Even if I had that much money to spend on a tt, I wouldn't. To me, the AF3 Premium fully optimized with great arms/carts, isolation & phono stage is all this audiophile would ever need/want. If I was going to spend silly money on anything, It would probably be on the flagship SAT tonearm. But I admire the engineering of the AF Zero which is a statement product for sure.
Lack of color was the design goal. That doesn't mean you have to live without it. Thrown in some mooks then. Go for a colored cart, colored tubes, colored speakers and cables. I'm not against anybody wanting color. That is color you can remove though. What happens when it is color you DON't like and it's embedded in the table? You'd have to do things like deal with saltiness by adding something sour then adding sugar if it gets too sour. You're stuck in a loop.
Hyped nuance however can easily be dealt with with arm setup and stage set up within recommended parameters. Add a few tenths of VTF, maybe some subtle load changes, slight change in VTA.
Lack of color was the design goal. That doesn't mean you have to live without it. Thrown in some mooks then. Go for a colored cart, colored tubes, colored speakers and cables. I'm not against anybody wanting color. That is color you can remove though. What happens when it is color you DON't like and it's embedded in the table? You'd have to do things like deal with saltiness by adding something sour then adding sugar if it gets too sour. You're stuck in a loop.
Sorry...i am saying techdas has a color, and the alternates don't. The color is in the power sound, midbass bump, trying to impress with the bass and the soundstage.
Anyway we are not going to Agree. You like it, I prefer others
I could only post some photos taken with my phone in the venue. Now I am home and there are proper pictures taken with a decent camera.
You can see Air Force Zero is only 80-90% completed. We are looking at the final prototype. Actual production will start at May or June period. I am trying to ask Nishikawa san to leave the demo unit in Hong Kong after the Hong Kong AV Show in August which is the last stop in his world tour. That unit will be delivered to actual customer. It can be the first unit. Nishikawa together with his engineers will personally install every Zero.
It is more powerful (hence impressive) than the others therefore it is a color? A characteristic perhaps but a color?
Okay so you find them jumpy maybe? So the others are more mellow. Okay, I'm cool with that. Mellow is good. I like mellow when the music is mellow. The funny thing with having meters on your amps is the numbers are right in front of you. I carry Townshend tables too. The Rock rides like a Range Rover. I've got an AC-3 too, one of the sweetest tables from the upper midrange up. Fantastic decay trails, simply lovely.
My point? I can make the AF1 do what my other tables do. What they will ot do is get the usable dynamic range of the TD. The meters show additional wattage use of two to three watts in noise. Noise that masks nuances. So the question is, is the nuance hyped or is it the others that are seemingly more organic because they are basically being noise shaped by warpage modulation, groove noise and groove echo?
Hey, end results are what matter. Again if that's the way one wants to get to a natural sound, go for it. It's just my personal choice to get there in ways where I need not sacrifice dynamic potential.
No it tries to be powerful in the same manner across records and does not do nuances. No dynamics are sacrificed in the others, they are there without forcing it to attention
The Zero will not be a Boeing 737 Max Bonzo. I think Nishigawa san has all the essences covered real well. Just hope its electronic gadgets and bling features dont mess the fundamentally good design.
The platter uses three different materials sandwich into one piece. Tungsten upper platter, gun metal middle level and stainless steel base are new design.
No it tries to be powerful in the same manner across records and does not do nuances. No dynamics are sacrificed in the others, they are there without forcing it to attention
Please articulate Ked. Clearly you are after some sweetness, those heart tugs. Maybe another way to put it is expressiveness. Swoon factor, there another topic we can have endless debates over LOL Sure. While I will agree to disagree on tastes, I can not accept the strange anthropomorphisms.
The thing is, I'm not letting you off with your slams after you having made a few visits and not having lived with any of these as your basis for doing so. Any of the members here who have invested time into learning about and setting up their tables to suit their tastes will attest that even small changes can be profound, horrific and anywhere in between. That's the thing about being a guest. You are hearing the host as much as you are hearing the gear. You can have two people with the exact same gear in an exact same room and I will guarantee that you will not have the same sound from them. Yet, you seem to know exactly what does what. Go to any sound lab and listen to the mixes of the students given exact multitrack copies to mix. All different.
Tell you what. Tell any of the guys you visited that considered their AF1s jumpy to PM me.Let me see if I can help get them sorted out.
The platter uses three different materials sandwich into one piece. Tungsten upper platter, gun metal middle level and stainless steel base are new design.