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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The CES 2005

Post Subject: CES: Meitner’s unexplained disaster.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 1/10/2005

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There was a big room in there with big Schweikert speakers (with thier grainy and insultingly confident Sound), some king of not particularly good electronics and the entire EMM Labs’ front-end. Many rooms at the show used EMM Labs so-call preamplifiers and in one of another degree the effect that will mention was presented in any single room that used this preamp but in the big Schweikert’s room it was the most distinctive.

Recently the many audio people got captivated at the new EMM Labs production. I would not comment on the sonic quality of the newest EMM Labs DAC converters (I juts do not know and as many times I heard this DAC it was in context of general digital ignorance of the system owners and they where not able to facilitate any more or less presentable demonstration) but I may with a full authority to state that the EMM Labs unit is absolutely disastrous preamplifier (living aside it’s DAC capacity)

I completely did not recognize music that was placing in that room (it was switched to two channels). It was like hearing a totally alien music looking is a kaleidoscope of sound and turning the kaleidoscope in a random directions and with a random speed. In the middle of playing I begun to complain to the guy who run the room that the right and left channels where switched but he assured me that they were not. The most insulting part was that imagery of the sound sources where not fixed and were running between the right and left channels like injured in ass antelopes! No mater where the images where they always were in a wrong place. The soft passages of the cello section of the Saito Kinen orchestra by some masteries reasons EMM Labs placed behind the first violins but then the cellos volume grew up then they moved to right with violins moved further out. The clarinets that should be placed in the middle and more or less should unite strings and winds were sitting…. at the roof of the listening room and I even feel that that clarinets where out of phase to the rest of orchestra (if it is possible) Even more then just positioning of the instruments: the entire orchestra was completely “inverted”, destroyed and the musicians played completely unrelated to each other. The total experience was just so freakish that it was almost laughable.

When the room played some audiophile-loved primitive crap with a “girl on the center, bass on the left and the drams on the right” then it was OK but as soon any more serious and demanding music was presented than just a typical “audiophiles country-stule” than the room were not able to handle it. I tend to attribute the failure to the Meitner’s electronics but not to the Schweikert speakers because the Schweikert speaker, no mater how bad or good there where will not able to produce the abovementioned dynamically changing effect. What it failing was the job of a preamp (read about the real duty of the preamps) and here was where EMM Labs catastrophically failed.

I have a lot of respect to Ed Meitner, use his Bidat in my own system and I was very much surprised with what I heard. I stopped 5 or 6 more times after this trying to catch Ed and ask him if he aware about the problem and what might be a reason for it but he was not there or was busy with the business meetings.

Anyhow, I do not know if the failure of the Schweikert/Meitner room was intrinsic for Meitner components of it juts “happened at the show” (that is also possible), however the few other rooms that used the EMM’s preamps has similar problems. The other rooms were way smaller and the Antelope-effect had to be searched instead the very large Schweikert room where the effect was screaming to me.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

To be continue…

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