and or budget to go this route, which requires double the space and double the investment at least, don’t fret. You can always add an amplifier later or if you are doing a smaller theater many home theater receivers do a fine job. I tend to look at the efficiency of the speakers and the size of the room when thinking about the wattage of a receiver. I tend to be an “all things in moderation” kind of guy, however when it comes to amplifier power there are very few instances when more power isn’t better. More speakers get blown from being under powered then have ever been blown by too much. One thing to keep in mind is that not all wattage ratings are created equal. If you are standing in a big box store looking at a home theater in a box with 1000 watts of total power for $399, and we just talked about a receiver that has 90 watts per channel that was $1000 I can promise you that one of those wattage ratings has nothing to do with reality. In the above example the 90 watt per channel amplifier will sound exponentially better than a $400 unit with 1000 watts of total power. One of the things to keep in mind is that modern movies are increasingly sending lower frequencies at great volume levels to the surround speakers. To hear what I am talking about just pop in any of the new Marvel movies on Bluray. The upshot is that ALL of your surround channels are going to need lots of clean amplification. One of the things I always consider when looking at power ratings is if the stated ratings are for one channel driven, two channels driven or all channels driven. Building an amplifier that can drive five speakers with over one hundred watts per channel at the SAME TIME is not only difficult but expensive as well! Many receivers now have NINE powered channels. In short, beware anemic amplifiers! I have always felt that fewer speakers that are driven by a great amp will offer a better experience than lots of little speakers driven by a wimpy amp. The former gives you a dynamic, exciting and enveloping movie or music experience and the later gives you lots of noise. In short weak amps are bad for your speakers and your experience.

Anthem AV receivers and processors use a microphone to measure and correct the sound of your room

So far we have touched on processing, room correction and amplification. So what do I think about when specifying a receiver? Where processing and room correction come in I tend to look at the size of the room and the position of the speakers. Where a speaker goes can dramatically change the speakers performance, and I consider it the number one thing to get right when I am designing a theater from scratch. However if we can’t get the speakers in the proper locations and the room is a serious challenge I will often specify a receiver or preamp from Anthem. The reason is that Anthem receivers come with a much higher quality microphone and you use a PC to do the actually processing for room correction. Once the PC has crunched the numbers it downloads a file to the preamp or receiver so that the receiver doesn’t have to think about it anymore, it just follows the rules it received from the PC. Anthem even goes so far as to voice match the program with the microphone. Every microphone has its frequency response measured and the program disc you get is specifically tailored to that microphone’s response curves.
In a room with good placement and that isn’t too challenging and with a client who wants good sound but still wants to interface with iOS devices and perhaps need to send video and audio to multiple zones, I typically specify Pioneer Elite or Yamaha. I personally have been using the Elite receivers in my home system for years. I plan on adding an amplifier to my current SC-05 sometime in the near future. As for Yamaha, they offer great flexibility and in the years I have been specifying them both the Yamaha and Elite receivers have had a very low failure rate. I tend to stay with what sounds good, has flexibility, is easy to use and is as bullet proof as possible. There are certainly many other well respected manufacturers out there, but since my job is to design a system with as little risk for failure as possible I tend to stick to what I know works.
Next week I will go over the video side of a receiver’s role and offer up some insights as to how I chose between Pioneer Elite and Yamaha receives when making a recommendation to a client.

Pioneer Elite combines great sound with bullet-proof reliability

By the way for those who have been reading my posts, my Dragonfly is on the way and won’t be leaving my side!
And always remember; the proof is in the listening!
Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

If you don’t mind I will tackle the second question first. The Dragonfly is an interesting combination of devices. I think of it as an USB DAC that happens to do a great job as a headphone amp. At $249 the Dragonfly is certainly not the most expensive DAC we have on hand but it is the most convenient. The Dragonfly plugs into the USB port on your MAC or PC. It comes with a very straight forward quick start guide for windows and iOS, and took me less than a minute to set up. I plugged it into my work laptop a Dell Latitude E5410 running Windows 7 Professional on which I use iTunes for music. I store my CDs on my laptop on AIFF as 48 kHz 16 bit files. I grabbed a pair of the well regarded Grado Labs SR80s ($99 retail) as headphones. The Dragonfly has a standard 1/8^th inch stereo output on it. Due to the ease of set up I was able to switch between the Dragonfly and the on board headphone output in a matter of seconds and the results were nothing short of stunning.

