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Zan-tinel day Picture Gallery
We are grateful of Mr.Zanden's hospitality in hosting this Hi Fi/Music Event with a charity purpose. His reverent spirit in an ever quest of improving room acoustics through the resonators alongside mechanical vibration controls via the SRA Ohio XL+2/Acoustics System Int'l platform/rack creates a musical experience for all of us. He has prepared for this event for more than a month.
We are very grateful of Mrs.Zanden's hospitality in preparing self-made cakes for all of us during the "intersession". The cakes are delicious.
We hope there will be more gathering in the future. I am sure the arrival of the Cessaro Alpha One Horn System will further inspire Mr.Zanden's musical journey. By then, we are sure there will be very "HORNY" event for us.
Last but not least, Mr.Zanden is grateful if participant today could share which piece of music had left you with the best listening impression.
Thank you!
We are very grateful of Mrs.Zanden's hospitality in preparing self-made cakes for all of us during the "intersession". The cakes are delicious.
We hope there will be more gathering in the future. I am sure the arrival of the Cessaro Alpha One Horn System will further inspire Mr.Zanden's musical journey. By then, we are sure there will be very "HORNY" event for us.
Last but not least, Mr.Zanden is grateful if participant today could share which piece of music had left you with the best listening impression.
Thank you!
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Comments
講回正題. 我對Mr. Zanden的音響所播放的古典及opera 我真的真的很喜歡. 因為這類是自己最喜歡的音樂. 正個舞台很立體, 人聲很突出. 小提琴很有真實的木的感覺．很有音樂感．我今天在家裡聽回Mr. Zanden所播放的曲目． 唉，再一次不能有這樣效果． 跟上次聽全套Da Vinci都是一樣． 我家裡的系統是不是有問題 ０．．０
再次謝謝Mr. Zanden 給我有機會學習＾＾
I was in Mr. Zanden's place when Srajan of 6moons visited HK and that was the last time that I had listened to his system. At that time, LP playback was obviously much better than CD which gave me a lot of rapport in venturing into the vinyl world which I have no regret. Room acoustics then was very good already with a huge virtual space and room for breathing. Whenever we listened to music with a lot of bass energy, I could always feel the power of the 'big Sentinal' in terms of bursting out the air waves effortlessly. Being critical and perhaps cynical, I felt the bass is a bit lagged behind from the rest of the other frequencies leading to a slight mismatch in the speed of propagation. This may be the inherent design of the speaker as I noticed that the bass compartment is an active one and I was not sure if this is the culprit of what I heard. Spactial cue and transparency then was a bit 'blurred' to be perfectly honest.
This time, without any major component replacement, Mr Zanden added the SRA stand for the Zanden transport, power supply for the Zanden dAC and main unit of the preamp, add in a suite of FMR, FR power cables and most importantly, an ultimate refinement (to the scale of milimeters) of all his resonators, diffusors, the change, I should say improvement, is not insignificant.
First and foremost, on last Sat, I could hear much much better transparency on both CD and LP playback and the gap between CD and LP is not as big as last time on attributes like dynamic range, clarity on both extreme ends, spactial separations and inner details and ambience. According to Mr Zanden, his LP system has not been warmed up due to the limited time. So what happened, I believe, was a major improvement in terms of the CD source and the ability of his room acoustics tweaking in revealing all these details which were hidden last time.
Bass mismatch was still there but I was too caught away by the coherence, openness and the serenity of the soundstage on all the classical music that we listened. What I learnt from this gathering is the unrelented effort to improve. If functionality is about focusing on the process to produce certain outcomes (ie a true musical playback), VITALITY is about the attitudes and mind-sets of the people responsible for such process. We have all got the tools to meet the functional need, I think we people always lack the 'vitality' of making it happens. A very good lesson learnt for me.
Cessaro is taking up the place of Sentinal very soon. Changing speaker is perhaps the most mind-boggling process which receives the most resistant from most, if not all the family members. I remembered taking my wife to visit the showroom to view the Mosquito Neo a few times before she nodded her head approving for it. I am sure Mr. Zanden will spend his utmost effort in ensuring this new speaker will sing in harmony with his Zanden suite even at the expense of changing his house. What a funatic to most of the people but without such uncompromising attitude, how do we excel in vitalising our heavy investment on our system?
Can't wait to visit Mr. Zanden again....
