Blasphemy!

My brother's gonna kill me for blogging about this, but yes--that's a Mac Airbook (or Air Macbook, or Book AirMac, or whatever) hooked up to my system. I ran the borrowed Mac through the Wavelength Brick V3 24/96 DAC and listened to titles using iTunes. The purpose of the Mac is to help break in the new cabling while the laptop for the server is being used as a, well, laptop. Overall, the sound quality was good to excellent and I was able to listen to a series of choice audiophile-y cuts that sounded about the same as a good CD player.

I think that says more about the excellence of the Wavelength DAC (not to mention my Trenner & Friedl ART monitors, which truly amazed some guests I had over last night) than the software. When it comes to iTunes, I think the interface is clunky, slow and downright antiquated compared to the Zune software running through the Blue Computer Solutions Music Server Project. (Or, as my brother likes to say, "iTunes looks like it was designed in the '80s.") In my humble opinion, many people love using iTunes because it's the only thing they know. I've used iTunes on PC for the last five years or so, but when I switched to Zune I instantly noted a HUGE difference in ease of use, speed, flexibility, features and overall appearance (the Zune presentation is great-looking and fun).

In the end, however, I think I could be okay with just the Mac BookAir and iTunes. It's not bad at all. The sound quality was much better than I expected (although those new Cardas cables are starting to break in nicely). But I can't wait to give the Blue another shot. The other night I reviewed Sam Cooke's Ain't That Good News from HDtracks for Stereolist.com, and it was my first experience with FLAC files. The sound quality was simply amazing. So I think we're on the right track with the project.

Dean Peer - Airborne

There's an old bass guitarists' saying that the first three rows of every Primus concert were filled with bass guitar players trying to figure out how Les Claypool managed to play the way he did. Well, I think there must have been at least one time where Les himself was sitting front row at a Dean Peer concert. Dean manages to wring more sounds out of his bass than just about any bass player on the planet, and his new album, Airborne, just about cements his status as the most gifted and innovative guy ever to pluck (or in his case, tap) four thick strings.

I first discovered Dean's music back when I used to read Stereophile. That audio magazine really championed his talent, and I wound up buying his LP Ucross based on their absolutely glowing review. Over the years, Ucross became one of my reference records for testing and evaluating stereo equipment. Since Dean himself is an audiophile, he always takes extra care to ensure his recordings sound fantastic. On Airborne, the sounds of his bass, coupled with some downright huge drumming from Bret Mann, creates some of the most astonishing and expansive soundscapes I've heard in a long time.

While it's hard to categorize Dean's music, I guess I would have to place it in jazz fusion. On the opening track, however, Dean and Bret lay down a momentum that actually rocks in more ways than one. Dean's unique style, which makes it almost impossible to believe that there's only one instrument playing, comes from a double-tap technique that allows him to travel into octaves that are alien to most bass players. Yet Dean eschews tricks and effects and focuses on how much sound he can extract from his instrument. If you're a fellow bassist, you'll be inspired and amazed. If you're not a bassist, you'll still think you're listening to a trio or a quartet instead of a duo.

Again, if you're into sonic pyrotechnics, Airborne will not disappoint. It's the perfect album for discerning what my new Cardas cables and my new Trenner & Friedl ART monitors are capable of achieving. I'm really fortunate that my system can now do justice to this fascinating album.

Incidentally, I received Airborne in a totally new (to me) format--the USB sound card. It's the exact size of a credit card. Just to show how technically challeneged I can be, I started looking around the sides of my laptop for an orifice that would accommodate the card. My brother Mat, the computer genius, pulled out the small insert on the right side of the card to reveal that it's just a garden-variety USB jack. D'oh!

You can get Airborne at your favorite record store, from the Cardas Audio website at http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=music&content_id=9&pagestring=USB+Audio+Cards or you can visit Dean's website at http://deanpeer.com/music.htm.

Trenner & Friedl ART monitors in the house!

Here are some more pics of the Trenner & Friedl ART monitors, courtesy of...me! They just arrived via FedEx a little while ago, and now they're breaking in in my listening room as I write. I won't give you my initial impressions yet other than the fact that they sounded awesome right out of the box.

These babies took forever to unpack because they are shipped like the precious little gems that they are. The ARTs aren't double-boxed or even triple-boxed--they're quadruple-boxed and even shrink-wrapped. Needless to say, they travelled from Austria to El Cerrito, California (into the hands of US distributor Bob Clarke of Profundo Audio--thanks for everything, Bob!) to my digs in central Texas without a single mark, scratch or ding. They are as pristine as the day they were inspected and tested by Trenner & Friedl.