A look inside this remarkable device

I started off with one of my favorite tracks, Diana Krall’s “Peel Me a Grape”, I love how minimal the arrangement is and how on a great system it feels like it is just you and Diana. I started with the Dragonfly and was impressed with how close, and how real her voice sounded. The vocals were silky smooth and the upright bass had impact and a sense of the strings on wood. That may sound odd, but an upright bass has such a special combo of low warmth and bite from the strings on the ebony neck. This unique sound is so often lost on even some very good gear and low and behold, as soon as I switched to the pc headphone output, it sank into the background and I had to actively listen for it. What was even worse is all the bite, intensity and intimacy I was sharing with Diana disappeared. She could have been singing for 10 thousand people rather than just me. Needless to say I quickly returned to the Dragonfly for the rest of the track.

Next I put on “Josie” from Steely Dan’s Aja. The first thing I noticed as I switched between the Dragonfly to the PC and back in the first verse was something I noticed and discounted on “Peel Me a Grape”, there is so much more space in the music through the Dragonfly. Usually I say that in the context of imaging between instruments, but here I also mean with the reverb. On the funk guitar part in “Josie” you can clearly hear the echo on the guitar even when the entire band is grooving. When I switched over the echo disappeared. Everything just sounds flat, weak and blah without the Dragonfly.

This is how we get to the first question. It sounded so damn good I couldn’t put it down.  I didn’t experience the fatigue you sometimes get with headphones.  What is more, listening through the Dragonfly was by FAR the BEST audio experience I have ever had with headphones on. I own several pairs of buds and over the ear head phones from well respected manufactures and though my Zune or iPod with lossless files and $500 a pair ear buds this experience was hands down light years better.

If you want to get into computer music and don’t want to spend big bucks look into the Dragonfly and a 1/8 inch stereo to RCA stereo cable and get started. You can use the Dragonfly as a DAC for your existing system or you can just use it with headphones. Either way you are going to have digital music that is more open, more alive, more intimate and more impactful. I do believe I will be taking one home tonight for just that purpose. Plus it is so small I can easily take it back and forth from home and work. You can have great sounding music anywhere you want!

Now if you will pardon me Diana is asking me “To Fly Her to the Moon”…….

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Well I have taken a week or so to process everything I saw on my visit to CEDIA ad I wanted to distill my impressions for you. The thing that surprised me the most is that I didn’t see a lot of home theater/audio type stuff. The one theme I DID see over and over again was the theme of making the home a place where technology and human beings can live in peace.

I think it is safe to say that we as a society have an expectation for things to happen quickly and easily. Every time a new phone, computer or tablet comes out it is faster and more intuitive. On the other hand home theater and integration systems just seem to become harder to use and more esoteric. Remotes have more buttons, every device tries to handle all tasks and most hardware is always looking for the latest firmware.  Even as a professional I well sometimes scratch my head when a new piece of gear comes in and I see the remote or user interface for the first time!

The theme that I saw repeated over and over at CEDIA was that manufactures are stream lining interfaces and interaction with complex integration systems. Ease of use seemed to be high on everyone’s priority list. Now call me a cynic but I have heard this song before and usually the results range from tepid improvements to full blown epic fails. This year at CEDIA is saw several things that make me think that the tide is turning and I would like share three of them with you….

The first thing I saw that swayed my thinking is a partnership between Sony and Control4. You can now get a Sony ES receiver with Control4 built in. Are you going to be able to run a full house on this system, no, but it is a great way to get into the integration world at a reasonable level and you can do enough to control the lights in your home theater and sound in another area. More importantly you get intuitive, easy control over the home theater you just invested in!  In addition it offers you the opportunity to use the Control4 interface and go through the learning curve in a gentle manner. If you are thinking about integrating your home this looks to be a great way to get your feet wet! This partnership actually solves real problems AND offers a fantastic value! I can’t wait to get my hands on one and get you the full report.

At the Control4 booth I came across a device that allows voice command of the Control4 system. I have noticed that voice command on some items, namely the iPhone and the Xbox360 seems to be hit or miss. Not to mention I feel weird talking to inanimate objects, but there are times when being able to issue voice commands to your house would be ideal. For example your hands are full or dirty, or you need to do something and there isn’t a touch pad or remote nearby. I also have clients that would greatly benefit from being able to issue voice commands. But it has to work. However, even on a busy convention floor the interaction between the demonstrator and the control4 system was flawless. I am anxious to see if it works as well in a real world beta testing environment, if it does, it could be a game changer for clients that either can’t physically manipulate a controller or simply don’t understand how to use a touchpad or hard button remote.

