Six Pounds and 3000 Dollars

RMAF 2015 has come and gone.  All audio shows are a pain in the ass, and this one was no different.  Besides losing six pounds in five days, and spending around $3,000 for room, transportation, food, marketing, etc.., there was damaged equipment, and various problems with accommodations.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

• When we started unpacking, the box holding the Pyon platter had somehow shifted and worked its way to the door, thus flying out of the van, hitting the ground, damaging the steel bottom half of the platter, and causing the top piece to shift relative to the bottom piece, throwing off the spindle center.  Without a dial indicator to adjust the platter, it meant the Pyon was DOA.  Luckily, I brought two tables, and I will always have two turntables (and probably should bring a microphone for completeness).

• Arriving 1pm on Thursday, I found that the room was missing the furniture and fixtures we requested

• Mr Ishihara arrived around 6pm with the brand new cartridges from Hana, finished the same week in Tokyo by Excel Sound.  This meant no time for break-in or experimentation.  

• Around 11PM, some chairs finally showed up, but I had to find the Marriott's Majordomo to beg to be let into their storage to get the tables I needed.  At 3AM, after "getting sound", I decided the strange-smelling, mismatched, tablecloths supplied by the Marriott weren't quite good enough, and set off for the local Wal-Mart.

• The black sheets at Wal-Mart, starting at $5 for the twin flat sheet, make excellent tablecloths for trade shows.  Also, if you want to steal something from the Denver Wal-Mart, apparently 3AM is the time.  This must be time for their "smoke break".  I had to track people down to pay for the sheets.  What happened to the self check-outs?  

• How does a brand new moving coil cartridge, brand new SE-DHT amp and brand new speakers sound?  Really bad.  I considered suicide, but thought "I'll wait until after the show---would be rude to stand up show-goers".  Besides, maybe I could take a few audiophiles with me, when it was time to jump.  

• Against my own best advice, I didn't bring ANY kind of room treatments.  Audio Russian Roulette, away from which even a Russian would shy.  "Not smart comrade!"  Those 16X19 rooms are audio hell.

• After warming up the Line Magnetic amp, generously loaned by Jonathan Halpern, and suggested by Herb Reichert, I sat down in a puddle of water produced by the room's air conditioning, just behind the amplifier.  Luckily, I didn't complete a circuit with the 900V power supply.  And the amp was still dry.

• Knowing the Line Magnetic Audio 518IA would be brand new, and would have Chinese tubes throughout, I did bring some tubes.  I replaced the 5ar4, 12ax7 and 6l6 tubes with my own.  If you are considering the 518IA, you should know that the amp sounds fine with the stock tubes, but it takes on "amazing" sound with better tubes.  I tried real British KT66, Sylvania 5932 and then tried real Tung Sol 6550 (the 6550 has the same pin-out and electrode arrangement as the 6L6, but requires more heater current, and it dissipates more plate watts).  The amp actually played louder and cleaner, with more defined bass, with the TS 6550.  I think the amp is class A2, pulling driver current for the total power output.  You need to see if your warranty is void if you use 6550.  I thought it sounded "way better".  It could've been "way worse" in another system.  I didn't have any 5751 for the 12ax7 (the 5751 is a good substitute for any 12ax7 depending on how much gain you need).  I tried some NOS Valvo ECC83, which were very good, then I tried 12bz7 and it was "way better".  The 12bz7 is a long out-of-production tube, that is literally a "double 12ax7".  The 12bz7 dissipates twice the power, with half the plate resistance, twice the transconductance, but the same gain of "100".  The 12bz7 shouldn't be used in a preamp, since the extra heater current could be a problem.  In the big Line Magnetic amp, the extra heater current in a 12bz7 is 'the flea on the elephant's ass'.  I replaced the Chinese 5AR4 with NOS British GZ34.  Seemed better, but I'm not a huge believer in changing rectifiers.  With a proper power supply, choke filtering, etc..., you shouldn't be able to tell much difference between a decent rectifier and a great one.  That's the theory.  

• The Chinese output tubes are very good.  The Chinese can produce very good sounding directly heated tubes---high purity tungsten filament is easy to source.  Unfortunately, they cannot produce indirectly heated tubes of the same quality.  The Russians are almost as bad.  They either don't know how to, or refuse to produce, cathode emulsion of purity, using reagent grade materials.  Until someone spends the money to build tubes like they used to, the market for NOS tubes will continue to go through the roof.

• So, after a few hours of break-in, and some old-production indirectly heated tubes, the Line Magnetic was sounding really good.  How good?  Like an amp costing four times the price.  It's a genuine bargain.  The output transformers, key to the performance of any SE-DHT, are fantastic.  We were getting usable output below 10Hz, and they seem to go "way high up" in the high frequencies.  We heard no deterioration when listening to cymbals and strings.  Matter of fact, the system allowed us to hear the differences between individual cymbals, something Eric Alexander, of Tekton, would know:  he's a drummer.  When I was a reviewer, I heard several SE-DHT that started rolling off at 10KHz!  The Line Magnetic is a great amp (I am not the importer, do not receive advertising revenue from Tone, and not even a dealer, though I would gladly place a local customer with one, so hopefully you take my notes seriously).

