Almost an art-installation.
Such a cool, elegant S150 platform and… look at the Goto SGs’ collection
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After some pondering, I decided to don’t attend to the Vienna HiEnd Audio Fair.
The reasons are many and all absolutely legitimate: first, comes my oblomovism, then the distance, costs, physical fatigue due to inexorably advancing age... but above all, after eight editions of the Munich fair, I feel a very significant, perhaps incurable, psychological fatigue: I know exactly how many people I know will be dressed, I know exactly the exorbitant price of a sandwich or a bottle of mineral water, I know that at the Silbatone stand, Maria Callas and Led Zeppelin records will be played at impossible volumes on unattainable cinema speakers and everyone will be elbowing each other over the high cost of amplifiers and preamplifiers... Aries Cerat will almost certainly present impressive new speakers, which, like ACapella, will cost millions... an absolutely embarrassing, painful sense of déjà vu, with flocks of audiophiles of different nationalities mingling in the corridors mostly talking about the sky-rocketing high prices of this or that and the Chinese stands always impeccably kept and sadly empty.
It will certainly be hotter than expected and - aside from the pleasure of greeting some friends who will be exhibiting for the first time - a fair like this represents a niche sector whose target audience ages year after year, without any real generational turnover… looking at elder people (so similar to me) spending in vintage discs at inflated price-tags sums worth the life and care of many children in war-zones makes me sad and guilty.
I'll definitely miss chatting with Joe Roberts, Beau Ranheim and JC Morrison, greeting Michael Fremer and a few others... but this feeling of having to "participate to exist" is frankly pointless!
I don't need or haven’t to buy anything, I have more records than I can listen to for the rest of my life, and—frankly—audio and music are a solitary, poetic, almost mystical journey that doesn't fit well in the glittering world of the contemporary audio industry.
My personal parameters differ from others, and I'm not seeking approval or proselytes as my actual frailty and disenchanted and realistic (pessimistic?) approach is my very own, period.
Let's just say I feel more like an ascetic with a deep love for music than a tycoon with a fat wallet and that my home audio system never sounded this good, also without spending millions.
~~~
According to rumors, I believe (and hope) the fair will return to Munich in a few years... we'll see what the future holds.
Personally, I hope fair attendees in Vienna’s HiEnd will find reasons to be interested and learning how to better enjoy music.
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Further insight about the new turntable by Jean Nantais:
“A quickie post on my new model, The Archivist! Sorry for the late report, still more to post after this but I'm so busy building various idlers I don't have time and most of all this new model was a shock! The first customer, who owned TWO two-tonearm Ultimates sums it up perfectly here: "All bets are off. I don't know what any piece of equipment sounds like. I don't know which records sound best. Reborn. I don't know which records sound best for demo because all hold surprises."
A well-known and loved client had bothered me for years to improve on the Ultimate, which I answered repeatedly couldn't be done as, after all, the Ultimate Lenco was the ultimate, combining the strengths of digial (perfect speed stability thanks to the much greater inertia of the 14 1/4" platter, razor-sharp transients) with the best of analogue, (silkiness, much more information including sustains and decays, resonances, a realistic soundspace etc.).
But increasingly, with the development of my own Mighty Mite and lately the Mighty Mite Super which was a smash hit at the recent Montreal Audio Show ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1UBQXzC1I ) , and my work on older idler-wheel drives like the Rek-O-Kut Rondine, the aesthetic of a simple tall platter on a flat plat/chassis appealed to me.
Then two clients at the SAME time wanted an Ultimate Lenco built for FOUR tonearms! Since this couldn't be done with the Ultimate Lenco design for a variety of reasons, I decided it was time to design a turntable homage to the '50s,!!
And I couldn't do this without at least attempting an improvement in sound. Since the Ultimate already had all the elements of taking an idler-wheel drive all the way (extremely low noise floor, off-the-scale inertia/speed stability imparted by the 14 1/4" diameter platter) I simply increased the Direct Coupling (greater expanse of chassis to plinth contact) and inertia (add more mass to the rim). I also developed a new bearing to handle the greater stresses of the platter. The new bearing also was an imrpovement on the Ultimate Lenco, I learned something new here as well!
Since it was literally impossible to even imagine improving on the Ultimate, I had no idea what better would even sound like. Would the greater inertia even be audible? Could the noise floor - already impossible to hear - be even lower and the difference audible?