Finally at Universal Remote Control’s booth we got to see some of the new Total Control hardware and interface that will be available this year. Universal has been doing one touch remotes and RF for years and took their time coming to market with an integration system. I have always liked their remotes and will be upgrading to their Total Control System shortly. As with the remotes the interface that they developed for Total Control are elegant, logical and uniform. After I have lived with the new system for a few weeks I plan on doing a detailed blog post on how the Total Control system performs compared to a tradition hard button remote from URC, and also to see how my wife adjusts to being able to control some lights, the thermostat, the home theater and music in another area of the house from one iPad app or hard button remote.

All in all it was an enjoyable show and it appears that we are finally at the point when there is something for everyone in the home integration market. Controlling a home used to be something that only a privileged few could have access to, it appears that we are entering an era when doing so will not only be affordable but also easier to use, and able to do more for you, your family and your home.

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Day one at CEDIA was packed full of interesting stuff! Rather than go really deep I thought I would share my impression on some of things I saw today. Paradigms new 30^th anniversary speakers looked and sounded stunning! And they are truly in limited quantities, only 300 pairs of bookshelf speakers and 200 pairs of towers will be built. The Signature series beryllium tweeter and a new mid-range driver deliver the crystal clear highs and tight focused mids that Paradigm listeners know and love.

We also got a chance to hear the new sound bar from Golden Ear, for such a small unit it had great impact, clarity and a wonderful soundstage. But yet was barely noticeable on top of the TV it was displayed with!

The most impressive thing from Control 4 was the addition of voice commands, you will now be able to use your voice to do anything and more that you normally do with a remote control or touch panel. I can see all kinds of great applications for this technology and rather than some voice activated systems I have used this seemed to work really well and really reliably, even on the crowded and noisy show floor!

Kaleidescape is going to be adding Bluray quality downloads to their M series units! And we learned that there are many movies and shows that you simply CANNOT stream. With Kaleidescape’s new downloads you get full quality 1080P picture and full lossless audio and all the same features you would get if you bought the disk. This is an exciting development for those who wish to have large movie collections but don’t want the hassle of having all that hard media, but still want the highest possible picture and sound quality!

Lutron introduced a ceiling fan speed control that will work with its Radiora2 system! This may not sound like a big deal but it fixes a serious gap in whole house control that until recently was not easily controlled, they had some other great stuff that I will be talking about later!

The Highlight of the show for Jon Robbins was hearing the Sonance SLS outdoor speaker system. With a sub that gets buried in the ground and four separate speakers it was the most rocking thing we have heard at the show yet. If you wanna rock the entire neighborhood the SLS can handle it!

So far it has been a great show and I am looking forward to more interesting things tomorrow! I hope to be able to go into greater depth on some of these things in the comings months! Stayed tuned for updates on Facebook and my blog for more pictures and info as I come across great stuff! If there is something you would like me to check out at CEDIA for you please send me an email! If I can find it I will snap a picture and let you know what I think!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

In previous blogs I have talked about the importance of a loud speaker being able to reproduce an audio event with a sense of the vertical, horizontal and depth of space of the original audio event. In the hobby this ability is typically thought of as “imaging” or “soundstage”.  Speaker manufacturers have gone to great lengths to master this and Wilson has gone further than most. Peter explained that one of the things that make Wilson loud speakers stand out versus other speaker in their price tier is the fact that the top models offer adjustable baffles. Most speakers have a fixed baffle. In other words the cabinet is one solid “box” with the speakers mounted in it. You can change the “rake” or vertical angle of the entire loud speaker but you can’t adjust the mid driver/s and tweeters separately. Many of Wilson Audio’s loudspeakers give you this capability, and when properly set up you can focus the soundstage very precisely. The analogy that Peter used was to compare a high end fixed baffle loudspeaker to an expensive camera that you can’t focus. Who would buy a camera that you can’t focus? Of course the down side to being able to adjust those baffles is that it is more expensive to build but the payoff is that you have a loud speaker that isn’t held back by the environment that it is in and that can recreate the true depth and sonic environment of a recording.

