Yes i remember that, never heard them. They are not terrible expensive in the used market.
KeithR's "Dream Speaker" Search
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My main speakers are Odeon La Boheme. My business partner has the Dynamikks. I know you have heard of Aries Cerat, no? Not Spanish...Cyprus. I meant the MBL amps and speakers ...heard them many times as well as their extremes.Are they the Dynamikks from your home page ? No i have definitely not heard them anywhere !I doubt you have heard the speaker combination i use, 16 12 inch paper sub drivers do change the sound a little. The plutonium reactor amps are not big electricity consumers, and are Greta Thunberg approved for their green footprint. Wow your amps are from Cyprus ! Never heard of anything being made in Cyprus before, except maybe olive oil !
If those subs are from Martin Logan then I did hear them with ML panels in LA a long time ago. I had big Infinty speakers in the past with similar bass arrays...Are they the Dynamikks from your home page ? No i have definitely not heard them anywhere !
I have heard so much about Aries Cerat in this forum, i almost feel i have heard them !
Do i actually know anyone that has heard Aries Cerat ? Not really ! And most of the AC posters in this forum are dealers or distributers like yourself. Maybe they will make an appearance at a local audio show one day.Well we now have audiophile recordings and audiophile demo recordings ...
Can we consider you still listen to "non-demo" audiophile recordings?
Sure, Kostas, I think all if our ears have some unwaxing to do
I agree that all music is world music.
As an omnivore myself, I also don't discriminate. It is also healthy to occasionally clean our tempered, polyphonic, contrapuntal ears with some natural balsamic, monodic musical antidotes!
I also listen to Avantgarde ( don't you think it's time the name has changed to something less vague and less "threatening")! I will leave you with three rather "soft" examples, with excellent sonics:
1) Pierre Jodlowski - "Drones, Barbarismes, Dialog No Dialog ( KAIROS ),
2) "All in All in All" by Mark Nauseef, featured on several MA recordings ( Relative Pitch Records ),
3( " Legends Of The Fall " - Jean-Marc Foltz \ Phillippe Mouratoglou ( Vision Fugitive ).
Cheers, Kostas.
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Yes, in my case even with what is considered "low brow" music by many. When I drive on German and Austrian highways during vacation to see my family, I *love* to put on the radio Deutsche Schlager (German Schlager), really schmaltzy music, and dwell in the melodies and kitschy mood. An Austrian friend of mine who also is into classical music despises this stuff. Once when we were all together, his wife and I raved about all those old Schlager classics, and she even fired up her old record player and we were just loving her playing those 45 rpm singles. My friend in the meantime could only shake his head and sink ever deeper into his chair in desperation how we could even like this music. He said, "how can you like both Stockhausen and this?" (He himself doesn't like the avantgarde music by Stockhausen too much.)
Speaking of Stockhausen, one of my all time favorite composers:
Stockhausen and his group of musicians once had to wait for hours for technicians to fix the sound for a performance of one of his most brutally radical pieces, the scratchy, screechy, noisy, boing-y Mikrophonie I, for tam-tam, 2 microphones, 2 filters with potentiometers (6 players). In order to entertain his musicians in the meantime, Stockhausen (a very good pianist) went to the piano and played a bunch of Deutsche Schlager for them. If it is even not beneath Stockhausen to play Deutsche Schlager...but maybe those were of the "better" kind, who knows
.Agreed, it would be time for that.
Excellent, thanks for the recommendations! KAIROS by the way is a label that consistently puts out great sounding recordings.
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LOL, Absolutely! Have a quite a few I can and do listen to the whole album.Well we now have audiophile recordings and audiophile demo recordings ...
Can we consider you still listen to "non-demo" audiophile recordings?
I don't put albums on for a single track anymore, or hardly ever.
You can find them at German (Including the big one, Munich), Dutch, Belgian and Swiss shows at least...I have heard so much about Aries Cerat in this forum, i almost feel i have heard them !
The argument from sub-optimal conditions is typically a defensive posture. It fails because any component criticism implies experience under sub-optimal conditions. Or inversely, if someone prefers component ABC (or says nice things about it), then by definition they heard it under proper conditions or listening conditions are not brought into question. It is a apecious argument because it can never be false.
The appeal to absolute subjectivity certainly is an interesting approach. If that had been used to defend Magico then the case would be different, viz..we all have different preferences and by that it is indeed possible for someone to hear a Magico (or any) speaker under optimal conditions and not prefer it, so it's okay for you to criticize it but i won't.
I don't know if an appeal to absolute subjectivity is the weakest form of pleading or the best. On general principle we at WBF do not overtly discount another's claim of what they heard. 'Who are you to question what I hear?' It seems 'issues' arise when a case for superiority is made or attempted.
