Upgraded to Audio Note J - and other musings.

[RGA]

Yeah it's going to be at least a year before I could do something like this. I'm already WAY over budget in going with the J's in the first place. Thanks for the generous offer though. You are right they were not against the preamp kit or preamp but they didn't feel it was a worthy move to use my amp as power amp as it is solid state.

I'll probably wait until I come back from Japan - roughly 4 years from now before I make a move - unless I marry a rich girl by then who loves music too. Or a lottery happens my way.

I will probably keep the Sugden and run it as a power amp for my Marantz receiver. Of course this assumes the receiver lasts five years.

Sugden has pulled themselves from north America apparently - probably because people here buy based off of looks and features over actual sound quality and build construction. .

I also noticed that Soundhounds was selling some of the AN amplifier Kits which they assembled for $3000.00. UGLY freakin things with a lot of tubes and uncovered transformers. - Definitely pay extra to get the covers - I mean there is acceptable ugly and then there is UGGGLY. From the looks of it they were very well built.

[92135011]

Actually, check out Audionotekits.com
The new kit1 is larger and has a stainless steel chassis. Looks better than the old one.
And yes...the covers are a MUST.

I'm going to build myself some of those kits in due time.
When I'm done you are welcome to drop by to give them a listen to see if its your cup of tea. Then it will give you a good idea what you getting yourself into if you do decide to invest. The kits are undergoing a lot of change. The preamp kit right now looks like the M2. But in a few months time they will look closer like the M3 (to accomodate more transformers and such). The excellent thing about kits is that you can upgrade it bit by bit rather than buy a whole new unit (OPT, caps, atteunators, etc.)

[RGA]

Actually, check out Audionotekits.com
The new kit1 is larger and has a stainless steel chassis. Looks better than the old one.
And yes...the covers are a MUST.

I'm going to build myself some of those kits in due time.
When I'm done you are welcome to drop by to give them a listen to see if its your cup of tea. Then it will give you a good idea what you getting yourself into if you do decide to invest. The kits are undergoing a lot of change. The preamp kit right now looks like the M2. But in a few months time they will look closer like the M3 (to accomodate more transformers and such). The excellent thing about kits is that you can upgrade it bit by bit rather than buy a whole new unit (OPT, caps, atteunators, etc.)

How much are these kits - the Kit two says it's only $999.00US Is it an integrated amp? How much is the Kit one? They say all you need is a soldering iron besically.

[92135011]

Kit 2 is a power amp, but it has a volume pot so that if you have a source with a high enough output you can run it without a pre. The kit2 is built based on the Kit1 except that its the non-triode version running on 6550 pentode. The kit1 runs $1349 and is 300B SET, no feedback, directly heated running about 9 WPC. The upgrades entitle a "high-B" OPT, black gate caps, copper film oil caps, tantalum resistors, silver wiring, better pot). The preamp kit runs $699, as upgrades like the above, and as I said, a new chassis coming soon.
BTW, they are coming out with some 211 monos soon, probably for the extra power or something. Also, a new integrated is in production. However, this will be a budget push-pull integrated probably much like the soro pp. Hence, even after these new products, the kit1 will remain their most popular amp. As you can see, I have asked Brian many many questions.
In regard to the equipment needed, I think a soldering pen, solder, stripper, cutter and pliers is enough to get the job done. I think they include everything else. Plastic wire ties may be worth the extra 50 cents too as it will make everything nice and tidy. Just the soldering pen and solder would do...but then the result would look very messy amateur. Actually, I'm going to buy a new stripper just for this project as my old one is dull and no longer does the job well.

[RGA]

Kit 2 is a power amp, but it has a volume pot so that if you have a source with a high enough output you can run it without a pre. The kit2 is built based on the Kit1 except that its the non-triode version running on 6550 pentode. The kit1 runs $1349 and is 300B SET, no feedback, directly heated running about 9 WPC. The upgrades entitle a "high-B" OPT, black gate caps, copper film oil caps, tantalum resistors, silver wiring, better pot). The preamp kit runs $699, as upgrades like the above, and as I said, a new chassis coming soon.
BTW, they are coming out with some 211 monos soon, probably for the extra power or something. Also, a new integrated is in production. However, this will be a budget push-pull integrated probably much like the soro pp. Hence, even after these new products, the kit1 will remain their most popular amp. As you can see, I have asked Brian many many questions.
In regard to the equipment needed, I think a soldering pen, solder, stripper, cutter and pliers is enough to get the job done. I think they include everything else. Plastic wire ties may be worth the extra 50 cents too as it will make everything nice and tidy. Just the soldering pen and solder would do...but then the result would look very messy amateur. Actually, I'm going to buy a new stripper just for this project as my old one is dull and no longer does the job well.

