A visit to chateau Firebottle
As promised on the Firebottle Vivant thread, here are a few pictures from the day.
After a 360 Km drive, starting off in the fog I arrived at Rochechevreux and could see Alan's house in the distance,
The usual warm welcome was received from Mr and Mrs Firebottle.
After an extensive tour of the house, we adjourned to the listening room.
Alan can be seen getting everything set up, starting off with my SL1200 shod with a HANA SL, Kin pre amp and Alan's AIR power amp, all hooked up to the suspended ESL57s.
We listened to a few tracks that I was familiar with. Immediate impressions were good, with a nice open sound stage. It sounded very good to me and I would have been happy to listen to the system as it for the rest of the day. However, that was not the point of the visit.
The first bits of kit we listened to:
We then plugged the Vivant phono stage in, and played the same tracks. I was pleasantly surprised in that there was such a noticeable difference. Everything was clearer, better defined, and seemed to occupy it's own discreet space.
I was impressed.
Alan then substituted in his modified KIN and we played several tracks through the built in phono stage. It didn't sound quite as good as the Vivant, but it was very good. The Vivant just had a little something extra.
To take things further, Alan swapped the AIR out, and installed the mono blocks.
Again, there was a noticeable difference. The SL1200 through the KIN, into the mono blocks powering the ESL57s was sounding absolutely superb. I could have sat there all day listening to it, but it was lunch time.
After a very nice lunch followed a visit to "L'atelier de Firebottle" where Alan works his magic. We spent a little bit of time modifying my KIN to increase the performance to the level of Alan's KIN. I didn't really understand the technical detail of what he did, but it seems that a bit of fairy dust was sprinkled over my phono stage in the KIN, as when we plugged it back in the system, it sounded superb.
I then changed my cartridge to an AT33PTG/II so that we could play with various head amps that Alan had. Some were loaded at 100 Ohms, and the Hana was not best suited as it is recommended to load it at 400 Ohms.
Before comparing the head amps, we played a few tracks to get used to the sound of the AT33PTG/II. We then tried the solid state head amps. If I am honest, I could not tell the difference between the KIN MC stage and the head amp feeding the MM input of the KIN. Alan informed me that the components were very similar, so no real difference should be really noticeable.
Next up was the Valve head amp.
This did sound a little different, being slightly warmer (If I remember correctly). It features some ingenious engineering with a suspension system for the valves.
Time again for serious listening, so the Vivant went back in to the system after a quick swap of the loading plugs.
For me, this was the best sound of the day. The AT33 to Vivant/KIN feeding the mono blocks and Quads.
Absolutely superb.
We played (quite) a few more tracks on the combination, but it was soon time for me to think about heading back to Toulouse.
Before I left, Alan plugged his RTR in, which for what it has cost him is an absolute bargain. The tape he had in it was recorded from a CD, but all of the digital edginess had completely gone.
In short, a thoroughly good day out. One of the best systems I have ever heard, which just produced the music with such ease and depth. MIBO should be interesting event, and I look forward to hearing some feedback.
I now understand why Quad ESLs are so favoured. I would quite like a pair, especially if they could be fed by Alan's mono block amps.
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A textbook example of how it should be done...
Originally Posted by Audio Al
-- it's gonna be different for sure.
