My day started with a sharp 6:00am phone call from Ravindra Desai, he was outside my building. We settled down with the usual meet and greet and I was wondering if I should go back to bed...LOL! SO after some kadak chai, around 8:00 am we unpacked his system. Simple setup. One odd looking wooden box with a few knobs on it and 5 tiny sattelite size speakers and a 1cube for subwoofer about 1 foot in size.
I dragged out my Sound foundation speaker stands and we placed the speakers and he shoved the sub towards the back-wall, connected an Line In to RCA cable to the line out of my PC (which meant using the internal DAC of my Gigabyte motherboard and amplifying the Analog out) We started with a stereo setup and played a couple of songs that he had brought on a pen drive (MP3's mostly).
1st song was O Paalanhaare by Lata Mangeshkar, with some chorus in the background. Still not one hundred percent awake, I was struggling to understand why I am listening to a pair of home made satellites and an odd looking passive subwoofer and that too an mp3 song I had never heard of. The sound that came out was nothing special.They kind of reminded me of a pair of Harman Kardon computer sat/sub speaker system I had a few years ago.Which meant they were no hi-fi speakers. Then Tracy chapman's fast car played on... again, nothing special. Ravindra asked me I wanted to hear the surround setup. He has a switch in front of the box that flips between stereo and surround speakers. I said lets keep playing stereo and listening for atleast half hour or more for my ears to get used to this new sound.
See i really wanted to like this odd looking system but I also needed to hold my patience to test as I was contemplating how to get through this day. Ravindra was leaving at 9:00pm, So i knew i had a long day .
So about 10:am I thought maybe he can listen to my HT setup. Magnepan MC1's for the front Left/Right and a pair of Polk satellite speakers
Thanks to FM Kane & HIFIVision's unique 'give away' thread). We played Amadeus the movie. There are parts of this movie that I must have seen a thousand times, just to hear the mastery of the mixing artistes and of course, Mozart.
Ravindra's reaction was not the best I had seen, as i was wondering if he liked it or not. We spoke about Magnepans and other stuff for sometime, again listening to his stereo setup. At this point in the day, I was enjoying Ravindra's company more than I cared about listening to music, as by now I had made up my mind that it was nothing special and cannot expect much out of this system.
sensing that i needed something more to keep me interested,I asked Ravindra if his amp could be connected to the MC1's as they were power hungry and were 4 ohm speakers with 86db sensitivity. He said yep, and claimed his amplifier is stable upto zero ohms.(WHAAAAT???) Now I am not a technical guy, but I do know most run of the mill amplifiers from main stream manufacturer's rarely support 4 ohm speakers. Nor do I know that there is such a thing as zero ohms. Well, as predicted the MC1's did play but could barely be played at a usable volume to judge any capabilities of the amp. I asked him what those four buttons were... He said one was to get voice up, the other for ambient sounds and i forget the third button and the last was volume.
Then he asked me if I could play the magnepan 1.7's. So I fired up the Peachtree decco 65 ( used as a preamp) and the Crown XLS 1502 and played some live stage recordings of Suresh wadkar from you tube. Some live recordings of various artists (DTS Music) again some YouTube music. Indian classical and what not. After listening to the maggies we decided it was time for lunch.
3:00 PM ,after lunch(Dal Khichda), we decided to head over to FM Hari Iyer's House, he lives 15 minutes from my house.Lugging the two bags filled with his gothic looking speakers and that odd looking amplifier,sweating, we entered Hari's home.
There they were, the open baffles covered from head to toe. I wanted to hear those open baffles even more now that those satellites had me longing for more....a lot more.
Quickly we decided to have the open baffle's the first go as the system was already connected and I wanted to hear the Vinyl/tube/open baffle combo. Hari warned there is some ground loop problem and a very loud hum came out of the speakers.
O well!! Vinyl hates me. So we switched to the CD player and listened to a couple of songs. Then Ravindra pulled out his speakers, connected to his laptop and we played the same songs we had started out with. This time I had something to do, like watch hari's expression and guess what he was thinking of this system. Hari's expression's were not too revealing. He looked uninterested, so I figured I wasn't far off with my impressions.