On the one hand we don't (usually) say my hearing, my ability to listen, is superior to yours but cases are continually made for one component (or type of component) being superior to another. Maybe not in those exact words - it is more covert or implicit - but it's always there, or so it seems. Sometimes it is majority wins. Sometimes it is "I've experienced more of this and that than you have, so you know not of what you speak." No doubt there's something quite viable there though that doesn't rule out the possibility one can still be wrong. (heh)
In the case of competing claims - X is better than Y - I don't find the appeal to subjectivity very appealing. (Now we get into what is 'appealing'. <wink>) I'd rather hear the reasons offered for the claim for superiority rather than hearing that reasons don't matter because it's all a matter of personal preference.
So nice that you each have a Strauss.
Didn't you have some Web pages on Stockhausen? Are those still active?
I totally agree. My Magico Q3s sounded really superb with the Lamm SS amps. I suspect you image they did not. I have heard good examples from each approach too. My change was based on both wanting to try a SET and a very efficient (105dB/16 ohm) corner horn speaker. Thus, we must agree to disagree about those Magicos having a very strong difference of opinion.
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Ego and vanity can get in the way of good discussions. It goes with the territory.
Sure. Except that in my case I have nothing to defend, but the truth as I hear it. I have no stake in the Magico game. I don't own Magico and never will. At this point I am solidly a Reference 3A guy, and expect to continue to be -- barring some exceptional horn revelation
, who knows (that speaker would also have to be affordable and fit into my room, good luck with that).
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I guess I lament some of the comments on this thread lately as it really comes off as an elitist hobby. Truth be told a year ago I almost went back to a more modest solution - like say a $10k-$15k pair of speakers and an integrated. It seems like the preferred solution is only to spend more and more $ and I start to back off from the hobby. People can make fun of my trekky Ampzillas, but they did sound better than most of the amps that were trotted in for demo. The only amp that I found comparable was a Jeff Rowland.
When I hear folks say $15k amplifiers are budget oriented, I feel the hobby has lost its way (see the crazy amp dude's YouTube channel that considers Pass Labs "mid fi"). The average Stereophile reader's system is $19k, but this is WBF after all so I guess it's expected. The reason this hobby has shrunk so much is the focus in the audiophile media and community on high priced bling of the month - I chuckled two years ago when TAS declared the $50k speaker category as "highly competitive." Dagostino is famously designed on form over function. Have you seen the internals of a Constellation compared with the expensive case? Why does carbon fibre and installation lights *on the back(!)* of a Chronosonic impress people?
I've often wondered if I should go back and maybe its too late for that now, but still on my mind. Twenty years ago when I got in this hobby there was tons of cool, moderately priced gear and not many Grand SLAMMs - now its the opposite.
When I hear folks say $15k amplifiers are budget oriented, I feel the hobby has lost its way (see the crazy amp dude's YouTube channel that considers Pass Labs "mid fi"). The average Stereophile reader's system is $19k, but this is WBF after all so I guess it's expected. The reason this hobby has shrunk so much is the focus in the audiophile media and community on high priced bling of the month - I chuckled two years ago when TAS declared the $50k speaker category as "highly competitive." Dagostino is famously designed on form over function. Have you seen the internals of a Constellation compared with the expensive case? Why does carbon fibre and installation lights *on the back(!)* of a Chronosonic impress people?
I've often wondered if I should go back and maybe its too late for that now, but still on my mind. Twenty years ago when I got in this hobby there was tons of cool, moderately priced gear and not many Grand SLAMMs - now its the opposite.
I empathize with your post in many ways but I also disagree. I feel like reasonably priced gear has made massive improvements in the last couple decades. Some examples are ELAC speakers, the continuous improvement in class-D amps, which are finding their way into the cases of very high-end brands. Schiit is offering some quality electronics made in the USA and ChiFi brands like Toping are even less expensive yet perform well. I think there's TONS of cool, moderately priced gear available. I think you can get a far better system for the money today than you could at any time in the past.
I'm not sure why audio is subject to these kinds of attitudes. Many other hobbies are a lot more expensive. Racing cars or boats makes high-end audio seem like a minor investment. Many folks spend what it costs for a very high end audio system on an annual basis when racing cars. Nobody laments the existence of these expensive cars or the fact a set of tires might only last 2 tanks of gas. I often race my $45k car next to cars that cost many times what my car costs, and they usually arrive on trailers with $75k tow vehicles. Others may show up with $15k modified Hondas and Subarus. You know how often talk about cost comes up? Rarely, and nobody puts down what other people choose to spend, be it a little or a lot. Cost comes up in audio all the time, always accompanied by judgements, and it goes both ways. I really don't get it. The money judgements in this hobby are a downer.
