American Sound AS-2000 Installations- Far East (Tango)

IMHO such long waiting times take away all spontaneity and most fun from reports.

What are you complaining about? I write my reports almost immediately. Kedar often does too.
 
I am sure Kedar listened to many, many component combinations and made many comparisons. I have a feeling this will be a pretty long report by Kedar. Let's give him time to get home, get back to his life in London and wait for his comprehensive thoughts.

5 carts, 3tts, 3 arms, 2 phonos, many classical records he brought plus a full box of terrific sounding mostly classical records that the Zerostargeneral picked for me to try. Four days of listening. 6 hours of listening per day on average. All classical music. That is a lot of writing if he wants to be very detailed. But I kicked him out at 4pm everyday except the first day. So he had plenty of time at the hotel writing in the evening..if not busy doing naughty stuff.

Kind regards,
Tang
 
Tang, our WBF discussions are about equipment at the highest level of this hobby. You are very likely the only person in the world who has assembled such a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art vinyl playback components. Your system truly is a laboratory for conducting experiments and apples-to-apples comparisons which could be conducted literally no where else in the known universe.

I am sure Kedar's report and your continuing impressions will be fascinating to many!
 
5 carts, 3tts, 3 arms, 2 phonos, many classical records he brought plus a full box of terrific sounding mostly classical records that the Zerostargeneral picked for me to try. Four days of listening. 6 hours of listening per day on average. All classical music. That is a lot of writing if he wants to be very detailed. But I kicked him out at 4pm everyday except the first day. So he had plenty of time at the hotel writing in the evening..if not busy doing naughty stuff.

Kind regards,
Tang


Hahahahah! Hilarious! :D
 
Ked suffers from the disease of fidelity! Can you take medicine against that ?
 
5 carts, 3tts, 3 arms, 2 phonos, many classical records he brought plus a full box of terrific sounding mostly classical records that the Zerostargeneral picked for me to try. Four days of listening. 6 hours of listening per day on average. All classical music. That is a lot of writing if he wants to be very detailed. But I kicked him out at 4pm everyday except the first day. So he had plenty of time at the hotel writing in the evening..if not busy doing naughty stuff.

Kind regards,
Tang

Would you list some the classical music records picked for you to hear. TIA
 
Tang, our WBF discussions are about equipment at the highest level of this hobby. You are very likely the only person in the world who has assembled such a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art vinyl playback components. Your system truly is a laboratory for conducting experiments and apples-to-apples comparisons which could be conducted literally no where else in the known universe.

I am sure Kedar's report and your continuing impressions will be fascinating to many!

I just wish he could enjoy music more. This guy was relentless in finding out differences in sound of one equipment to another. When a box of vinyls from the General arrived, I left it unopened on my working table. I could just see him got relentless wanting to know what were inside and I knew he was gonna ask me to open it. So I told him no just to disappoint him for fun. When ddk was with me, we were just enjoying music and the sound of my system. He taught me the most valuable thing a vinylphile can have...that is how to tune a cart. It was very pleasant. We enjoyed time together talking about other things other than audio. But with Bonzo it was tiring. I didnt even finish a song with him. He just kept switching. His eagerness to find out and learn were more than 100%. He will report something like yesterday A sounded better than B but the next day B suddenly became much better than A. That is because when we switched arms/carts I had my tonearm guy do them. He did them very accurately and efficiently with modern cart setup tools, but not by ears. So what Bonzo heard right after arm/cart switch, the ooh ahh he had, were from something that werent optimized. I didnt want him to know how I tune my carts the ddk way so I left him listened to just that until the next day I came alone very early in the morning to do the setup trick I was taught. Then he really heard everything at optimum. Bonzo is very good at detecting identifying differences. I think he enjoys finding out gears strengths and weaknesses more than the music itself when listening to audio. And when he wants to really enjoy music he just goes listen to a real symphony.

Here is me and Bonzo.

2875E4AD-9DBA-4EC0-9C5E-A402CDA4D648.jpg

Here is Bonzo cueing the SME. (Look pretty awkwardly clumsy imo :D)

444771A9-4268-41BA-854C-F952BFFB5976.jpg

Tang
 
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Khun Jack. What are you laughing about? You must have that naughtyness in you too then ;).

Tang

I was naughty once upon a time LOL
 
5 carts, 3tts, 3 arms, 2 phonos, many classical records he brought plus a full box of terrific sounding mostly classical records that the Zerostargeneral picked for me to try. Four days of listening. 6 hours of listening per day on average. All classical music. That is a lot of writing if he wants to be very detailed. But I kicked him out at 4pm everyday except the first day. So he had plenty of time at the hotel writing in the evening..if not busy doing naughty stuff.