By the time they were unpacked, my listening room was a mess! As you can see from the pictures, these ARTs are finished in a rich, textured cherry veneer with a front faceplate made from black Corian (it's marked "volcano" on the box!).

Note how nicely my Cardas Twinlink speaker cables fit onto the rear terminals. That's because the ARTs are internally wired with Cardas cable as well. So if you buy Trenner & Friedl speakers, it makes sense to continue using Cardas cable externally as well for the best results! (Note that Cardas cabling already provides the best results in most systems.)

So I'm going to grab some appropriate stands, let these gorgeous little critters break in for a couple of hundred hours and then I'll sit down and start some serious listening. I'll be posting reviews of the ARTs as well as the Cardas cabling in the next few weeks. Until then, I'll probably be rediscovering my entire record collection with these massive improvements to my system.

Special thanks to Colleen Cardas of Cardas Audio and Bob Clarke of Profundo for getting the ARTs into my hot little hands. There are some truly great people in high-end audio.

Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart

As promised, I'm posting a pic of the Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart cartridge to show that Cardas Audio does more than make great cables. Here's a description from their website:

"The Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart body is made from America's most beautiful hardwood, the legendary Myrtle tree. Rarest of all woods, this symmetrical, broadleaf, evergreen Myrtle grows only in Southwestern Oregon (Coos and Curry counties) and the Biblical Holy Lands. Myrtlewood has a very complex grain structure. The coloring of the wood is unique, varying from a sedate, satiny gray to riotously, multicolored grains of red, yellow, and brown, with many burls and shapes in its grain. Denser than Oak, unseasoned Myrtle logs will not float."

I heard an earlier Cardas cartridge, the Heart, some years ago and it definitely qualified as one of the world's finest. I'm a huge fan of wooden-bodied cartridges, having owned a Koetsu Rosewood for seven years. Wooden-bodied cartridges tend to sound warmer and more romantic than cartridges made out of plastic or metal.

In fact, Cardas cartridges were (or still are) the preferred cartridges for the amazing SPJ turntables that I wrote about several years ago for Perfect Sound Forever. (You can read it here: http://www.furious.com/perfect/vinyl26.html.) After I wrote that article and praised SPJ designer Judy Spotheim-Koreneef, we wound up exchanging quite a few emails. She wound up linking my article to her website, where it still remains after almost 10 years. I can remember the fond words she had for George Cardas and his cartridges.

George Cardas owns one of the SPJ 'tables, and there's a great video on YouTube of him playing his system at home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFhBmy6XFQ. As you can imagine, he has a pretty amazing system that includes Rowland Research and Wavestream amplification and vintage Magnepan Tympani speakers.

As you have probably already guessed, I'm quickly becoming a Cardas convert!

Cardas Audio Newsletter -- Fall 2010

The Cardas Audio Fall Newsletter is out, and it happens to discuss many of the things I've been blogging about this week such as Dan Muzquiz of Blackbird Audio and Trenner & Friedl Loudspeakers. In fact, I really had to include the photo above because it shows just how tiny the Trenner & Friedl ART monitors really are while still showing off their stunning looks.

For those unfamiliar with Cardas Audio, they make probably the best cables in the world. Or, like my old audiophile friend Jim Sanders just told me, "I recall back when Corey Greenberg wrote for Stereophile he began an article talking about a recent audio show he'd attended and it ultimately dawned on him that the system setups that he thought had the best sound all happened to use Cardas cable." In fact, I'm planning to purchase some Cardas interconnects and speaker cable in the very near future as the first step in rebuilding my home system to its former glory.

(And in step with the Vinyl Anachronist theme, Cardas also makes a couple of wonderful wood-bodied cartridges as well! I'll try to see if I can find some pretty pics.)

The Cardas newsletter also starts with a rather illuminating statement: "Alternating current can shake a wire like a guitar string." I was a telecommunications technician for eight years, and I know that the wire = wire argument is seriously flawed, if only for the reason that there's more to cable (terminations, jacket, cable geometry, environment) than copper or silver. I installed and tested literally thousands of miles of cable during that time, and I know how easy it is to degrade a signal if everything isn't perfect. Or as a guy I know with a Ph.D in electrical engineering once told me, "Cardas knows what they're doing...the others guys I'm not so sure."

Anyway, give their newsletter at peek at http://www.cardas.com/newsletter/fall_2010/.

And one more thing...I want to include a picture I found on the Trenner & Friedl website. This appears to be an older version of the ART monitor with a radically different tweeter. I've included it, however, because this photograph shows the impeccable craftsmanship of these Austrian speaker manufacturers. Enjoy!