As many of you know I came to our hobby as a musician first. I was frustrated that recordings didn’t sound like what I KNEW a guitar or drum kit sounded like in “real” life. Peter shared with us that Dave Wilson started building speakers for the same reason. As  a recording engineer Dave Wilson became frustrated with the fact that he would put a great deal of energy into capturing a performance only to have it sound nothing like the original performance when played back. While listening to Peter tell the story of how he and Dave Wilson meet in the 1970’s I jotted the note, “Dave Wilson is a recording engineer that builds speakers….awesome!” The story that Peter related had to do with Dave coming into a hifi store that Peter worked at and after many hours of careful listening buying an Audio Research SP1A preamp. Sometime later Dave came back to the store holding the preamp, which if you are a Hifi sales person is almost never a good sign! However Dave was smiling. You see Dave had purchased the preamp so that he could fix a problem that he saw and no one else had considered let alone addressed. Microphone preamps sounded terrible, so Dave went way out of the box and modified the preamp so that he could defeat the built in RIAA EQ and use the Audio Research Preamp as a microphone preamp. A moment of true genius! Peter went on to tell us how Dave is gifted at finding solutions for problems that no one even knew existed. This talent is the driving force behind the remarkable performance of the entire line of Wilson Audio loud speakers.

After Peter gave us some details about the new Wilson loud speaker that is coming out and shared with us some info about the new XLF loud speaker we got down to some serious listening. Peter started us out with a rare and wonderful treat; we got the pleasure of listening to some of Peter’s recordings directly from the device he recorded them on.

All told Peter played us eight or nine cuts that covered the spectrum from full blown opera to an a cappella vocal group. I thought I would share a few that I found to be particularly remarkable. First a word about the system, Peter ran his digital recorder to an Audio Research DAC8 via a coaxial cable, and his Mac Book via firewire to a Weiss INT202 which sent the digital feed via USB to the DAC8, the DAC8 is connected to an Audio Research REF5SE preamp which is running to a pair of Dan D’Agostino Momentum monoblocks. All interconnects and speaker wires are from Transparent.

A cut that I found stunning was a section of Carmen that Peter recorded at the Opera Hall in Miami Florida. Of course the music and chorus where amazing but what put my jaw on the floor was being able to see people walk around the stage and the sheer thunder of the feet stomps of the chorus. It was simply unreal, or rather so real that it took my mind a moment to accept it. The stage had width and depth that defied the space that the Alexandria’s occupy. Peter then played a flute and piano duet for us that was so intimate and so close that I was stunned. To clearly hear the difference between the sound of the flute and the breath of the flutist passing over the flute’s mouth piece was breathtaking, no pun intended! You could clearly “see” how wide the flute was and how high off the floor it was! The piano’s overtones and size were clearly defined and I would have sworn there was a piano in the room. I love the sound of a piano in person and I am nearly always disappointed when I hear one through a hifi system, but every single piano I heard last night was in the room with all the space, size and beautiful cascade of overtones that drew me to the instrument in the first place!

After a short break Peter switched to some pop/rock style recordings off of his Mac Book where once again he played some rare and spectacular pieces for us. Hearing a cut off of Keith Richard’s Main Offender it was clear that not only can the Wilson Alexandria X2s gracefully and effortlessly handle vocal and acoustic music from the classical world but that they can also rock out, or in this case reggae out. I couldn’t tear my attention from the drum kit, the snare alone was amazing, every detail, every impact was real!

Then Peter played a Kris Kristofferson cut that has never been released and was recently recorded in Kris’s home. It was just Kris and an acoustic guitar. Kris’s presence in the room singing just for us was undeniable. The detail and emotion in his voice, the reality of the acoustic guitars wood body and metal strings resonating, I keep coming back to the fact that it was real. It was so real that you could feel the emotional shift as the people in room reacted to the raw energy of Kris’s performance.

The piece I can’t get out of my head was a drum solo by Manu Katche. Once again the realness of it is beyond my ability to impart to you in words. As I have been writing this my mind keeps coming back to a phrase that Peter used last night that I think succinctly and elegantly describes the experience that I had last night, “Inherently beautiful and transparent.”

I can think of no better way to communicate the experience of hearing music on a pair of Wilson Speakers. If you love music and you have not taken the time to listen to a pair of Wilson Audio loud speakers, do yourself a favor and give a pair a serious listen. I promise you that you won’t regret it.

