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The F.L.O.W. of music

I feel compelled to write about my initial impression of the famed FMR power cord as despite reading numerous users' raved reports of this cable, I did not have the real urge of using it in my system until P.T. enthusiastically invited me to try one to replace the power cord I have been using for 2 years which runs from power line outlet to the mains.
Since P.T. knows my system well, I'm sure he was confident on exactly what type of the improvement Agento's FMR would bring to my treasured Zanden-based system.

Honestly, because I had used Argento cables (interconnect and speaker) & power cords 2 years ago and subsequently found they were not the best match for my full-range speakers, I accepted his suggestion with slight trepidation in case I didn't find the improvement worth my while to part with current oil-filled statement power cord which had been serving my entire system faithfully so far.

P.T. personally brought the FMR (with less than 24 hours of burn-in)over to my place last Sunday morning and after listening to a small selection of music, I removed my heavy power cord and replaced it with this silken white cable. It did not take more than 30 seconds for me to hear the difference, although I can't say the immediate improvement brought about by the FMR was day and night as the timbre & dynamics were very similar, this FMR simply made music sounded more like music to me. Further listening clearly revealed it made rendition of large scale orchestral music and vocals more life-like with better coherence and details as well making the soundstage/ image more 3-dimensional.

Last but not least, since I normally read most audiophiles improve their system by changing (upgrading) their components, my experience is different to theirs as I continously tweak my acoustic resonators and speaker placement by very small increment at a time in order to achieve a better overall balance. The FMR has facilitated such endeavor and now I have the sensation of sitting in the middle section on the 6th row of my favourite Concert Hall at the City Hall. P.T. further suggested I should try FMR or its brethen cord in my other components, however, if similar improvement can be wrought about by each additional FLOW, then I may end up using 11 more cables, however, I think this may well be a case of what we call an 'overkill' !

For now, I am content with having just a single FMR cord supplying musical current to all my Zanden electronics and I look forward to employing a pair to my power amps in the not too distant future. P.T., tks again for re-converting this cable-renegade to return to Argento.
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Comments

  • Mr.Zanden, I know who you are - the man of Sentinel. Roy Gregory thinks Zanden gears are the best match for the Avalon. The Sentinel must be hell of a job to tame. Would the beast be too enormous for your listening area?
  • I agree the notion of "overkill". In my system, two FRs feeding the 300b monoblocks changes nights into days. The FMR teams up synergistically with the syren linestage, with observation similar to Marvel bro's field tests. The dac is a good place to serve by FR too due to the shielded ground wire design.
  • Voy, Franck Tchang the inventor of the acoustic system helped Mr.Zanden personally to fine tune his acoustic over a time span of 2 years of at least three visits, when he almost worked there from 10 to 10.

    The beast is not easy to tame, you are right. In the right listening position, the system does magical on many orchestral scores. Mr.Zanden's musical preference is mostly concerto type - he got the concert perspective right. It is neither hyper-realistic details nor photographical reality.

    Mr.Zanden will definitely use the FR on the Zanden dac. I tried it before and there is no escape because the DAC has lots of digital noises feeding direcly to the preamp via the gound wire. The ground wire of the FR and FMR are shielded by natural materials.
  • PT,

    I have full confidence in Yamada san. Not sure abt the speakers. The speed of the bass may not catch up well with the midrange. Quality of the active amplifier should be substantial below the 9500 mono blocks. This is not a problem of acoustics. How Franck can solve a design/physical problem by acosutical method is a mystery to me. I am not questioning the acoustic ability of Franck. It sounds like there must be huge compromises in this system. We all live with compromises but a full suite of Zanden top dogs mating with a complicated speaker could be far less than ideal. The theatrical soundstaging should not be a problem for Zanden and the Avalon. What about microdynamics, transients, energy burst, fading in/out of voices? These are attributes that makes the system sound more like real music other than the concert mid hall perspective.

    Can this beast play Anna well? I would like to know your opinion.

    VR
  • Mr.Zanden,

    Kung Fei Fat Choi! Knowing you the first thing you did last night right after 12:00am in the first moment of the PIG year was to fetch a 2nd FMR for your Zanden 3000 linestage, I am immensely honored and admire your unbeatable passion.

