The Piano Tuner did his magic today. The excitation was the result of damper or sustaining pedal mis adjustment lifting the dampers off the strings. Apparently the movers over tightened an allen head bolt so the pedal was not releasing the dampers fully back to the strings. Its no wonder having witnessed them using a battery impact driver to reinstall the legs and pedal mechanism. I thought that strange but figured they knew what they were doing. After adjustment by the tuner no sympathetic string excitation from voice or hand claps unless the pedal was depressed. He did say a string towel will work if I notice further issues.
The piano Tuner Leon Ziligson, is an interesting gent, 76 years old old naturalized from the Czech republic. He still performs here in DFW area for events and local restaurants or country club parties along with his piano business. He has done tuning work for Norah Jones, an Alumni of my daughters high school, and Elton John in the past. He played Scott Joplin The Entertainer and some Vince Guaraldi pieces for us on our Grand after the tuning. Quite lovely indeed!
One late night long ago, long after everyone was asleep, restless, I decided to play the Carlos Kleiber/VPO lp of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. I put on my Marantz electrostatic headphones & turned up the volume. Electrostatics take a while to warm up & reach full volume but even after a few minutes the sound was still low & muffled. So I turned the volume a bit louder. Not much change. So, a bit louder. These adjustments ended abruptly when I felt a finger jabbing me in the back, I turned & the angry lips were saying, “what are you going?” The headphones were on my head, but the music was playing through the loudspeakers.
A good friend loaned me a pair of these Inakustik 2404 Air speaker cables to try. I have been eyeing their 4004 Air since I saw them in a YT video a while ago.
I just finished listening to my sound check playlist and all I can say is OOOOOOOOH MY.
Air, detail, nuance, impact, presence, drive, dynamics, smoothness, soundstage – all substantially leveled up. And this on top of improvements I was already hearing by switching to RCA cables.
I’m going to spend more time listening, but I feel this configuration has now bested the CH I1.
Yes my system it is much better clarity. I thought things were sounding warmer after the Piano was placed my wife had noticed a difference in piano sound playing it, but thought it was room.
He sorted it out quickly. He spent more time looking for the right wrench. Rather than fixing it after i gave him an SAE allen wrench when he was convinced a Swedish Piano would have a metric bolt head. Curse two standards that double our tool needs. One never knows or has enough tools these days.
It is fun watching somebody like this who is good at their job. I always learn a good deal.
I have good sets of SAE and metric tools. I thought I had what I needed. Then I learned that the fine set of Torx sockets I already had were not adequate for a new motorcycle I bought which uses Torx-Plus.
An excellent fastener, but but do we need yet another? There has got to be an end somewhere. I hope.
There is something special about Inakustik ,i have liked their various cables since day one.Haven’t heard speaker cables yet but do you feel like they are better than Iconos or others you tried?
The Inakustik digital cables the USB and ethernet Referenz cables are top shelf too and not as pricy as those speaker cables. I always wanted to try the speaker and power cables in the Referenz series. Nice your friend loaned his out!
I’ve been listening the past five hours and the music is remarkably delightful, enticing and engaging.
I’ve spent the last week testing ways to decrease any possible attenuation in the sound signals. Upon the advice of the same friend who lent me the Inakustiks, I switched to a mishmash of RCA cables a couple days ago. There were more details in the upper-midrange and some in the high end, as if additional information were trying to peek through and yet sounded unbalanced, not quite right – which is why I was reserving judgement until I listened more.
Once I put in the Inakustiks, everything balanced out and opened up – another literal veil was lifted and the music now has a presence and dimensionality that I’ve never heard from my system before. Micro-details, which I’ll characterize as faint echos, reverb, palpable instrument sounds like a bow scraping along strings, subtle intonation of strings, the sound of air blown into a wind instrument, delicate fingerplay and fret buzz along the high B/E strings of a guitar – are all present in such a way that the instruments and sounds appear and position even more realistically.
There’s a real, palpable difference in the action of these subtle details – they’re more correct, precise and firmly present. Vocals now have a subtle air around them and breathing sounds more like breathing. The decay of certain sounds take longer, sounds have more texture – the music sounds more alive, more natural. Live music sounds like live and the recording space is more present. Pop/electronic is more dynamic, presenting both subtle detail and hard basslines simultaneously with more distinction and fluidity. The soundstage has expanded at least 10ft further left/right than before and front to back positioning of sounds is much more distinct.
I previously said I was looking for a system that had the warmth and soul of my PSA with the precision and detail of the CH. I think this fits the bill.
Wow that’s pretty amazing! I knew Inakustik might be good choice for speaker cabling but now you got me even more interested. Though i am very happy with Icono OFE. Hmm…
How do the 404s compare for stiffness relative to the Iconoclast? Refresh my memory what version of copper is your Iconoclast speaker cables?
I attached the Inakustik price lists. It appears that Biamp version are pretty good bargains versus Iconoclast Biamp versions too only 250 more. I always wanted to try their HDMI to see if it bested the RAL
I was using TPC. On flex, no contest. You can’t twist them because of the internal interlocking spacers, but you can bend them back and forth quite easily. I have them making a tight “S” shape behind the speakers.
Their HDMI non-opticals are copper-based, so unlikely to best the RAL’s pure silver.
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