Well when the time comes I will go and listen to the ones built by the guys at soundhounds. this way I will actually get to hear the kit before I buy. If i like it I will build one.

[92135011]

Well when the time comes I will go and listen to the ones built by the guys at soundhounds. this way I will actually get to hear the kit before I buy. If i like it I will build one.

Soundhounds has the kit1 but they dont have the preamp. If you drop by vancouver, you can give it a try at my place if you wish. I havent built it yet, but will in due time.

[kexodusc]

I dunno RGA, I kinda like the earlier idea of going with the PSB Alpha's....I have some old Alpha bookshelfs in my garage I suppose I'd be willing to trade you straight up for your new AN J's...
Whaddya say, buddy???

[RGA]

I dunno RGA, I kinda like the earlier idea of going with the PSB Alpha's....I have some old Alpha bookshelfs in my garage I suppose I'd be willing to trade you straight up for your new AN J's...
Whaddya say, buddy???

thanks but after due consideration I will suffer with J's

[lattybuck]

On the subject of the AN box design, I am curious about the concept. I have met and talked with a few folks who made insturments, strings mainly but dome precusion/drums also, and they all focused heavilly on the way the material they used focused the sound in a certain way. All said that different materials and shapes had different sounds so you tuned for that when building them. I am not an insturment maker/designer but It seems to me that if these guys are correct than any box design would inherently hvae some "sound" they would be tuned for. So trying to isolate and eliminate that sound would create an overall more "neutral" sound. That said, and if i am reading this correctly, why would trying to utilizing the box's "sound" as opposed to trying to "neutralize" the boxes sound be preferable? Aren't you fine tuning the sound toward a certain "type" rather than the neutrality I tend to lean so heavilly towards.
Maybe it's just me, but I want my crappy old 70' and 60's rock to sound the closest to the way they were recorded just as much as I want my old Gramaphone masters and newer recordings to sound. I would rather hear whats recorded as neutrally and accurately as possible and decide the music I enjoy more than I would like to decide what I enjoy listening to on a specific system. I know this is a pipe dream in many ways, nothing is that accurate or neutral. This has always been my approach to music. But maybe I am proceeding from a false assumption here. I always loved the Maggie sound and the ML sound nowdays partly due to what I percieved as maybe not as full a range but a less "colored" range or reproduction. Admittedly I auditioned some B&W 803's driven by Krell stuff last week and was floored by the tonality. They doubled in the deep base area some but were increadible for the 5k or so they sell for.
So am I stumbling blindly here or are you saying that the sound speakers recreat has to be non-neutral so plan on it rather than trying to eliminate it?
Your help is appreciated.

[RGA]

Lattybuck

I don't pretend to be a speaker designer. Peter Qvortrup has answered a similar question as to why they chose the approach they do. I made an error stating that these speakers are undamped - they are damped but they sleect what it is they want damped instead of doing what virtually every single other boxed speaker maker does and damp EVERYTHING. Their arguement is that doing that invariably damps the bad resonances but takes away a lot of the good stuff as well. It shuts down the midband - sure one can make a clear case that the speaker is less coloured - but if it also hacks of a large segement of the musical information then it's not a particularly good approach - you throw the baby out with the bathwater. That was his complaint. You havd a speaker with flaws(they all do) and to gain in one area the new speakers ruined several things that were already very good.

Don;t make the mistake in assuming that because the way they damp the speaker that it will only work for the set of frequencies of a given instrument - their analogy is for a layman to state that unlike a lot of speakers the cabinet cannot be completely ignored or that the only purpose of the cabinet is to house some drivers and not resonate - everything resonates. So you can store it which is what B&W cabinets do and try and dissipate them or you can try and shift the resonance to a different inaudible frequency and release it immidiately. (At least this is my general understanding as to what AN is doing).