Many thanks to Peter for sharing such great recordings and his wonderful insights with us! I can’t wait for the next event!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

One of the questions that I hear the most is, “How many watts are those speakers?” I also hear, “What’s the wattage on that amp?” Usually folks are asking these questions to see if the amp/speakers are a good match. Believe it or not those numbers mean less to me than the “voice” of an amp or speaker, when I think about matching an amp and speakers. I have covered before how wattage is rated in a few different ways and how those numbers have nothing to do with one another. The piece I would like to talk about today is an excellent example of a piece of gear where the numbers have nothing to do with reality!

We move equipment around a fair bit and sometimes a really nice piece of gear will sit dormant because something from the same line is hooked up or we just don’t have space. Recently we moved some stuff around and I had a chance to hook up the Ayre AX-7 integrated amplifier. As I was saying above, on paper the Ayre doesn’t seem that impressive. It is rated at 60 watts per channel into 8 ohms and 120 watts into 4 ohms. Mind you this is continuous power not peak power. I’ve owned guitar amps with more power than that, but as I said above sometimes the numbers lie. Among the innovations that make the AX-7 special are a volume control that uses FET switches and metal film resistors, the fact the control microprocessor is completely off unless you ask the AX-7 to do something like changing an input or volume level and the fact that the inputs are completely disconnected when not selected. When you add in Ayre’s legendary zero feedback, fully balanced circuitry you get an incredibly low noise floor that allows music to move effortlessly and for even the softest passages to have presence and impact. This also allows more “space” between instruments.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about hooking the AX-7 up and I had a slew of songs that I was excited to hear once I hooked it up. So I connected the Ayre QB-9 DAC to an Apple Mac Book Pro via an Audioquest Carbon USB cable and to the AX-7 via a pair of Audioquest Single Ended King Cobra. The AX-7 is powering a pair of Wilson’s incredible Duettes with Transparent Music Wave Plus speaker wires.

Wilson lists the minimum power requirements for Duettes as 20 watts per channel with a nominal impedance of 4 ohms. The sensitivity is rated as 90db @ 1 watt @ 1 meter @ 1kHz.

Up first I put on an 88.2/96 copy of B.B. King and Eric Clapton’s Riding with the King. On the track Hold on I’m Coming, you can clearly hear WHERE Eric and B.B. are both vocally and their guitars come from slightly behind and to the side of their voices. The background vocals during the chorus are faint but can clearly be heard as being “behind” the band proper. I saw B.B. King play live at a relatively small venue years ago, and I about drove the person I went with crazy talking about how clean and powerful his guitar tone was. I thought about it for days afterward and in spite of the fact that I listen to him fairly often this was one of the rare times that all that power, clarity and bell like tone sounded real. Mr. King could have been in the room!

Next up I gave a listen to a Bjork track called Army of Me off of Post. I like this track for the complex synth bass line. The line is sinuous and quick with notes that are close to together in both time and tone. If the amp and speakers is slow to respond this track sounds like one big annoying pile of mush. Usually to control bass this low and this fast you need LOTS and LOTS of power. On paper the AX-7 should not be able to reproduce this track with accuracy and grace, nor should it move with ease. The AX-7 didn’t even blink an eye. All the notes were clear, clean, and articulate and the amp never felt like it struggled or was trying to keep Bjork’s voice was tightly focused and jumped right out of the mix.

I thought it was so cool that I pulled Anthony in to give it a listen and got a kick out of him grinning ear to ear as he shouted, “My chair is VIBRATING!”

Yes folks we could feel the bass in our bodies and our sits. This from an amplifier rated at a lowly 60 watts per channel. More evidence, not that we need it, that the proof really is in the listening.