IMO the world benefits from folks making cost-no-object products, be it in audio, automobiles, art, or whatever. The world is a better place when some people can afford to pay unlimited amounts of money for things. It drives technology and innovation. Even if we can't own it, we can appreciate it, and the work that goes into these things does trickle down.
Finally, the market determines what the industry offers. Some have the attitude that audio companies are determining what kinds of products they offer, shoving $$$ products down the throats of consumers. I can assure you this is not the case. Their customers and the market determine the products they offer. Lamenting the high cost of gear and judging "the industry" for it is not realistic.
You can speak to a hundred non audiophiles, the man on the street. Ask what they'd send their lottery winnings on. Property, interior design, suits, designer dresses, watches, jewellery, cars, bikes, boats, cosmetic surgery, designer garden, holidays, resteraunts, coffee machine, guns, cigars, home cinema....audio will be nowhere on the list.
And that's why stupidly high priced gear is scoffed at by most of us, and pretty much the entire outside world.
And that's why stupidly high priced gear is scoffed at by most of us, and pretty much the entire outside world.
I also have heard several YG systems that I consider some of the best the world has to offer. A couple examples are the system at the YG factory with D'Ag amps, the system they set of for RMAF 2019 and the system MSB DACs setup at RMAF 2018. All three were AMAZING.
It is too bad that it's hard to find suitable amps. If cheaper options do exist it seems like they have not been uncovered. I'd bet something like an IcePower AS1200 module would be great if put together by a competent company, but in any case you do know this going in, YG speakers are hard to drive well. They also don't offer much in the way of surface area until you get to Sonjas. Unless the system is for a small room or you have an unlimited budget, and you're really into high fidelity in it's literal meaning... YG may not be the best choice.
Personally, I go for a simple, high efficiency system, but a lot of this is driven by the fact that a complex system of the same quality would cost far more than I can afford whether it's something like YG or a traditional 4+ way horn system. It's MUCH cheaper and easier to design and build something like my EL34 SET amp vs an amp like Boulder or D'Ag. A complex crossover using all top-quality parts can get into the 5-figures not counting the speaker it's self. It's easy for me to understand how some of these product's prices can get so high, because I've looked into building it... it's not all just fancy casework although that is often a major factor. For example building a 211 amp the same quality as my EL34 amp costs many times the price, power does not linearly scale with cost. It's just so much easier and cheaper to use an efficient speaker and a smaller amp, and for the money you can get higher quality.
It is too bad that it's hard to find suitable amps. If cheaper options do exist it seems like they have not been uncovered. I'd bet something like an IcePower AS1200 module would be great if put together by a competent company, but in any case you do know this going in, YG speakers are hard to drive well. They also don't offer much in the way of surface area until you get to Sonjas. Unless the system is for a small room or you have an unlimited budget, and you're really into high fidelity in it's literal meaning... YG may not be the best choice.
Personally, I go for a simple, high efficiency system, but a lot of this is driven by the fact that a complex system of the same quality would cost far more than I can afford whether it's something like YG or a traditional 4+ way horn system. It's MUCH cheaper and easier to design and build something like my EL34 SET amp vs an amp like Boulder or D'Ag. A complex crossover using all top-quality parts can get into the 5-figures not counting the speaker it's self. It's easy for me to understand how some of these product's prices can get so high, because I've looked into building it... it's not all just fancy casework although that is often a major factor. For example building a 211 amp the same quality as my EL34 amp costs many times the price, power does not linearly scale with cost. It's just so much easier and cheaper to use an efficient speaker and a smaller amp, and for the money you can get higher quality.
Keith,
I think you are very lucky that ultimately you have been able to "have your cake and eat it, too."
Yes, your current system cost is above the $10-$15,000 plus integrated amp level. But the Fynes have let you achieve a stunning sound quality per dollar level.
I truly think that your system can compete sonically with systems that cost multiples of what your system now costs.
I think you have done a great job!
I think you are very lucky that ultimately you have been able to "have your cake and eat it, too."
Yes, your current system cost is above the $10-$15,000 plus integrated amp level. But the Fynes have let you achieve a stunning sound quality per dollar level.
I truly think that your system can compete sonically with systems that cost multiples of what your system now costs.
I think you have done a great job!
Ron,
I also believe that Keith has done a great job. But I also believe that if he had spent multiples of what he has spent he would have assembled a better sounding system.
IMHO meaningful comparisons should be carried with optimized systems, not with systems we consider are poorly assembled or set up.
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