When I finally had the 'table up on the stand and playing, I literally could not believe what I was hearing: STUNNING dynamics I wasn't sure wasn't an exaggeration, bass reach and detail I couldn't be sure wasn't a colouration, the smallest details emerging clearly from LPs I had played thousands of times, resonances and decays permeating the sound room, incredible depth and placement of the soundstage, even in comparison to the Ultimate Lenco!
And so began several months of testing, to be sure the Archivist was "telling the truth": it seems it is, but perhaps this is irrelevant given the performance! As the client said above: "All bets are off. I don't know what any piece of equipment sounds like. I don't know which records sound best. Reborn. I don't know which records sound best for demo because all hold surprises."
As you can see the visual design owed a LOT to the Rek-O-Kut Rondine, HAD to have the big knob, had to have the level, had to have the Art Deco lettering 😃
More later on the journey with more sonic details, it took years for me to design and make reality the Ultimate, had to find all the suppliers and businesses needed along the way, this one I realized in a record year because most of that work was already done.
Enjoy the music, I'll end with another quote from the same first Archivist client: "How foolish to worry about pressings. Just put anything on. Enjoy it. Archivist is the cure for audiophiles. It is Freedom." Couldn't have said it better myself! But still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
Well done, Jean 💫
I recently visited - after some years hiatus - a friend, an audiophile who’s using some nice audio gears and, most of all, owns an impressive records collection.
He invited me for some music and chatting, expressly asking to bring some disks or CDs (something I don’t really often do) and so I grabbed the three ECMs’ disk I was listening to a few hours before…
When I arrived, he let me “enjoy” an orchestral tympani infused crescendo at deafening SPL, with a level of distortion and booming seldom experienced… this appetizer forced me to handle one of my ECMs’ (I won’t disclose which one on the attached picture) and…
Three ECMs’ and… an intruder 😉
… something worth sharing happened: my friend exclusively listen to classical music on vintage nice pressings (Decca, RCA, Mercury) and after a few minutes (maybe seconds) of a nice ECM atmospheric, eerily impressionistic and dreamy soundscapes, I looked at my host face: the eyes wide shut 😳, the sweaty forehead and the thinned lips… everything suggested a cultural short circuit of-sort!
As I didn’t want to be cruel, the aural torture was abruptly interrupted by me and I felt the need to ask about my friend’s feelings: his words left me speechless i.e.- I don’t understand, really I don’t understand! and myself trying to explain the how and why - IMHO - about ECM’s raison d’etre and aesthetics, the soundtrack-like quality to moods and thoughts… but, no! my friend went ahead saying he didn’t understand, period.
Manfred Eicher’s ECM truly invented a sonic and aural world of beauty, a soundtrack to eyes wide dreaming, a safe harbor.
As a music lover, I find deep inspiration and enjoyment, as an audiophile I cherish the virtually infinite variety of timbres, tones and overtones, decays, dynamics and everything in between, falling in love for the Sound of Music.
Also if I badly failed my proselytism with my livid, victimized friend, I’ll be forever deeply grateful to a lifetime-worth of… beauty (my limited skills don’t allow me to better argument the concept with deeper, more redundant words) to Manfred Eicher and his monumental ECM: a true world heritage…
P.S. - The disk I used to torture my pal was the one with music score cover.
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A single note. For hours.
Not a scale, not a chord, not a whole piece.
Just one note.
Yet from there was born one of the strangest and most beautiful ideas of the twentieth century.
Giacinto Scelsi, born in Pitelli in 1905, then a hamlet of Arcola and later of La Spezia, doesn't take music to make it "flow well."
He takes it and looks at it closely.
So closely that he ends up hearing what everyone usually misses: the breath of the sound, the weight of the key, the trembling of what lies within a note and is not immediately visible.
After his wife leaves, he sits at the piano and plays a single note for hours.
Hours.
Always the same.
Not to show off how good he is.
Not for show.
Because in that gesture he finds a kind of door.
And once opened, there is no turning back.
For many, music is movement, a race, melodies chasing each other.
Not for Scelsi.
For him, a note isn't a dead end.
It's a world.
The color, the pressure, the pitch of a breath, the vibration change.
The same note, if you listen carefully, is never truly the same.
