My sincere apology, I was (actually still) caught up in family emergency and wasn’t able to do much with audio or any of my other hobbies, I even neglected my business for a while. My apology for my disappearance to anyone involved in making this long and wonderful thread. On the week of my last post, my dad’s kidney went to a total failure. He had to be admitted to ICU and undergoing 3 x week @5 hrs hemodialysis, even so his condition continued to deteriorate. I had to jump in completely to help my parents overcome the legal and financial hurdles for my dad’s kidney transplant. Although my dad is OK now, he went through 3 cardiac arrests during the hurdle. It was a very difficult months for us. Now after my dad fully recovered, my mom is suspected with leukemia and we are waiting for biopsy result. Really not a good year for me, so I guess for the time being until everything settled I won’t be too active in searching for THE speaker for my Ongaku.
I did however, had a chance to audition my Ongaku with WVL Berlin just three days ago. After months of hiatus, my regular favorite dealer contacted me and told me that now they are officially carrying Kondo, they want to borrow my Kondo and offered to do everything (dismantling and transporting my gear) to their showroom which I gladly accepted because I just do not have the energy left to do anything audio related at the moment. They hooked up my Ongaku + G70 to their WVL Berlin to an astonishing result, I was dumbfounded and floored… Never thought that a low watt tube amp can give that much transparency, speed, precision and staging. My feet just can’t stop rocking… Any song we put through the system, the system played it as if it was all a live concert. If I close my eyes, I would’ve believed that I am in the middle of a live concert. It was completely surreal, there was ZERO trace of horny-ness and absolutely Zero tubey sound. There was a single MAJOR problem though, obviously 27 Watts from Ongaku is borderline lacking to drive the massive WVL Berlin, so at high volume and certain notes the sound can sound very strained/shouty/bright/ear bleeding, we tried several tweaks including buying a pair of RCA 211 to tame the strain/brightness to no result. Coincidentally the dealer have a Kondo Overture on display (32 Watts), after some initial hesitation I finally managed to convince them to try to bi-amp the big WVL using Ongaku for the mid-high and Overture for the low. I didn’t expect much, neither was the dealer. Surprisingly, the bi amping effort resulted in complete elimination of straining/brightness/shouty-ness. Everything became much more at ease, not straining, flowing, relaxed while still maintaining aggressive speed, rhythm and precision, Rare Earth’s “Get Ready” 23 minutes track is full of surprise, never messy, always composed and very precise To the very end of the song. I found the perfect sound for me but it requires additional purchase of Kondo Overture for bi amping along with the additional cables….
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www.cessaro.de
