6Moons Roadtour to HK

Marvel

On Monday 27Nov, three of us, Linnman, Jlam and myself were standing in the Arrival Hall in Chek Lap Kok Airport in the late afternoon. We were all desperately looking for a 6ft tall 'kwei lo' whom we only saw his photo in the internet. None of us has met this fellow but all of us were very excited when he will come out from the Custom / Immigration. Almost an hour had passed before we finally identified our target which marked the first page of the Roadtour to HK by the owner and chief editor of 6moons.com: Mr Srajan Ebaen.

Without any delay, we all rushed to shake hands with Srajan and without any surprise, we all pronounced his first name 'Srajan' slightly differently from how he introduced himself.

The next 72 hours went like a Formula-1 racecar as we have accompanied Srajan to visit 6 audiosystems (including mine) and in every visit, Srajan stayed more than 2 hours in order to allow ample time for him to chat with the owner of the system and exchange views on where the system performs well and where there are rooms for improvement.

On the first day, Srajan presented us with some gift CDs made by himself by croning some of his favourite music into CD-Rs. With my limited knowledge, I could hardly find any familiar titles from those CDs. But when Srajan started to play some of those tracks in AE Showroom, my heartbeat kept increasing and mind could not stop twinkling because those tracks are really 'killer tracks' as I find them very very demanding to be playback well. They covered vocals, flemenco music, gipsy...That effectively put the system being auditioned into a microscope...

I am sure Srajan will include all his more serious and technical observations in his upcoming Roadtour article but I will try to re-collect some of the interesting side-stories to share with the forum readers...more to come...

Marvel

ShanghaiBigPiece

Marvel

I had dinner with PT last night in Shanghai and heard how interesting was the roadtour in HK. Though I did not join, I can still pick up a few inspiring idea through PT. I heard that your system was the most balanced one in this trip and passed all "tests" by Sarajan. What is your next move?

Big Piece

Marvel

Lots of food for thought in the past several days.

I need to further improve to make my system to produce good music but not just good sound. More coherence and less 'digital sounding' are perhaps something I should focus on. Not sure if I could achieve this easily but certainly I will set it as my target.

I listened to a Kondo system which is extremely musical: M77 preamp, Kagu-oh power amp. Will definitely have a chance to try M77 in my system with the kind consent of the owner.

Marvel

VoyR

Marvel bro, the correct spelling should be Gakuon. Bury us with more comparison between silver bat and other pricey linestages. I am curious to know. But Kondo always work in chain, just like Tron. I still have reservations how the bat can work well with the German tank.

You raised a good point about sound vs music. If you to get more music , that is very easy. Get a pair of high efficiency speaker, low output amp, and then you are more or less there. What speakers does the kondo electronics driving? Do you mean you get more music out of that Kondo system than your mega audio home base?

It must be real fun to have Srajan of 6moons visiting you and others. I admire his works and audio attitude tremendously.

Marvel bro, would you mind sharing your thoughts for FMR?

VR

志雄

Marvel大哥，請問什麼是FMR?

VoyR

Marvel bro, have you forgotten poor Voy? I must visit your room. I see full of reflection in your home. I must listen myself in order to be convinced. Maybe, I am an old fart. Still, good job that you have done on 6moons.

VR

Marvel

Chi Hung,

FMR stands for Flow Master Reference. It is another stream of work by Argento and initially this series offers power cord but I would expect interconnect or speaker cable may come forth. I have not tried it yet although I have seen FR (Flow Reference) but not used it in my system.

Voy,

Please arrange a visit when you stop over in HK next time. You can judge by yourself if Syren can match well with Baldur. At this point in time, I'd rather stay with the power amp + speaker and try a bit more on the frontend sources and preamp.

I have no idea on FMR but with the serious attitude of Mr Madsen in Argento, I do have a very high expectation of it. I lost the chance to get the very first FMR but have confirmed an order of one FMR power cord in the next batch of delivery. I won't have a vigorous comparison between FMR and SMR EE but certainly this would be a series to watch closely for from Argento.