    Most users find the FMR can be applied almost in everywhere - Linestage seems to be the most ideal position regardless of solid state of tube.

    If you are free, please share your experience of applying a 2nd FMR on the linestage with all AE fellows.

    Kung Hei Fat Choi!

    J
  • What type of audiophile are you ?

    The sole purpose of my occasional writing in the forum is to foster the quest for better hi-fi sound reproduction as each fellow hi-fi comrade has some kind of valuable experience or tale to share.

    No doubt we upgrade our components with the sole intention of achieving better sound from our treasured system and sometimes the sound is better and sometimes it is different (not necessarily better). I have noticed from my experience all of us fall into certain category which for sake of simplicity, I label them under 3 different types :

    TYPE A – this is by far the most common group of hi-fi enthusiasts, they regularly upgrade their components, be it electronics, cablings and/or speakers. As long as the change results in improvement in sound, they are very contented with their achievement. Some of them are damn sure the components they use are better than their buddies but very often they receive honest feedback from fellow audiophiles his system in fact does not sound the best and sometimes, it doesn’t sound good at all. However, these Type A folks are in constant state of ‘denial’ as if the individual piece of component they employed is considered by many as the state-of-the-art product, surely his system should sound, if anything, less than perfect. So they will continue to upgrade whenever a better component is discovered.

    TYPE B – these audiophiles are originally TYPE A folks (the masses), however, instead of living in constant state of denial, they can hear their system’s sound is nowhere near as good as some of his other buddies, some even costing much less than his, so he realizes the missing link is in ‘system matching’. Once this phenomenon is identified, he’ll make every endeavor to ensure, with the help of his buddies, find the best matched components for his system. This great effort really pays off as his system is slowly but surely sounding better than before, however, he still feels his system still does not sound the best amongst his buddies. The next endeavor once his components are suitably matched, must be room acoustics problems.

    TYPE C – after spending enormous amount of money, time and painstaking effort evolving from Type A to Type B, he has now evolved into a Type C audiophile. Once room acoustics problems are identified, he will search for the proper room treatment ‘apparatus’ to achieve a more balanced and natural sound. However, despite expending on such effort, he realizes the system still does not sound anywhere like the real thing especially when it comes to classical (acoustic) music reproduction. Then the next step is to compare his system with the real thing – concert !

    TYPE C Plus + - initially, this type of audiophile finds the sound from his proud system essentially lacks the timbre, realism and pleasure/
    excitement of the real thing, be it a simple recital, sonata or orchestral works. If he has purchased everything which is essential for optimum sound reproduction, then what is missing. Then he discovers that speaker placement is now the most vital factor in achieving a more realistic sound, from that moment onwards, he continues to tweak his room acoustics and makes finer changes to his speakers’ placement and each endeavor pays off in his system sounding a little closer to the actual sound and this is a ongoing process. TYPE C+ audiophile will still look to upgrade individual component of his now good sounding system and continue to tweak his system after returning from a concert or from home visit to his hi-fi buddies as he can discern certain aspect(s) of their systems is better than his.

    TYPE C Minus – these are essentially renegades of TYPE C Plus persons but think they know more about everything in hi-fi than his peers and subjectively think his system sounds the best even though it still cannot play certain types of music as well his other buddies, be it vocals, piano, jazz, rock and/or orchestral music. They will use the most stringent yardstick to judge the sound reproduction of his buddies’ systems but use a double-standard when evaluating his own system, if it cannot reproduce orchestral music, then they won’t bother listening to this type of music and try hard to resist playing it during home visits from his audiophile buddies.