Then Ravindra connected his surrounds configuration, flipped the switch in style and played i believe a clip from bajirao mastani. Huh! My head turned as i heard something . Was I hearing the same speakers I have been bored of since 8:00 am? I was sitting with the left surround at my arm's length and the center speaker about 5 feet away sitting on a plastic chait next to the laptop.I got up and stood in the middle of the setup. Now the surrounds were behind me and the center right in the front.The dialogue was firmly anchored and the music/fx was playing from the surrounds.Huh! Tis is interesting...very interesting. So we packed up and got home this time I really wanted to hear the surround system as we had not heard it in my home until now. I fired up my proector, kept the center channel right beneath the edge of the screen and unplugged my surround speakers fromthe yamaha AVR that I use for movies,just to hasten up the processs, as now I felt like we were running out of time.I fired up the same Bajirao mastani scenethis time and WOW.! This tiny dinky speakers were playing magic.The way it seperated the dialogue atnd the ambient sounds was astounding.Then it was AVATAR time. The effects were clear as a summer time day with no smog, But there was something not right. The panning of sound was not as evident as it is with the yamaha amp, so I was wondering what is going on...But it still kept me engaged listening to these gotihic toy like speakers and that odd looking amplifier. Door bell rang. I also had invited a couple of friends who had bookshelf speakers (Rave speakers with Scanspeak drivers). We swapped out the center speaker and attached one of the bookshelf speakers and O MY GOD!!! That was just beautiful. The 5/12 inch woofer and 1 inch tweeter book shelf speaker sounded much fuller and more crisp. So i knew the bottle neck were these tiny speakers. There was something in that wooden box that was the magical stuff. If the speakers were upgraded, this magic box would do wonders for a small home theater, without the Dolby/DTS/codecs this little amplifier really was amazing and just needed a stereo analog signal from a PC or laptop. Ravindra reduced the volume to almost barely hearing levels and still the clarity of the dialogue and clearly distinct surround sound was evident. That i had never really heard on my yamaha setup.Now i thought ,this dude is jus showing off. with a big grin on his face he does the ultimate stunt that we constantlly warn others. He disconnected the center speaker and connected the positive and negative terminals and the amp did nothing . No protection kicked in, no short circuit, no smoke. WHAT!!!! he asked why cant big brands fix this simple issue when I guy from Kolhapur can? I looked at him with a blank expression as i had nothing to say....
Sadly it was time to go for Ravindra and we had to pack up.
The system lasted a lasting impression on me as none ever has. Not because it was the best sounding, nor the loudest with punch, but for what that wooden box had hidden in it which was making the movie watching experience enjoyable with it's own set of challenges with small woofer size and a cubic sealed 8 inch subwoofer, all drawing power from the 20 watts per channel. I really wanted to explore more possibilities of this system. I believe this system works because what it does without any of the hype or seeming necessities that we are plagued with currently,with robust electronics that wouldn't clip under stress or go into stand by mode just because a couple of stray strands of speaker wires fell in love .An experience that might take some time to fade from my memory.
I dragged out my Sound foundation speaker stands and we placed the speakers and he shoved the sub towards the back-wall, connected an Line In to RCA cable to the line out of my PC (which meant using the internal DAC of my Gigabyte motherboard and amplifying the Analog out) We started with a stereo setup and played a couple of songs that he had brought on a pen drive (MP3's mostly).
1st song was O Paalanhaare by Lata Mangeshkar, with some chorus in the background. Still not one hundred percent awake, I was struggling to understand why I am listening to a pair of home made satellites and an odd looking passive subwoofer and that too an mp3 song I had never heard of. The sound that came out was nothing special.They kind of reminded me of a pair of Harman Kardon computer sat/sub speaker system I had a few years ago.Which meant they were no hi-fi speakers. Then Tracy chapman's fast car played on... again, nothing special. Ravindra asked me I wanted to hear the surround setup. He has a switch in front of the box that flips between stereo and surround speakers. I said lets keep playing stereo and listening for atleast half hour or more for my ears to get used to this new sound.
See i really wanted to like this odd looking system but I also needed to hold my patience to test as I was contemplating how to get through this day. Ravindra was leaving at 9:00pm, So i knew i had a long day .
So about 10:am I thought maybe he can listen to my HT setup. Magnepan MC1's for the front Left/Right and a pair of Polk satellite speakers
Thanks to FM Kane & HIFIVision's unique 'give away' thread). We played Amadeus the movie. There are parts of this movie that I must have seen a thousand times, just to hear the mastery of the mixing artistes and of course, Mozart.
Ravindra's reaction was not the best I had seen, as i was wondering if he liked it or not. We spoke about Magnepans and other stuff for sometime, again listening to his stereo setup. At this point in the day, I was enjoying Ravindra's company more than I cared about listening to music, as by now I had made up my mind that it was nothing special and cannot expect much out of this system.
sensing that i needed something more to keep me interested,I asked Ravindra if his amp could be connected to the MC1's as they were power hungry and were 4 ohm speakers with 86db sensitivity. He said yep, and claimed his amplifier is stable upto zero ohms.(WHAAAAT???) Now I am not a technical guy, but I do know most run of the mill amplifiers from main stream manufacturer's rarely support 4 ohm speakers. Nor do I know that there is such a thing as zero ohms. Well, as predicted the MC1's did play but could barely be played at a usable volume to judge any capabilities of the amp. I asked him what those four buttons were... He said one was to get voice up, the other for ambient sounds and i forget the third button and the last was volume.