Srajan's visit is enlightening and leave all us a lot of food for thought.

Marvel

Marvel

I believe readers of this forum would, like me, have already gone through several times the report by Srajan in 6moon. If you have closely worked with Srajan for a few days, you will know he is absolutely professional and critical in conducting the listening session and it is always done is a 'total system' perspective. Srajan told us that if one could swap a component with another, he could possibly tell the difference and the individual contribution. However, if he is listening to a system then his comments would be to its entirety. I think this is a good approach as we sometimes to bump into somebody's system and said something like, 'oh, your power amp is not able to drive your speaker well', but in fact, may be it is the problem with the Cd source or the conditioner connecting the power amp or even the room acoustics. Similarly, analysis is more on a piece of music rather than a segmented high, midrange and low frequency range, soundstage height, width and depth. It is not because these attributes are not important, I think the systems that Srajan has visited may have already a certain 'entry level requirements' in terms of these basic attributes failing which it is not possible to step further into more in-depth discussions on the overall musical message being delivered, individual touchings and microdynamics, etc.

I asked Srajan a daring question during a dinner why he created this website and named it 6moons. He simply put because 7moons has already been registered and he likes thinking during a shower so the name just came to his mind all of a sudden. He did not use any name which explicitly tells it is an audiophile related website because he may in the future turn it into a website of a totally different nature and orientation, yoga may be (he practises it).

Marvel

ChopStick

Hey Marvel, I enjoy the report very much. It is done very professionally.

You raised a good point about evaluation of a complete system. I respect Srajan's way because this way he never accuses of any component in an unfair manner.

But having said that, I also find experiences do play a role in identitying the problematic gears, cables or ac outlet etc. My question is does he able to idenitify the potential problem, and provide recommendation? At the end of the day, we want to solve the problem.

I see a lot of honesty in the report. Your acoustic is on the bright side but no problem from hi fi perspective. The avalon setup, the acoustic is on the warm side. You use many Argento cables, which seems to be more suitable for the Avalon setup. I am not sure how thick is the carpet and curtain over there but if leading edges are insufficient, then open the curtain is better or use faster sounding cable. Your case is interesting. It is not easy to tame such acoustic problems. The use of argento cable, german power amp and the tron are all very resolute gears.

Maybe can you share more how could you achieve such balance?

Your input appreciated.

Chopstick

Marvel

HI,Chopstick,

Yes, I do believe Syren+Argento and possibly the AudioValve Baldur + my 'hard tone' of my room may yield a brighter presentation and that is why I use extensively the wooden platform on the speakers, Syren as well as the Baldur amp. The balance is not bad...

In achieving the tonal balance, I normally play more kinds of music during the evaluation to make sure I can really hear different colors, timbre, tempo, good recordings should sound good, bad recordings should sound bad ...the more I try different types of music, the higher the chance I could identify if my system is exhibiting a certain type of character and if there is, I then try to locate the 'black sheep of the family' and if equipment / cables permit, I swap play some of them, then what remains is easy for me to nail down what could further be improved in order to tilt the balance back.

Of course, x-examination by PT or other fellow audiophile friends from time to time is important to avoid 'climatisation' on certain system characteristics and stay believing that it is in the perfect balance. Visit my Srajan has strengthen my belief and put a lot of fuel for me to excel further. What's next ...Baldur Reference Preamp...a true balanced design taking 3 years to complete. Large circuit board...separate 2-chasis...30-40kg....PT once told me that there is a MK (Marvel Killer) waiting for me and if he discloses it, I have no choice but to write a cheque...Many would have seen photos of my German Tank and they will stay together with Neo speaker (with blessing by Srajan not to make any attempt to change them). How can a matching Baldur Ref Pream not be a Marvel Killer.

Some said the output gain of Kondo M77 is too low and would suit better a high efficiency speaker...any comment?

Marvel