• The cartridge had too much output for the three step-up transformers on hand (oops), but my customer's modified Jasmine LP2.5du was quiet enough on the MM input to work.  The modded Jasmine had zero hum, even with the Line Magnetic turned all the way up.  I'm proud of that.  The problem was that the MM input was 47K, not the specified 400 ohms.  That contributed to a rising top-end in the room.  Typically, a moving coil will have flat frequency response at the indicated loading, and will have a few dB rise in the highs when loaded at 47K.  In some systems, you can't hear the rising high end.  With Eric's speakers, the rising high end was audible.  So kids, terminate the cartridges at the recommended loading.  That's why the manufacturer makes the recommendation.  After the first day, the highs calmed down, thankfully.  Still, the last minute nature of receiving the cartridges, and the nature of the show, kept me from going to plans E~Z (after plans A~D were played out).

• Though Eric's speakers were brand new, they sounded pretty well "open" from the beginning.  I did hear things relax after the first day, but that was probably the amp and phono cartridge breaking in.  I don't think the speaker was getting enough power to "break things in".  Eric does use warble tones to break in the woofers at the factory, and the woofers run full-range.

• Eric's Pendragon speakers are a massive bargain.  HUGE sound for small dollars, compared to the competition.  After showing with Danny of GR Research, I am accustomed to speaker bargains.  I think Eric takes it to a new level with his Tekton line of finished speakers.  From the start, I knew I would like the speakers:  the woofers are Eminence paper cones, with pleated fabric surrounds, just like the good old days from JBL, Altec, etc..  Paper and pleated fabric are winners.  Paper produces very little tone, and pleated fabric surrounds do not cause weird IM distortion with the cone, or artificial roll-off.  These speakers, starting at $2,250, are incredibly well built, with more sound than you can get with any other company that I know of.  WOW!  Of course, they are very accurate, and not a "sucker" speaker, meaning they aren't designed to be forgiving or to juice up sound.  It pays to feed them a clean signal.

• It's getting harder to know what records to bring to an audio show.  20 years ago, a healthy dose of Living Stereo, along with a handful of awful audiophile titles, would cover you.  These days, we are still dominated by quasi-entertaining female vocals of questionable artistic value (Billie Holiday lived the life she sang).  I had requests for all types of music.  One guy asked for "baroque or rock".  Interesting...  Another guy came in, wanting to hear "bass" on Eric's speakers.  So, I put on Susan's House.  "I don't want to hear that artificial crap".  So, I put on some Pat Metheny with Jaco Pastorius.  "I want acoustic bass, not electric!!"  Um, okay dude.  So I put on a 45rpm Music Matters, Blue Note pressing with acoustic bass, and the guy listened for 10 seconds, then left.  ????  Never mind that Susan's House starts with a well recorded upright acoustic bass.  Maybe he meant bass harmonica.  I brought about 120 records, that satisfied most people.  I got the most mileage from an original Impulse:  Coleman Hawkins, Bossa Nova and Jazz Samba, an uncleaned first pressing, mastered by Van Gelder (VAN GELDER in the dead wax).  It sounded unbelievably good, tics and pops, 50 years of grunge, and all the rest.

• Things finally worked themselves out by Saturday afternoon.  It wasn't an ideal room, but there were much worse at the show (according to reliable sources).  

• Time from Denver to Dallas, by way of Salina KS:  13 hours to Denver; 11.5 hours to Dallas.  At one point, going home on I35, I woke up to find I was going down the center stripe of the highway at nearly 100mph.  To the law enforcement of CO, KS, OK and TX:  better luck next time.

• Seeing Herb Reichert on Sunday reminded me that I approached Jonathan Halpern and Eric Alexander based on his reviews and recommendations.  So, room 465 was the "Herb Reichert Room".  Hopefully I didn't embarrass Herb.  

• The power conditioner supplied by Audience AV was remarkably effective.  Thanks to John McDonald for the power conditioner, and extra cables to augment what I had from Tiglon.  With all new pieces, never heard by me, in a cruddy room, John was more than willing to send me extras to allow for system tuning, by way of cable changes.  Thank You John!

• Thanks to Jonathan Halpern at Tone for the use of the Line Magnetic amp.  He's a classy guy!

• Thanks to Steven Norber of Prana for the use of his great sounding power amplifier.  Unfortunately, due to gain-matching issues with the cartridge and preamp, I needed an active preamp, and only brought a passive.  There wasn't enough gain to allow the amp to romp and stomp.  In audio, the thought counts as much as anything!

• See you at Newport Beach in 2016.