This upgrade makes my old system sound broken!

At the moment, I'm reviewing a pair of Graham Audio's LS5/9s. I'm utterly fascinated by the balance they strike between precision (in imaging, tonality and dynamics) and emotion. Remember, these were designed by the BBC as monitors to allow correct microphone positioning during recording and to verify faithfulness (to the original performance) during playback. They let emotion through, but on British terms (just a soupçon, it must be the French Audax tweeter). The balance is very much what I imagine a recording engineer's perspective would have to be. It is as if the emotional aspect is suggested and lightly experienced, but never fully deployed. But then, the engineer had to remain focused on his work...

Originally Posted by Graham Clarke:

 Sure, why wouldn't he try to sell people on the Statement. What's a dealers profit on that transaction? If it's what I think it is you just guaranteed he's in business at least for the next five years.

Highly doubt this...the return would be in the upper 10s of thousands for the dealer.  If it's a serious dealer with multiple staff, this would certainly be great....but not enough to keep the doors open for 5 years alone. 

Even tiny businesses can have several hundreds of thousands for payroll.  Not to mention the cost of the inventory, health insurance, taxes, etc.  (speaking of USA).  Small business is much hated in the USA by our govt; they are bled to death while large corporations get all the breaks.

The govt just wants stuff which is too big to fail, so we can all sit around and be couch potatoes with no risk. 

Japanese Hi-Fi is all about JBL, Dali and B&W loudspeakers (so nothing Japanese there), and switchmode power supplies. Toroidal transformers are nearly unheard of because no one wants to make a 100v PSU for just one market (the reason Naim dropped out). At the high end it is all McIntosh and Mark Levinson stuff and the mid is dominated by Onkyo and Yamaha, Denon and Sony up to say the price level of a NaitXS or Uniti. And the only way to get earth here is to build your own home and twist a builder's arm to install plug sockets with earth (and hope they really are earthed). And they believe in buying expensive kit on spec alone with no demonstration (because you can't get a demonstration that is in any way meaningful).

But they love Linn. Until Exakt came out and suddenly they hate it and you never see it anymore. Go figure.

Never read a Japanese review that described an old component as sounding "broken". But they don't touch on emotion or metaphor either. Bass is either strong, weak, neutral, good, bad, or excellent and the same for mid and treble. Not very exciting reads.

And going real hi-end in Japan means an old Sure integrated or anything with valves and preferably a speaker that was made in the 60's or earlier like a JBL Paragon.

I've said it before in other posts. Japan is where real hi-fi goes to die. I had to go see me dealer in the UK for a dem, and reserve an entire aircraft pallet to ship a proper Naim hifi out here.

Thinking out loud............

Back in the UK I have a RED DOOR leading out onto our rear garden.......

It's a beautiful colour and makes me feel really happy. Much more happy than the blue door that we used to have. Everytime I look at this red door I think wonderful thoughts, a mixture of excitement, yet with a calm and re-assuring undercurrent.

The blue door, well............ it used to be nice, I was really pleased with it until I had the red door installed, in fact the red door is soooo.... good that the blue door seems as if it were ......broken ! 

What more can I say ? you guys really should get down to your retailer and arrange a home demo of a red door as soon as possible 

Don, does the red door use the specially regulated paint and improved RFI shielding?

Graham,

You of ALL people ! You are NOT allowed to ask TECHNICAL questions..........it's only the EMOTION that matters..........

Sorry, let me rephrase that.  When you saw the new red door, did you nearly wet yourself with emotion?