Kind regards,
Tang

He was playing in a very serious ping pong tournament in Patpong
 
I just wish he could enjoy music more. This guy was relentless in finding out differences in sound of one equipment to another. When a box of vinyls from the General arrived, I left it unopened on my working table. I could just see him got relentless in wanting to know what were inside and I knew he was gonna ask me to open it. So I told him no just to disappoint him for fun. When ddk was with me, we were just enjoying music and the sound of my system. He taught me the most valuable thing a vinylphile can have...that is how to tune a cart. It was very pleasant. We enjoyed time together talking about other things other than audio. But with Bonzo it was tiring. I didnt even finish a song with him. He just kept switching. His eagerness to find out and learn were more than 100%. He will report something like yesterday A sounded better than B but the next day B suddenly became much better than A. That is because when we switched arms/carts I had my tonearm guy do them. He did them very accurately and efficiently with modern cart setup tools, but not by ears. So what Bonzo heard right after arm/cart switch, the ooh ahh he had, were from something that werent optimized. I didnt want him to know how I tune my carts the ddk way so I left him listened to just that until the next day I came alone very early in the morning to do the setup trick I was taught. Then he really heard everything at optimum. Bonzo is very good at detecting identifying differences. I think he enjoys finding out gears strengths and weaknesses more than the music itself when listening to audio. And when he wants to really enjoy music he just goes listen to a real symphony.

Here is me and Bonzo.

View attachment 44031

Here is Bonzo cueing the SME. (Look pretty awkwardly clumsy imo :D)

View attachment 44032

Tang

Hey Tang,

The only person who has truly managed to control Ked’s mad incessant tweaking / fiddling bug is the General lol. How do I put this - The General just dictates the state of play as any good general would ;)

That said I was reliably informed that he was “gripped” by excitement at the ping pong tournament and only auditioned for a while.
 
Agreed. I’m curious, why does it take a month to write up a report?

All my reports are drafted on the day of the shootout and the journey (airport, plane, train). What takes time is resizing pics and uploading, because I hate that. So, the pics don't get uploaded for days, till I feel like doing them. I like writing, so I write.

The longer the journey, the faster the report, because writing, editing and restructuring gets done on the way, there is more dedicated time allotted automatically, instead of having to wait when the mood strikes.

My draft is all ready to be cut pasted on the way back now from Heathrow. But I am going straight to work. And weekend is to pay attention to my gf after time away. So it will just sit there till I do a spell check and upload with the pics
 
Hey Tang,

The only person who has truly managed to control Ked’s mad incessant tweaking / fiddling bug is the General lol. How do I put this - The General just dictates the state of play as any good general would ;)

That said I was reliably informed that he was “gripped” by excitement at the ping pong tournament and only auditioned for a while.

Yes but the General is closer so I can go back and forth, and the report will be up after many visits, and the Vyger compare will be done at Gian's.
 
Yes but the General is closer so I can go back and forth, and the report will be up after many visits, and the Vyger compare will be done at Gian's.

But I can assure you that you’ll not be able to tweak and fiddle with the General’s :eek:
 
I really get put off by not finishing songs or pieces and even most of the albums. This is the sole reason for not inviting many people from audiophile clubs or circles. When I was a student at university, we had a very big music conservatoire next to our design faculty. I had lots of friends from there as well as many other musicians from my days of being a musician. I love to listen music with them. They love listening whole pieces and albums and really "enjoy the music" with me. We turn off the lights, they do not ask questions about the equipment, but generally talk about sound and show love towards the timbrally correct, non fatiguing, dynamics sound. Over the years I found out most of my musician friends are keen on dynamics and timbre.

However Tang! your system is very inviting to do these thousand needle drops, so I can not say anything against Bonzo :) If one is interested in audio equipment (and we all are here to varying degrees), you have a very special place in the world. Best turntables, best arms and cartridges with matching incredible electronics. The speaker system would also be familiar sounding to me so it could mean a few crazy hours of test tracks even for me before settling to listen properly. A child like excitement would be expected for sure :) Congrats once more on beautiful equipment, clean layout and being a nice gentleman who puts his time to share these with fellow enthusiasts. The last videos about the cartridges were great. I have never listened to so much youtube before!
 
this is what I like about tape; I tend to play the whole album in one uninterrupted sequence from a 12 or even 12,5" reel like it´s intended to be heard...

apart from that, my experience from being sat down in front of an unfamiliar system, is that it hardly matter what is being played, it doesn´t take long to recognize a great system anyway, and I´m pretty sure this is one of very few...
best
Leif
 
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