There is a lot of technical stuff going on with these speakers that are covered over by a ery simplistic looking box - the fact that for a start the speakers have impeccably low deep bass distortion and no matter what room they're in and in a corner you don;t get bass boom (you have to make sure the room size is appropriate and positioning in the corner needs a bit of fiddling) but it's pretty easy to set-up and you get consistant attributes from room to room.

For instance let's take the N803 and the AN E as two similarly priced loudspeakers. Firstly what you sort of hear with the B&W cabinet and those cabinets of the same shape and similar multiple stacked woofer approach is a localized presentation which is pretty tight and punchy and clear. moving to the E you get a breathy bigger presentation - tonaly on a piano or cello you hear the instruments box rather than just the guitar pick you get the overhang of the instrument(Decay). I can write on this until i'm blue but the fact is that until you hear it side by side against the N803 or N801 etc what I say means zip. B&W has asked Peter how he is doing what he is doing from his boxes and the answer he keeps giving them is to get their cabinets right. But in order to get them right B&W will have to make a butt ugly box and use much better wood quality - two things the accounting and marketing departments are not going to want - the engineers -- hell they KNOW but can it sell? This is not a slam to B&W - IMO they are shooting now at a different market. There are many reviews on AN - this guy seems to have been down a multitude of roads and maybe better explains it http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/rev...w&ModelID=2941

Speakers are the least faithful thing in an audio chain - there is no such thing as a truly accurate or transparent speaker. They ALL make compromises and ALL like to tout their speaker as most accurate or more accurate transparent etc.

I think there is too much argument over semantics that we lose sight of the point of this is to get something that pleases the individual. For insance I have heard good systems that I would personally not want to listen to long term but I respect the fact that a lot pf people feel is very transparent - I don;t but I understand why they think it is so - something along the lines of Bryston Monoblocks/preamp and PMC studio monitors. I feel the set-up might be pinpoint imagers in certain respects but I feel too much of the intrument's tonality is lost. There are other disadvantages - longjevity - foam surrounds deteriorate with time more so than rubber or other materials. So after 10 years or so you may need to get them refoamed especially in a humid climate. This thread at AA deiscusses it http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?...+E&r=&session=

I know the respected Lynn Olsen who seems very knowledgeable on speaker design noted that The Audio note Ongaku integrated amplifier of all the SETs he had measured the worst in terms of distortion and power att 22watts 3%THD - and this is a $90,000.00 amp "It also made the Ariel sound better than any electrostat I've ever heard ... in fact, the best sound I'd heard in many years. It certainly sounded better than anything I heard at the 1994 Winter CES. So what's going on here? Maybe THD is simply measuring the wrong thing." and that's the problem. TO me a more transparent system is the one that lets me hear more of the musical event - I get that with the J or E more so than I get it from the Paradigms and B&W's of the world.

Frankly all you have to do is listen and decide for yourself. Not everyone hears things in the exact same way either - I'm not out to convince people I'm right or Audio Note is right. I know their speaker/systems is/are right for ME.

[lattybuck]

So if i am seeing this correctly, AN makes their boxes to resonate at a non-audible frequency and then dissipate and/or dampen that out thru the speaker. I understand that. That is what I was wondering about. I know the B&W has really perfected the time honed "if we don't want it kill it" approach. Both approaches seem to be very good sometimes. Although I haven't heard any AN's many claim their transparancy is very good. Wish there was an AN dealer around Tulsa, OK or close I would go hear em.

Also, i presume you have 1 or more cats by your posting's. Do you have any occasional probs using AN's w/o grills of any kind? I notices some adds of their's claim they have no grills/covers and are specifically made that way. None are available if you did want em. Sometimes the kitty just has to test things. I lost my old Pans that way. That was pre-declawed kitty. Even declawed open paws on open drivers seem like it could turn into a questionable deal. Maybe I am paranoid after the great Pan episode here also.
Your opinion is appreciated. I will try to find some AN somewhere to try out soon.
Thanks

[RGA]

Lattybuck. I no longer have cats as both died at 17 years. My AN J's are last year's model and they do have grill cloths - they are meant to be played with the cloths and Peter didn;t want them audtitioned with the cloth - some dealers even have one cloth on and one off when demoing - this no grill cloth stops that practice...of course they are less protected I suppose from cats.

My old cat sprayed my Wharfedales - and the damage to the metal rings have left permanent stain on them = damn cat.

You can put moth balls at the bass of speakers - cats hate moth balls.