Next week I will be doing a special post, as Peter McGrath is coming to show off Wilson’s best, I will be talking about that! Feel free to stop by the Jenkintown location for one of the best listening sessions you may ever have! The week afterwards I will be blogging right from the CEDIA convention, from September 7^th-9^th. If you are curious about a particular product or gadget and want me to check it out, post on our Facebook page or hit me up via email! I will do my best to check it out and I promise to pass along all the cool stuff I run into!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

First things first we should talk about listening, I can’t tell you how many times I have been talking to someone about better audio gear and had them say something to the effect that they don’t have “golden ears” or don’t have good ears. At which point I go, “Well, I guess it is time to start training them!”  I have sat with many folks and pointed out some things to listen to while auditioning a pair of speakers and have watched a smile spread ear to ear as the realization hits that they CAN hear the difference between two different pairs of speakers. If you don’t think you can all you need to do is work a little bit at learning what to listen for. Granted the reviews you read in the magazines that review Hifi gear can seem esoteric and daunting. But it is REALLY hard to describe sound without sounding completely stuck up. These folks aren’t stuck up they just need to push the English language to its limits to describe what they are hearing. Their hearing isn’t better than yours or mine just better trained and they are paying much closer attention to what they are listening to.

I like to close my eyes, may seem silly but it allows the music to more effectively pull me in and it shuts down visual stimuli. Are we not more visually oriented than aurally? So close the eyes and hear the music open up and you will suddenly start noticing things that you didn’t before.

The second thing I would like to tackle is listening fatigue. Even well trained ears can get tired and confused, especially at higher volume levels. My first tip is; don’t be afraid to listen at a sane volume level. I always ask my clients to let me know if it is too loud, if it is, I want them to say something. One of the greatest professional challenges that we face is that there are normally a lot of other sources playing in the store at any one time. Human nature is to turn it up because you are A. trying to show off a system that you are proud of and B. Trying to overcome all the other sounds in the store. I therefore turn off or turn down other systems when possible and try to talk to the client about the volume levels they are comfortable with and match that level. So that covers volume levels, next is how long do you listen?

I recommend that you take four or five CDs or LPs and listen to one song or part of one song, on each of them. If you are trying to compare two different speakers it gives you a base line to hear what the difference in their performance is. I also recommend that for each song pick out two or three things to listen for, and they need to be specific. For example, there is a Tears for Fears song called Elemental, on the album of the same name that I like to use. It is a very dense mix and most speakers struggle to leave enough space for all of the instruments, so I listen for the space and depth of the three guitar tracks. The second thing I listen to is a very low frequency note around 35 seconds in that most speakers can’t handle. What I listen for is if that note gets reproduced and if it is how loud it is relative to the rest of the frequency range. This is great for testing amps and subs too….. The third thing I like to listen to is a small guitar part that is buried in the mix. On speakers that image exceptionally well it should sound like it is about a foot to the left of the speaker and about 2 feet above the speaker. These three things all happen within the first minute of the track. More about why that is important later.

I also recommend that of the selections you choose try to pick a variety of music, I usually go with a female vocal performance that is as close to a capella as possible, something that is classical, and a live jazz recording. Even if you don’t care about or normally listen to these genres they can offer insights into how well a specific pair of speakers perform. For example female vocals and vocals in general can tell you a lot about how well a cross over works and how good of a soundstage the speakers can produce. In a speaker that doesn’t cross over well it can seem like the vocalist gets taller and shorter as they work through their vocal range and the sound moves from tweeter to mid-driver. It is a small thing but something speaker manufactures have worked incredibly hard to perfect. If you are listening to a classical violin concerto can you hear the cello and viola parts? Is there a sense of depth front to back? There should be….In a live jazz recording can you clearly hear where the cymbals are relative to the snare and the kick drum? Can you pick out where the players are on the stage?

Now back to why you want to keep your song sample short and sweet. I have discovered that I hear more differences if I listen to only a small section say no more than a minute of a few cuts and switch to the other speakers and listen to the same cuts in the same order. By keeping your selections short you aren’t forcing yourself to try to remember every little nuance between the gear you are auditioning. This also allows you to listen to more speakers over a longer period of time without hitting the fatigue wall. And remember we are listening to just a few things on each cut. By listening to the small specific things over several short sections allows you to narrow down an objectively judge what you like and don’t like about a pair of speakers.

This is the way I prefer to narrow down what kind of speakers I like and that my clients like. Once we are down to one or two but aren’t quite sure, that’s when I recommend popping in your favorite album and giving it a good, solid listen. I will typically leave my clients alone at this point as I want them to see if the speakers bring out an emotional response. At the end of the day that is what you are buying. A piece of technology designed to illicit an emotional response. If you put on your favorite album and the speakers take you to the place that album is tied with in your mind then Congratulations we have a winner!

