We previously wrote about the superiority of cotton sleeving over polyester braided outer jackets on our signal cables.
Yesterday, we delivered a complimentary upgrade to a local customer – a balanced tonearm interconnect to compare against a cable we delivered last Winter.
We were confident he’d like the update, but you never know …
It’s been a long haul, but the pulleys for our 2019 update are nearing completion.
We specified a runout tolerance of .0002″ to .0005″ (that’s 2-5 ten-thousandths) and our machinist has finally cleared his bench to develop a quality control process.
The pulley is a small part, but it would be a mistake to underestimate it’s contribution to the precision of the drive system, and it’s deserving of a rigorous quality control procedure.
This was a transitional year for the Rocky Mountain Audiofest – a new, larger venue along with an earlier date.
Upon first first-siting of the massive, Gaylord Hotel (the photo doesn’t convey the scale of this place), I experienced sensory overload, and visions of ‘Vegas swirled through my head, and with that, Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro’s masterful performances in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Read more …
The Mk II turntable series represented a shift from pivoting (rotating) armboards to sliding armboards.
After the production launch, we looked into the possibility of this sliding armboard architecture trickling down to our Mark I series turntables
The result was the Mk 1.5 conversion.
The only downside to this conversion is the sacrifice of dual tonearm capability, and we’ve recently developed a solution to this problem.
With the release of our Spring, 2019 drive system update, it seemed like a good time to trace the evolution of our motor drives.
We’ve included some details for the technically inclined, and we’ve tried to give you some insight into both our developent process and what we were trying to acccomplish.
The sonic attributes we report below echo the comments of our customers, although in many cases they describe them differently than we do.
We express our observations in terms of musical performance values where possible, and you’ll find minimal use of audiophile jargon unless there’s no other way to describe it. Read more …
Development of one product frequently informs development of another.
In the case of the NiWatt amplifiers, we needed better wire and suddenly, a new line of cables was born.
During development of the Eiger rim drive turntable, our biggest challenge was reducing noise transmission from the motor, since it’s directly coupled to the chassis as well as contacting the platter through the idler wheel.
We learned some interesting things while solving this, and the results transferred to our belt drive turntables.
I was going through my notes on the final round of cable prototypes. This was the group of cables that pointed toward the production cable, and I invited Lynn Olson over for a listen.
Since Lynn has been an advocate of cotton for longer than I, I knew he’d welcome the opportunity for a comparison.
What do polyester leisure suits have to do with hi-fi cables, why are people returning to cotton underwear, and most importantly how could anyone wear such an ugly suit?
With the number of design changes we’ve made to the NiWatt over the past 18 months, its initial release might well be called the NiWatt Mk-IV.
All of this is to say, that the design is stable and mature, and there will be no need for first year revisions (all too common with some manufacturers).
Our customers like stable, mature designs …
