Parkie37's Audio Note System

[AlfaGTV]

A most impressive system Parkie. I can imagine some truly magical musical sessions in your sweet spot!
I still haven't experienced a full Audio Note system in a well sorted home environment... Yet..

[The Black Adder]

Very nice, Don... So... you like Audio Note I take it... lol

It's smashing kit, no doubt. I remember owning an OTO PP and that was super. I remember chatting to Peter at the time too, very nice chap.

A super sounding (and looking) system. I bet you are well chuffed.

Now it's time for you to sit back and enjoy the music.

[Parkie37]

A most impressive system Parkie. I can imagine some truly magical musical sessions in your sweet spot!
I still haven't experienced a full Audio Note system in a well sorted home environment... Yet..

It's definitely worth your effort to try to hear a complete system. Everyone has their preferences but I find that the synergy takes so much guessing out of the mixing and matching of components and cables and such.

[Parkie37]

Very nice, Don... So... you like Audio Note I take it... lol

It's smashing kit, no doubt. I remember owning an OTO PP and that was super. I remember chatting to Peter at the time too, very nice chap.

A super sounding (and looking) system. I bet you are well chuffed.

Now it's time for you to sit back and enjoy the music.

Well, as I mentioned before, I never thought that I would end up being a fan boy of any single brand, but I have found such good synergy with other AN products as I have upgraded each piece that I ended up preferring the Audio Note gear. So, even though it wasn't on purpose, I am really enjoying what I have right now and my plan is to do exactly as you say Josie and just sit back and enjoy the music. My dealer is in another city a little west of here and he tells me that we can change the mono blocks to a lower gain setting and that would be fantastic. I found the sound getting a little hard and shouty and checked with an app on my iPhone, which told me that I had reached peaks of 102 db in my listening room

That is not a normal listening level for me. When I turned it down, the detail and delicacy that this system is capable of came back. I just don't have much volume pot adjustment available with this much gain, so I look forward to getting the gain corrected. Also, the original owner had supplied the amps with driver tubes that had died, so they put in inexpensive EH tubes to get me going and I appreciate that, but I think that I will look for a really nice NOS 6SN7 that doesn't break the bank. I expect a small but noticeable improvement with those.

The rest of the adjustments will just be tweaking to get the most out of what I have setup and make sure that there aren't any buzzes or hums to mar the enjoyment. I have a grounding cable or two coming as well as the AN components all have the grounding nut and bolt on the back. I found that really beneficial on my Meishu Silver in the past. Last night I played Dark Side Of The Moon for the first time in quite a while and I heard the band members talking at spots that I had never heard before! The good part was that it was musically enjoyable not distracting.

Off to enjoy some more music : )

[The Black Adder]

Hi Don.

I agree, having the gain adjusted will bring things in to more focus. My Croft kit in the past was the same. I tried the in-line attenuators ('sticking plaster' solution) but they just sat on the sound so I'd steer clear of those. With such a fine system as yours it will be worth having the job once and done right.

The Dark Side of the Moon is one of my benchmark albums, love it to bits. Also, The Wall is a superb production too, but you will already know that, lol

If you are getting an occasional shouty sound maybe try to do some more room treatment. Early reflections can be the culprit too.

[Infinitely Baffled]

Hi Don.

I agree, having the gain adjusted will bring things in to more focus. My Croft kit in the past was the same. I tried the in-line attenuators ('sticking plaster' solution) but they just sat on the sound so I'd steer clear of those.

Unless the engineer undertakes a significant re-work of the amplifier design, isn't that going to be all that they do to reduce gain (ie. use attenuators in the signal path, only they will incorporate them in the internals of the amp rather than use the plug-in variety)? IB.

[The Black Adder]

No idea... I had my pre done and it was miles better than using phono attenuators.

[Infinitely Baffled]

Result!

[Firebottle]

The reduction in gain will be achieved with a swap of input valve, fitting one with a lesser gain, so no degradation in SQ.

[Parkie37]

Hi Don.

I agree, having the gain adjusted will bring things in to more focus. My Croft kit in the past was the same. I tried the in-line attenuators ('sticking plaster' solution) but they just sat on the sound so I'd steer clear of those. With such a fine system as yours it will be worth having the job once and done right.

The Dark Side of the Moon is one of my benchmark albums, love it to bits. Also, The Wall is a superb production too, but you will already know that, lol

If you are getting an occasional shouty sound maybe try to do some more room treatment. Early reflections can be the culprit too.

I love both of those Pink Floyd albums and try not to listen to them very often so that I don't lose appreciation of how great they are. I feel the same way about some Jimi Hendrix albums and some Stevie Ray Vaughan albums.

I really do want to take the best possible path to get the gain adjusted without affecting the sound quality. My friend who is the manager of the hifi shop that I deal with told me that he had been working with his technician trying to figure out which set of resistors to put in to have the amps match my speakers properly. Audio Note makes a standard version of these amps as well as a low gain version. I believe that the first owner had lower efficiency speakers that needed the higher gain (I think my friend had made some passing comment about the previous owner's speakers, but for the life of me, I can't remember what he said). However, I am not an electrical engineer so I could be wrong about why he had so much gain. Here is Audio Note's description of the two versions of the same mono block amplifiers:

KASSAI Standard Version:
Level Four, 22 watt Class A parallel single-ended no feedback mono power amplifiers, component quality and output transformers as NEIRO, valve compliment 4 x 300B, 2 x NOS 6SN7, 2 x NOS 5U4GB

KASSAI Low Gain Version:
Level Four, 22 watt Class A parallel single-ended no feedback mono power amplifiers, component quality and output transformers as NEIRO, valve compliment 4x300B, 2xNOS 6J5 Glass, 2xNOS 5U4GB

The only difference that I see between the two amplifiers is that the lower gain version has 6J5 tubes in it. It had been my understanding that changing the resistors would give me the result that I was looking for, but after reading what Firebottle says above, I think that putting in a lower gain tube would make the most sense. Again, I have no training in this field beyond basic trouble shooting, but that does make sense to me.

I think that either I or my technician needs to call AN and confirm exactly what they recommend....