    After reading my description of the above 4 types ( there may well be some hybrids out there !) of audiophiles in the hi-fi world, which type do you fit into ? I will continue to write in the near future on my most recent experience gained in travelling my hi-fi journey. Since this column is dedicated to our encounter with Argento’s power cord, I’d like to say the improvement it has brought to my system after using it for just one week is an incredible 25%+. Let me say immediately after replacing previous statement power cord with the FMR, the improvement was 5%, however, as this cord has since facilitated my daily effort of tweaking my room acoustics and minor speakers’ placement, once they dial in i.e. speakers bloom with the room, the system sounds better than ever before with more life-like timbre, micro & macro dynamics and 3-dimensional image/
    soundstage, very subtle information hitherto not noticeable in the past appear out of nowhere. So unless you continue to push the boundaries of what your beloved system can do, you will be unable to obtain perfect synergies and that's why TYPE A audiophiles usually at best obtain no more than 30% potential of what their system is capable of sounding.

    Happy new year and wish you all every success in optimising your systems !
  • 王國維在「人間詞話」古今之成大事業、大學問者,必經過三種之境界:
    “ 昨夜西風凋碧樹,獨上高樓,望盡天涯路 。 ” 此第一境也。
    “ 衣帶漸寬終不悔,為伊消得人憔悴 。 ” 此第二境也。
    “ 眾裏尋他千百度,驀然回首,那人卻在,燈火闌珊處 。 ” 此第三境也。
  • Mr. Zanden,

    Bravo! Bravo! You got quite a character. Presumbaly you are a philosopher. Good. You spell out the audio psychology well. I believe I belong to type B plus some characteristic of type C-.

    I am a critical thinker. That's my character. It is a smart move not to label any type is right or wrong but by implications of the evolvement from type A to Type C or whatever, there is a pyramid. But the apex of the pyramid is undefined C+/C-. Who knows there may be a type D on top of type C+/C-? Why there is not an apex up there? Because I see honesty. It is often the case that the ego part of this hobby prevents us from reaching the apex, isn't it?

    Let me try to define type D for you. Type D belongs to the type who always apply double standard to evaluate other's system. Rather, they know too well they are not as good as the one being criticized. But they are good because they are critical. They got reasonings behind their calls. They want to see other to improve more and more because the other may not see their deficiencies. They want answers to their tough questions. If type C care about reaching the utopia, they need to assitance of type D. Well, you don't have to play as well as Zidane to judge whether it plays well in a game.

    Did you watch Rocky 6? The real winner is about how he can take the pain and stand up again.

    Bravo! Bravo! Mr.Zanden, I like you a lot.

    Marvel bro, what type is yours?

  • Hi Voy,

    Heard that you are not in HK for a while. Wish you a healthy Year of the Pig!

    Rather than myself putting a category for myself, which type do you think I belong to after watching my countless consistently inconsistent passages?

    My Ravel is coming in 2-3 weeks, any tips that you would give me in mating with Syren phono?
    Marvel
  • Type C contaminated by Type A virus occasionally
  • Voy,

    I guess I am constantly a TypeA with a faithful interest to become Type C.

    Marvel
  • 我雖是甲類,但好很快活。揪線活動在初二下午已開始。由於八爺深深不忿又常問侯我家人,在忍無可忍下我話不如上佢屋企比試。由於上次比試是CD機,今次也是。條G6 Ruby Hill插在Metronome T1 CD機唱翻上次聽過的CD。莫老師是評判。戰況一如過往,G6中頻漲大節奏緩慢,中高音柔順悅耳但缺泛諧波,中低音結實但冇彈力線條,總體也不過不失。換上FLOW後,八爺又燥起來跟住爆粗繼而收聲,其如我不用再講了。

    Marvel大大,水晶線已放了。
  • Cables – The Final Frontier !

    There is no argument that cables are used/bought for the purpose of making our hi-fi systems sing and we would never acquire these hideously expensive wires first and then choose what components of our system would be the right match for them later on.

    If cables are the final variable(s) in the hi-fi system, then choosing cables can be a relatively straight-forward exercise, isn’t it. We simply keep swapping one brand with another brand until we achieve the ideal sound we want from our system.

    Remember the 5 types of audiophiles I mentioned in my previous mail, I’m sure hi-fi buddies from each type will undergo cable-swapping exercise at one stage or another and irrespective of which type you are, we are delighted whenever we have discovered a set of cables, speakers and/or power cord which brings better sound to our beloved system, period.