Marvel
(By the way, the way that Mr. Zanden was so well prepared for the gathering had really scared me off, if ever there is a Marvel Day, I think I really need to refresh my memory of how to make a few desserts or stocking some very good Chinese tea)
Shortly after we settled Mr Zanden spinned some classical, and the second song "The Favourite Opera Aries, track 4, Cisco" sound marvelous which was the best rendition to me in the whole session. Although I was sitting at the back row right against the wall, I believe the Mr Zanden's skillful room treatment from the "sugar cube" and resonators have virtually made the back wall vanished in a certain degree. Without that, the opera duet wouldn't have been that engaging and airy at the same time.
Overall the rendition of Mr Zanden's present rig is smooth, quiet and tuneful; CD or vinyl. If serenity of calmness is something among the top priority aims that Mr Zanden is seeking, he's successful in demo-ing this trait throughout the classical pieces that he played.
To me it's a crazy thing to try taming big floorstanders like the Avalon Sentinel in a probably sub-400sqft room. Not only will that require great courage, deep pocket, but it also takes tremnendous patience in endless trial & error; not to mention a deep underatnding of your room and also skills to tune that room to house such big speakers. Last but not the least the deepest understanding of the bottom line of his beloved wife's acceptance.
Let's skip the details about the cake, as everybody will cover that, except a great thank-you from me. Right after the tea break, I had this honour to have the chnace to spin a cut "You'd be so nice to come home to" from Maria McPartland Trio, a refrence live recording in the Madison Shanghai Jazz... Surprisingly this close-mic jazz house type of recording proved a difficult task for a premium rig which excels in classicals. Solo bass lost grip and piano sounded truncatedly steely, which greatly contrasted the outstanding dispersed low frequencies I heard minutes ago. I reckon the classical-oriented preference of music had Mr Zanden focused more to showcasing the dispersion of low register that normal untreated rooms find impossible to house. So the humongous soundstage, on the flip side, once being required to jam-packing into a low ceiling jazz house gig, it lost the grip to produce that tautness to please a hard die Jazz head like Santamomo. Given Mr Zanden's knowledge in room acoustics, I believe it won't take him more than a blink to figure out how to put it back right by moving the master tuning wooden cube.
Saturday, apart from the charity good cause, I visted a man who has the gut, the patience, the skill and the pocket to tame a big bird in a small cage (in fact the cage is already twice bigger than mine) , and better still i was told an even bigger bird is coming. What more can I say? It's the heart, the attutide and above all the quest for the better that amazed me most. His family's approval of allowing hobbyist strangers to share his "madness" in audio excellence is the highest respect not mere words could describe. My hearfelt appreciation and salute, Mr Zanden.
To you last Saturady was probably nothing more than a piece of cake! But it meant a lot for us. Thanks
Momo
Dear fellow hi-fi comrades,
First and foremost, thank you ALL for coming along last Saturday morning – the weather did turn for the better at least from morning until our luncheon session. A total sum of $ 1,600 was raised from this event and I wish to express my gratitude to everyone in supporting this charitable event and in particular, Ronald, for his generosity.
I am particularly appreciative for the detailed and candid comments you have made in the forum on your listening impression of my system which is specially tuned for ‘my taste’ of classical & pop music, it is extremely helpful to receive objective feedback (Marvel bro’ did discern the improvement I had made since his last 6moons’ visit - I added many FLOW power cords & 3 SRA Ohio+ platforms) as in my experience, every good system would invariably have a particular sonic flavour (personal bias) and naturally but inevitably, possess certain strengths & weaknesses, the latter usually pass without the consciousness of the owner – otherwise, he’ll remedy such less-than-desirable sonic trait.
It is gratifying to be reassured that most of you endorsed the rendition of classical (orchestral) music from my system, I’m pleasantly surprised some of you liked the operatic music I played as well. As already mentioned in my previous writing, a system can seldom play all types of music very well, so mine is no exception to this hard and fast rule and hopefully, with the arrival of horn design speakers, this would further arouse my interest to hear more jazz music as this type of music demands a lot of micro as well as macro dynamics from the system (Santamomo I will make special effort to play better jazz music in the future) and my current one is only biased towards playing violin with wooden tone & human voice with emotions without a trace of hardness.
From your response, I guess once I manage to make the new big horns sing in my room, I should organize a horny gathering for all of you again, let’s hope this will happen in the not too distant future. Last but not least, thanks P.T. & Jlam once again for organizing this charitable event, I definitely benefited by the feedback in the forum and hope my passion as TYPE C+ audiophile has inspired those who visited me as well as other readers in positive way. Happy tweaking everyone and I’m sure the improvement in sound will commensurate with the effort you have put in !
Cheers,
Mr Z.
Can I join the "horny" party? I want to learn more Hi Fi and Music from you.
Frank