At the beginning I mentioned that one the variables that make a fair audition impossible is that there is a very low chance that the gear will be set up exactly the same in the store as in your home, not to mention the fact that the room plays a huge factor in how a system sounds. And where some speakers are very forgiving with placement some aren’t. The best you can do is talk with the person you are working with and see what their personal experience has been. Where possible, if a client makes an appointment, I will try to set up the audition system as closely as possible to the home system to mitigate these factors. I also offer my clients a 30 day money back guarantee, so that they can really see at home if they made the right choice.

This is certainly not a definitive guide to auditioning speakers but I wanted to offer a solid foundation for setting yourself up for an objective examination of a speaker’s ability to reproduce music. By taking some of these tips to heart you may even find more enjoyment in your current system, or you may find out that you need new speakers because you are becoming a better listener!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

I have long made it a habit to talk to clients about the speaker wire and interconnects that they are using in their systems and I am always surprised by the responses I get. The responses range from “Of course I use the best wire I can for my system!” to “Those fancy wires are all snake oil and marketing hype!”

Outside of the analog vs. digital debate nothing starts more controversy in our hobby than the great wire debate. Over the years I have been through many trainings, from some of the most well known wire companies and even I get a little glossy eyed hearing about dielectric this and time correction windings that! As always the bottom line is; do better wires/connections help a system? I have long held that they do, but not because of my experience in home theater and hifi. If you really want to see the difference a cable can make, plug a nice guitar into a nice amp with a crappy guitar cable. Then swap the crappy cable for a good cable. I became a believer when I went to a gig and my crappy cable failed. I got a loaner from a fellow player and was amazed at the difference. My Strat was more open, there was more separation between notes in chords, that beautiful bell like quality that single coils have jumped right out. And I got more sustain and “tone” with distortion. It was as though my guitar’s sound had been covered in Vaseline and somebody had come along and cleaned it off. This incident occurred years before I was in the hifi business and when I started selling hifi I carried this experience with me. I thought that if it worked on a simple rig like a Fender Strat into a Mesa Boogie amp then the same should be true in a complex system like a home theater. And wouldn’t you know it I did hear a big difference.

So I can hear the doubters saying; it is all crap! Monoprice wires are fine, wire is wire there isn’t any difference.  And maybe there isn’t.  If you want to give up an accurate soundstage and don’t want to hear all the overtones from cymbals and violins. If you are okay with sloppy bass and singers sounding like they are in a box then the cheap wires are just fine. Want to cover your system in Vaseline? Use the cheapest cables you can find.

Now I am NOT saying that you should go crazy on the other end either. I am a huge fan of balance, in other words if you buy a nice $2000 pair of speakers it would be a little crazy to spend $3000 on wire. But $200 to $500 for a pair of speaker wires makes tons of sense for a pair of $2000 speakers. Because a two channel rig or home theater is a system that means that your performance is capped by the lowest performing piece of gear in your system. Why would you make such a great investment in a beautiful, great sounding pair of speakers and then stick them in a closet?

If you doubt the benefits of better wire and interconnects, I would encourage you to at least entertain the idea and ask for a demo. I have done this for clients before, switching out speaker wire, a digital cable or a pair of interconnects is easy. Better yet see if the person you work with would let you take a pair home for a demo on your own system, with some type of return policy available if you don’t like them. If you don’t hear a difference then; no harm no foul. If you do, you can start making decisions about how you are going to unlock the full potential of your system. In all the years I have been sending cables home with clients it is a rare occurrence when they come back. Recently my co-worker Anthony had a client call to say that it was criminal for someone to buy a specific set of speakers without getting good wire. After owning a set of speakers for two years she finally got some great wire and was BLOWN AWAY by the incredible improvement they made.

I do feel compelled to say that wires and interconnects are not a panacea for all issues. If the system isn’t set up properly or the speakers aren’t placed correctly there is only so much better wires will do. My point in all this is; if you are doubter give a careful and honest listen. You may well discover that you are missing out and that the wires you are using are doing a huge disservice to the wonderful gear that you already own. If you know that better wires have benefits, pass the knowledge along. Loan a friend a nice pair of speaker wires, you could open whole new worlds of performance up to them! As always the proof really is in the listening. Have an open mind, give an honest detailed listen and I believe you too will find the benefits of better wire and cables far outweigh the cost.

If you have a personal story about your experience with speaker wire and interconnects please take a moment to share it on our Facebook page or give me a yell to share your experience!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com