Then he asked me if I could play the magnepan 1.7's. So I fired up the Peachtree decco 65 ( used as a preamp) and the Crown XLS 1502 and played some live stage recordings of Suresh wadkar from you tube. Some live recordings of various artists (DTS Music) again some YouTube music. Indian classical and what not. After listening to the maggies we decided it was time for lunch.
3:00 PM ,after lunch(Dal Khichda), we decided to head over to FM Hari Iyer's House, he lives 15 minutes from my house.Lugging the two bags filled with his gothic looking speakers and that odd looking amplifier,sweating, we entered Hari's home.
There they were, the open baffles covered from head to toe. I wanted to hear those open baffles even more now that those satellites had me longing for more....a lot more.
Quickly we decided to have the open baffle's the first go as the system was already connected and I wanted to hear the Vinyl/tube/open baffle combo. Hari warned there is some ground loop problem and a very loud hum came out of the speakers.
O well!! Vinyl hates me. So we switched to the CD player and listened to a couple of songs. Then Ravindra pulled out his speakers, connected to his laptop and we played the same songs we had started out with. This time I had something to do, like watch hari's expression and guess what he was thinking of this system. Hari's expression's were not too revealing. He looked uninterested, so I figured I wasn't far off with my impressions.
Then Ravindra connected his surrounds configuration, flipped the switch in style and played i believe a clip from bajirao mastani. Huh! My head turned as i heard something . Was I hearing the same speakers I have been bored of since 8:00 am? I was sitting with the left surround at my arm's length and the center speaker about 5 feet away sitting on a plastic chait next to the laptop.I got up and stood in the middle of the setup. Now the surrounds were behind me and the center right in the front.The dialogue was firmly anchored and the music/fx was playing from the surrounds.Huh! Tis is interesting...very interesting. So we packed up and got home this time I really wanted to hear the surround system as we had not heard it in my home until now. I fired up my proector, kept the center channel right beneath the edge of the screen and unplugged my surround speakers fromthe yamaha AVR that I use for movies,just to hasten up the processs, as now I felt like we were running out of time.I fired up the same Bajirao mastani scenethis time and WOW.! This tiny dinky speakers were playing magic.The way it seperated the dialogue atnd the ambient sounds was astounding.Then it was AVATAR time. The effects were clear as a summer time day with no smog, But there was something not right. The panning of sound was not as evident as it is with the yamaha amp, so I was wondering what is going on...But it still kept me engaged listening to these gotihic toy like speakers and that odd looking amplifier. Door bell rang. I also had invited a couple of friends who had bookshelf speakers (Rave speakers with Scanspeak drivers). We swapped out the center speaker and attached one of the bookshelf speakers and O MY GOD!!! That was just beautiful. The 5/12 inch woofer and 1 inch tweeter book shelf speaker sounded much fuller and more crisp. So i knew the bottle neck were these tiny speakers. There was something in that wooden box that was the magical stuff. If the speakers were upgraded, this magic box would do wonders for a small home theater, without the Dolby/DTS/codecs this little amplifier really was amazing and just needed a stereo analog signal from a PC or laptop. Ravindra reduced the volume to almost barely hearing levels and still the clarity of the dialogue and clearly distinct surround sound was evident. That i had never really heard on my yamaha setup.Now i thought ,this dude is jus showing off. with a big grin on his face he does the ultimate stunt that we constantlly warn others. He disconnected the center speaker and connected the positive and negative terminals and the amp did nothing . No protection kicked in, no short circuit, no smoke. WHAT!!!! he asked why cant big brands fix this simple issue when I guy from Kolhapur can? I looked at him with a blank expression as i had nothing to say....
Sadly it was time to go for Ravindra and we had to pack up.
The system lasted a lasting impression on me as none ever has. Not because it was the best sounding, nor the loudest with punch, but for what that wooden box had hidden in it which was making the movie watching experience enjoyable with it's own set of challenges with small woofer size and a cubic sealed 8 inch subwoofer, all drawing power from the 20 watts per channel. I really wanted to explore more possibilities of this system. I believe this system works because what it does without any of the hype or seeming necessities that we are plagued with currently,with robust electronics that wouldn't clip under stress or go into stand by mode just because a couple of stray strands of speaker wires fell in love .An experience that might take some time to fade from my memory.