    In my opinion, although there is no fixed rule in how one gets his/her ticket in the journey to hi-fi nirvana, if we see the role of cables are essentially acoustic equalizers, then, saving your time, effort and money in the end of your hi-fi mix and match endeavor will give you the most comfortable ride. For instance, almost all users of ceramic drivers’ speakers find all-silver wirings are not the best match (most likely the worse), so they will work hard to find the right types to suit their tastes, we normally need to re-assess our cables’ compatibility whenever we change speakers or amps, however, TYPE A audiophiles are renowned for doing this most of the times. I have come across one of best sounding systems in recent years did not employ cables costing over $ 3,000 (HKD & not USD), so this shows that cables may not be the most vital link in the critical chain especially if you’re the TYPE C PLUS or MINUS audiophiles.

    Notwithstanding the merits of cables, once our hi-fi components are suitably matched, the synergistic benefits brought about by the use of the right cables can bring pleasant surprises to the owner of any balanced hi-fi system.

    As mentioned earlier, I was one of the earliest users of Argento cables 3-4 years ago but subsequently did not find them to the best match for my system which had undergone many component changes. Since I have not changed my system (brand wise) for 2 years now, under the shrewd observation of PT, I took heed of his suggestion of replacing the statement oil-damped power cord which ran from power bar to the mains with FMR and after several days of tweaking the room acoustics (including the acoustic resonators) and minor speaker placement, I was surprised to discern a 25% (my subjective view only) improvement in sound.

    So after being very recently thrilled by this unexpected surprise, I suddenly enjoyed to become a TYPE A audiophile and acquired another FMR one week ago. However, acting on PT’s advice, I plugged my 2nd silken white power cord to a seperate radio for burn-in and waited until Friday before I took it out to replace the stock power cord (specially made by Yamada-san) of my Zanden pre-amp.

    The initial impression was a wee bit of a disappointment as I was expecting a comparable 5% improvement in sound immediately, although I could discern better resolution and transparency, the sound did not FLOW like music as all users had reported. Further critical listening revealed this power cord had more energy than the Zanden’s stock cable, I had to tweak my resonators ‘again’ to unleash this extra energy. To cut the long story short, I spent the WHOLE of Saturday (the only Sat. I did not go out with my family in many years – tks to my v. understanding & accommodating other half) adjusting the resonators by very small increment ( 1mm at a time) and after moving my speakers farther apart by 4-5 mm, the MAGICAL sound & soundstage returned.

    Once again, my system is singing to me with better resolution, tonal colour, clarity and bass dynamics. My main concern now is should I continue to replace my other power cords as I strongly believe the law of diminishing returns, however, there is no harm done in trying more F.L.O.W. power cords, I’m still waiting for a pair (FMR’s smaller brethren) to serve my power amps. I can now share the excitement of TYPE A audiophiles when they change their existing cords with the F.L.O.W. – keep the music flowing J.Lam & PT !
  • Mr.Zanden, you become my audio idol! Your spirit is excellent! I am using the small brohter of FMR with my power amp with excellent result. I agree the law of diminishing return but it does not seem to apply to the flow. At least, it is not reducing anything. I like the bass clarity very much.
  • Mr. Zanden,

    I read your thread with great interest.

    When reading your writing of having more energy because of using FMR, and needing to use room accoustic devices to get the sound and soundstage return, I could not help but think of one common comment made from my US friends after reading the Srajan Ebaen's article of his HK visit , which is why people use such big speakers in small rooms in HK?

    My explanation to their question was that because those serious audiophiles there in HK would like to have full range sound, hence they would use floor standing speakers, and use room treatment to get the best of both world. Still, the common wisdom is that smaller speaker is better for smaller room.

    I had been facing problem with too much energy than I like in my system too, I tried adjusting speaker placement, using different isolation devise--(the acoustic system's reference feet worked great), and I had a few acoustic system's diffusers and one silver resonator in place, the sound became much better, still, I found that using one or two less expensive(capable) power cords in my system helped in achieving a more natural, less hifi sound.

    After reading the overwhelming response of the flow power cords, I am now tempted to try. I am wondering besides cost consideration, what is your point of view in selecting between the FMR and the FR?

    Robert



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