There's a whole life in it, if you know how to sit still.
His style is born from this obsession.
A style that's stubborn, but never impoverished.
Repeating doesn't mean copying.
It means digging.
It means staying there until the sound opens up, until it reveals its folds, until it becomes something else.
This is why his pieces seem frozen, but instead they move under your skin.
In 1959, one of his most famous titles was released: Four Pieces on a Single Note.
The name itself says it all.
There's no need to decipher the trick.
You have to accept the idea that a single note can be enough, if you look at it the right way.
Within that gesture lies a huge challenge: to remove the superfluous, to keep only the essential, to listen to the smallest detail as if it were the center of the world.
Then come the micro-intervals, the changes in timbre, the minuscule variations.
Stuff for the distracted ear? Not at all.
That's where Scelsi makes the leap.
He doesn't want to fill.
He wants to reveal.
And when you get to that point, music stops being just a sequence of notes and becomes a kind of meditation.
It forces you to slow down.
It forces you to stay.
It catches you off guard, because while you thought you'd heard little, you were actually listening to a lot.
Scelsi died in 1988, leaving behind a vision of music that few initially understood.
Then, in 1989, the Ensemble Scelsi was born in La Spezia.
A sign that this discreet figure, so difficult to pigeonhole, ultimately left a true mark.
One of those who don't make a noise right away.
But they remain.
Scelsi is one of those people who make you understand a simple thing: sometimes the revolution doesn't start with much.
It starts with a single note.
Then with another, identical one.
Then with the desire to understand what's in between.
Thanks to: Wikipedia, ilsaxofonoitaliano, Durand Salabert Eschig
About same feeling I so often experience while seating in my Eames Lounge chair (and ottoman), listening in awe - as I’m doing right now - to Piers Faccini’s music.
Just an example ☺️
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Tom Penaguin – II (áMARXE)
The masterful Tom Penaguin presents his second studio album, released via the fantastic áMARXE label. Simply titled "II", the album brings us six new compositions, highlighted by the epic "The Ornamental Hermit Suite", which is divided into four movements. Just like on his debut album, Tom plays every single instrument himself, and everything is at its absolute peak. Once again, he has successfully recreated that classic prog sound, but with an original and fresh approach, painting beautiful sonic landscapes that stretch from the recognizable Canterbury sound to an eclectic, heavy, and occasionally avant-garde narrative.
As with his debut and the compilation album "Beginnings" (which captured pieces written and recorded between 2012 and 2020), this album radiates quality, but it also showcases a clear upgrade and the further artistic maturation of the artist.
Tom demonstrates complete mastery of the instruments, bringing a remarkable richness of timbre and texture. The music gradually intensifies, culminating in rhythmic explosions where instruments intertwine, alternate in leading roles, and launch into fast, dynamic solos.
The compositions often begin with slow, atmospheric introductions that give way to reckless, acrobatic tempos. This contrast is brilliantly showcased throughout the entire album, but it is especially prominent in the two longest compositions: "Didier Dandelion in the Year of the Great Winds" and the fourth movement of "The Ornamental Hermit Suite".
This musical clash signifies the album's central idea: evolution lies within tension and its subsequent release. The transitions from one extreme to another sound completely natural, giving the impression that each new musical idea is a smooth, fluid continuation of what preceded it.
This explosive energy makes the album both cohesive and full of surprises. Each tune is a work of art in itself, deeply rooted in the eclectic approach of the Canterbury scene, with richly textured symphonic sounds mixed with jazz, avant-garde, and progressive rock elements. Tom layers sounds that are intricate yet highly listenable, entrapping listeners in otherworldly, gorgeous melodies and complex arrangements.
Ultimately, "II" marks an era in modern progressive rock music. It intricately fuses its modern elements with the genre’s sophisticated 70s roots, serving as a testament that Tom can single-handedly drag his contemporaries back into the golden era of rock. The result is a breathtaking fusion of fast tempos, complex multi-instrumental arrangements, and deep emotions. It is an album that pushes listeners to experience the extreme depths and heights that only a masterfully crafted progressive rock album can offer.
https://amarxe.bandcamp.com/album/tom-penaguin-ii
This image doesn't just show the passage of time. It shows a body that lived rock in its purest, most sincerely visceral and unadulterated form.
