Pop pop music artistes live at the KLIAV 2011

If you have missed the live performance this year at the KLIAV, not to dismay.
You can still watch it on video.........here......courtesy of a avid fan Mr. Rocky Lim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5z3VF_eSgM

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PMC Demo at AV Design

The message conveyed during the speaker demonstration!

Guests gathered at the main area of AV design

1. 

A big poster which depicts the PMC speaker system greets visitors at the entrance of AV design

Peter Thomas explained to the guests how the idea of a good speaker system started. The slide show presentation was very informative and explained very clearly how the idea developed about then the BBC days, till the making of the present PMC speakers on demonstration.

Andy Duffield explained a point during the speaker demo.

Andy Duffield and Peter Thomas addressed the guests in the demo room

Pic taken: Olympus 4/3 system, e300, zuiko digital 14-45mmf3.5-5.6
with available light sources.

2011.............................Happy New Year!

Happy New Year 2011 to everyone!


How does one celebrates on the 1st day of a new year?
Sort of like doing something right with things moving
steadily and surely in the right direction to start an
auspicious day. Typical of ethnic chinese origin, the
all so important 'ong' factor coming into the picture!
At least in modern times short of me looking up the
chinese almanac as to what to do best for the day!


So the few of us, Uncle Vic, Uncle Chew, KL Doc and
Kajang Foo decided to get together for lunch in
Broga, not too far from the town of Semenyih.
Lots of laughter and jokes, but still more or
less centred around hifi related discussions &/or
a twist! However, observers looking at us having
a good time could surely tell from our waist line,
(all of us are fat around the middle) that it's a
past time we enjoy very much, besides the chit
chat, the food and drinks that is!


To think we are going to sit all day talking or
dispersed after the lunch, then readers don't
know us well enough. We adjourned to Kajang
Foo's place to listen to his many setups and to
help give suggestions as to tuning the systems
and improving room acoustics. The brain
storming sessions followed the thorough
listening and it's where our analytical mind
got to work overtime. By 5pm we break
for tea and more talks and jokes followed.
Overall it's a very fruitful day of outing,
to savour some high cholesterol filled
food(;-p quite sure you won't want to
know) from out of town places and listen
to some hifi systems and raking our
brains for ways to improve the already
good sound!


I could say it's a good day of outing for us
playful overgrown audiophiles.

Hope the readers here on this auspicious
day, had a good day like us, too! And
wishing all readers a Happy New Year!!!

B's Vintage Setup

One sunday afternoon, blog master, Kenneth, Uncle Chew and myself, visited a friend with some vintage gears(for the purpose of this write up,only the gears in used were mentioned) that we were not familiar with. The setup was placed in the spacious living hall of the house, which was just about in many of opinions to be generally suitable for speakers of that size. However, I thought this could be flexible and one has to listen to be very sure, though general opinions point towards empirical experiences and proven practical knowledge that big speakers should be placed in large rooms. The speakers, a model of infinity series the Q2, from the late seventies period, and a sound typical of that time.The speakers appeared to be in the first instance different from modern day design. First the number of tweeters that were on each speakers, 3 pieces of ribbon tweeters, front firing to the listeners and 1 more firing from the back of each speaker! Arranged in a vertical array with each piece individually angled inwards to the middle between the speakers, seemingly able to cater for several choices of listening positions along a dividing line between the speakers. Besides the ribbon tweeters there were 2 more dome tweeters also firing front to the listeners and common beliefs has it that the dome tweeters would work over a lower frequency range from those of the ribbon tweeters and probably into the midrange too, as indication has it, there is a single midrange driver that could have complimented the tweeter arrangement design. A bigger woofer cone type 15 inch driver, one each to each speaker cabinets, completed the arrangement of drivers and tweeters combination. The cabinets in it's original form and aged over the many years of different ownerships, dark wood coloured and probably some wood polish or wood oil may bring back the good look to the wood veneer. A back firing port covered with a speaker cloth indicates that the speaker placement could make for careful choices and may influence how the speakers may sound with different placements. We did some test listens as the visit was a fact finding visit which the owner kindly accomodated. We listened to a jazz sampler courtesy of Interglobal music and the 'Dream of Opera' CD which I may have mentioned in the write up of visits to other music lover's music room. Not to confuse readers about how the music sounded, my personal choice of descriptions will not be provided here, as different persons in their music or hifi journey conceived good sounding presentations to be utterly different from each other. So the opening drum sound of track 6 of the Dream of Opera cd will have different meanings to different persons. So to some a drum sound is just a drum sound, to some others who may have moved on to be able to perceived the skin of the drum and how that skin vibrate and how the subsequent resonating low hz would sound like, and to some others it may be again with some ever more slight differences, and again there will be some who have not reached this level and may not be able to perceived the sonics or otherwise too subtle to be perceived yet or that the perceptions of low frequencies may be a very personal choice, and how low the low bass one wants may dictate the choice of listening materials. We have a choice of amplifications between a preamp unit plus the Odyssey power amp and a vintage Yamaha integrated amplifier CA2010. Both of which we tried, and both sounded just as good. However we unanimously preferred the vintage speakers with the vintage amplifier as the colourations (called it distortion, ifyo u like it) add to the flavour of the music for that afternoon's listening session. It would probably have been different at another listening sessions with some other listening materials. As we listened to some vocals besides some jazz and some chinese music. We even tried listening at different listening positions, middle of the hall and all the way to the back wall, which we thought the presentations of which to be different, depending on personal choices. That afternoon we looked for a 'comfortable' music presentation and a listening session that we can call 'enjoyable' and not a loudness test, and hence look into rearranging the speaker placement(the owner asked us to do the placement for him anyway) and looked at the choices of listening spots. We did found one but it wasn't what the owner would call his ideal choice. So we worked out something he could like and suggested he listen for a while to see if he will like it and could listen over a long listen session.

TAD speakers launch

The soft launch was on 26th june, saturday 2pm at AV design's showroom at Rohas Perkasa Building, Jalan P Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur. Those invited include their customers, hifi bloggers, some hifi sifus, the young and talented and as well as the wise & learned senior ones. I was there early, and met up with Jo Ki, the LS3/5a guru & moderator of the LS Malaysian Chapter and a friend Yee, I met about a year ago at a Yamaha Music and Audio equipments sales in PJ. As the quests kept coming in, the gathering picked up momentum, & the host suggested we start off with slight refreshments and drinks and what follow were exchange of the latest happenings and updates, as most of the guests more of less know each other or have met previously at some other hifi social events.

When the music listen proper began, James of AV design started off with a rock track, Stairway to Heaven from Led Zeppelin, and it was rock, rock and more rock music thereafter. Later James played some audiophile tracks and some of past favourites. And it was followed by more coffee and drinks, and food! It was the rock music that everyone have their eyes glued to where the setup was placed, the TAD Reference 1, the Bryston amplifications and source. Everyone's attention and interest have moved to where the speakers were, after the light refreshments. This is an event reporting not a audio review, so will leave the technical information to other hifi bloggers present at the meet to write in detail of the equipments in used.

Then there were the photographing session, besides the listening session. Most guests have a closer look of the speakers and the ancillaries used for the music demonstrations. Followed by photo sessions with guests posing beside the R1 speakers.

It was much later when most of the guest have left, the guests who were still around played some old favourites followed by some trance music with beats as fast as 133bpm!!! The speakers handled this very well, and I was still comfortable with the pace of the music!
I left the place after this, still thinking how loud & well the speakers plus the setup could replay the various types of music!