Happy Easter!

It’s become so all consuming that we’ve managed to let two years worth of April Fools Days pass without a spoof posting of some sort. We really must try to re-engage with the lighter side of our business. Perhaps if we watch fewer news programmes and imbibe more alcohol.

News was promised, though, so best I start by telling you that we’re closed for Easter. It’s just one day off (Saturday) with Good Friday and Easter Monday being bank holidays and one of them a day we don’t work anyway. There’s a suitably apologetic message on door and answering machine.

Our financial year is in line with the fiscal one and drew to a close at the end of March. It actually turned out to be another ‘robust’ year, even if it didn’t always feel that way. Thanks, as ever to our customers.

The last month has seen us having various flurries of activity, including two electrically powered trips to Oxfordshire that worked astonishingly well.

Finally, our Naim Ovator 800 owning customer in that neck of the woods has been cajoled into using a trio of NAP 500 DRs to drive them. With the statement pre already there, a brace of turntables; two Linns and a Solstice, CD555, ND555 and a radio tuner, the greatest issue is lack of input sockets.

But, my word, it sounds great.

Accuphase

After a couple of months of waiting, we finally got to see, caress and hear the new Accuphase C-2900 pre-amp. Priced a little way north of £20k, it’s quite a bit more expensive than the remarkably good value C-2150 that we’ve now delivered to quite a few customers. What we heard was pretty damned impressive, particularly when you consider that it was removed from the sealed box in our presence. I was, in fact, the very first to be opened the country and it certainly has yet to run in properly. Definitely well ahead of the older C 2850.

The trouble is that Chris the wily MusicWorks / Accuphase man also had a run-in C 3900 pre-amp with him and, well, we sort of had a listen. C 3900 is the top pre-amp in the range and it’s priced a tiny bit south of £30k. The vaguely embarrassing upshot is that we’ve ended up buying both. Inexcusably, he had a brand spanking new C 3900 in the car, so instant gratification was dangerously available.

Writing this, I’m entering the post purchase justification phase. It’s kind of hard to sell serious products like this without offering the customer some sort of context. Besides, having some extra high end equipment around is always handy. Hell, I can always borrow the odd piece of kit. I think I’m old enough to qualify. Have I mentioned that I should be retired and gone by now?

If you want to hear some serious Accuphase pre/power combos, or chunky integrated amps, come to that, we can help. We have the DC 37 DAC and three of the CD players too. It’s a sea of gold.

Melco

Melco’s two box, analogue power supplied, N10 has evolved into one of our favourite music servers. It’s now in slightly enhanced mkII guise, basically the gold hued ‘Anniversary’ but in black or silver, with 5tb of hard drive storage. This has now been joined by a 3.8tb SSD version. We have one of these arriving just after Easter, so will soon know more about how much of a sonic improvement this brings.

Prices are rising in May, so April conversations woulds make sense. Not that anyone seems to take any notice of these little hints . . . 🙂

Events

With Covid levels still at fairly epic levels, we’ve been trying to figure out the best way to handle having multiple visitors. We’ve invested in a whole host of HEPA equipped air purifiers to try to keep the air as virus free as possible. Who knows if it will work but there seems to be some science in the thinking.

Incidentally, we are still wearing masks if visitors are happier that way.

As mentioned elsewhere on the site, our first formal upcoming event is as a satellite venue for the Ipswich Jazz Festival on 2nd July.

You may also want to keep 28 / 29 October free in your diary. We have tentative plans to hold Audio Show East at Trinity Park. What was that line from Field of Dreams?

Linn Organik upgrade now available

Linn’s new Klimax DSM streamer / pre-amp, which launched last year, has impressed us greatly. A substantial portion of its breakthrough performance is due to the new Organik DAC implemented within it. This technology can now be applied to all the existing digital Klimax components. Read more here.

The the highly competitive upgrade price to migrate from old DSM to the latest Klimax DSM still stands. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss.

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