Each deep line in this leather-like skin is a song played. Each curve in this spine is the record of a historic show, a leap from the stage, and a life dedicated to the rebellion of art, unfiltered, almost neglected without any skin-care cream or sun-screen, hot-rod… a rock lizard of sort.
While the world tries to hide the marks of age, Iggy Pop displays them like war medals. He is living proof that the true punk spirit is immortal and doesn't bow to standards. A true anatomical work of art.
Thanks to Juergen Teller for the amazing picture of Iggy Stooge.
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Why I do prefer triodes made out of pentodes over natural triodes?
It’s very simple. Pentode is a triode with canceled NATURAL internal feedbacks (simplified explanation but very true).
So, by canceling the internal feedbacks we are getting much more efficient tube, and any imperfection of the design will be amplified as well.
To make best linear pentode one must create an ideal construction of the tube first.
So any imperfection will be minimised at the very beginning.
Do you get my point?
Not because “we have plenty of pentodes” or “tv pentodes are cheap” or any other explanation. No. (Of course there are some sleepers tubes, not famous because every one was talking about it, but really good pentodes like c3m become less and less available, and it’s equivalent with 6,3V filament c3o is absolutely rare tube).
Here we come to the point why I do not really like DHT (blasphemy? I have my strong point for it ;))
First. It’s mostly very raw made tubes. Early tubes. That of course, of course, making DHT sounding “magical” for very limited number of the genres of Music, and gives every tube it’s “unique character” - since every type and every make has unique set of imperfection - namely harmonics tales shape.
So tube rolling became a game one can spend years - of course having a lot of fun… or frustrations. People having sets of different tubes good for the different records… well, I do consider my life to be way too short to waste it’s time on such a games 🙂
Second - I do find the DHT to be more anemic and slow than to be energetic and fast. Due to the natural limitation of the constructive design of the DHT. Cathode is a filament wire, coated. The surface is limited. The ability to supply excessive amount of the electrons in surge/pulse is very limited.
Good and relaxing for some genres and records? Sure!
My musical taste (if we can call it this way, we also can say I have no taste at all or I have way to many tastes 🙂 demands that my amps should be able to reproduce ANY type of music equally well.
And reverberation. See the point above - cathode is the filament. Thin wire slightly stretched in space with the springs. Same as a rever tank in a guitar amp. Easily excited by the every vibration around. And sometime pleasant. Some time.
So, back to the pentodes operating in triode mode.
My point is - the best triode we can get only from the best pentode.
This is my way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to Misho Myronov 🙏 as I fully subscribe the above: my personal experience with my old Marantz 8B power amp in pseudo-triode mode (something also suggested by user’s manual) was outperforming on many sonic parameters most of 300B amps around… an indelible memory, but also my actual Gotorama 2.0 sounds amazing with venerable, stock Quad II and GEC KT66 push-pull, for example… the 300B Partridge mono blocks also if very pleasant and romantic but aren’t able to compete in terms of natural slam and dynamics with the Peter Walker’s masterpieces… also if not wired as pseudo-triodes!
Just saying…
The king is naked… hooray for the king… AKA the 300B triode.
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The picture (my face, at least) is a younger me in a selfie I took myself while riding on my BMW GS in the phosphate mountains around Tozeur, Tunisia… I used my trusty analog pocket Rollei… it was September 2005.
AI made this and… nothing: it made me cooler than I was.
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A Colossus passed!
We've just received word that the great Sonny Rollins has left us at age 95.
The impact of Rollins's sound and improvisational genius will be studied for as long as there's music.
Requiescat in pace to one of the most important figures jazz has ever known and will ever know. Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins, September 7, 1930–May 25, 2026.
The great Miles Davis would be 100 years today. What a genius. He’s definitely my favorite musician!
Of course, he never recorded for ECM, but many of his fellow musicians did.
So I asked myself, which musicians who have recorded for ECM have played with or recorded with Miles Davis?
These are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are a few more...
Please post your suggestions in the comments!
Keith Jarrett
Jack DeJohnette
Dave Holland
Sam Rivers
Chick Corea
John Scofield
Gary Peacock
Collin Wallcott
Dave Liebman
John McLaughlin
Bennie Maupin
Herbie Hancock
Palle Mikkelborg
Marilyn Mazur
PS: Now spinnin' Kind Of Blue...
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