Compadres,
Last weekend, a friend and I listened to an all Audio Note system at the dealer in Mumbai. TT2 turntable with power supply, CD 2.1x, OTO Phone SE and AN SPE HE loudspeaker.
It was very musical and engaging, and got us both stomping feet and nodding heads. We listened to Ellington at Newport (piece of jazz history, diminuendo and crescendo with the main man Paul), Argerich playing Tchaikovsky, a swing LP and then some. Rejecting tube stereotypes, the sound was not overly warm, and the clarity was great. Good scale and tone with classical (Holst the Planets). It brought out music and detail in poor recordings too (example Girl from Ipanema in Getz-Gilberto).
In that room, the bass was a bit strong on close miked bass recordings (think it was the room which was indeed small), but on many other recordings, the bass seemed right and enjoyable.
There was another system in the other end of the room which had the Audio Note Zero set up with Audio Note K speakers. The Dealer (Aernoud) did not want to play it as it was not set up or broken in, but I insisted as it seemed like an opportunity not to miss. And I was glad - it did not need any huge adjustment to scale down, as the musicality on the Shostakovich's dark String Quartet 8 (with Borodin quartet) was lovely.
Aernoud emphasised on synergy that arose from the system, but we audiophiles like a car with a transmission from Ferrari, engine from Lamborghini, blah blah. And someone will come and say "you need to change the radiator pipe"...fun).
It was also possibly the highest efficiency loudspeaker that I listened to (and need to go to Prem's!). Hoping to get a low priced AN system for review in Hifitoday...so lets see. I think the India website has some idea of prices or you can call them up (I asked but do not remember the prices that were rattled off).
