October 2014 SAC Meeting
For October, Cameron Pope of Krispy Audio presented a superb system. Cameron is always open to new and interesting products in the audio world. Since Cameron last presented to the club in March 2013, he’s brought in lots of new gear so we thought a revisit would be good. Refer to his site at: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/
The system on the day was comprised of:
Tune Audio Anima horn speakers: These are unusual speakers in their appearance, and excellent in their sound. Made in Greece, they are attracting lots of attention after many appearances at the Munich and Athens Hi-End shows in recent years. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Tune-Audio-Anima-horn-speakers.html and the Tune Audio site at: http://www.tuneaudio.com/anima.html
To quote from the Krispy Audio web site;
“Each Tune Audio ANIMA utilises a 15" woofer and 5" mid modified in house, and a 1" compression drive rwith neodymium magnet and titanium diaphragm for high frequencies.”
“ANIMA's distinguished design is built around its bass horn which stands tall and fires to the floor. Mid height on the side you have a mid-range horn and on top the high range horn. Both bass and mid horns are built from Baltic birch plywood while the high horn is built from their proprietary epoxy compound. Crossovers are located on the bottom of the bass horn. This allows the crossover parts to be well spaced to avoid any kind of interference from any driver's magnetic field. All components are hard wired.”
All internal wiring is made of high purity OFC copper with waxed cotton insulation. Brass bracing parts with felt acoustic isolation are used to minimize vibrational transfer on the contact points of the different horns. The horns themselves are mechanically time aligned for a time coherent result. Mid and high frequencies level adjustments are available to the user making it possible to fine tune the ANIMA to the listening room.
Manley Labs 300B PSE 11w monoblocks: These sensational amps are low powered but can easily drive the highly efficient Anima horn speakers (109db sensitivity). Each amp has 2 x 300B (output), 1 x 6SN7 (driver), 1 x 6SL7 (input) and 2 x 5AR4 (rectifier). Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Manley-Neo%252dClassic-SE%7B47%7DPP-300B-monoblock-amplifiers.html
Esoteric D-02 d/a converter: This is another stellar product from Krispy Audio. It’s a dual monaural D/A converter configured with eight circuits per channel and "35-bit D/A processing" capability. It has a fully discrete Class A buffer circuit and multiple filters are available. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Esoteric-D%252d02-Dac.html and http://www.esoteric.jp/products/esoteric/d02/indexe.html
Aurender X-100 Music Server: The Aurender X100 digital music player supportsDSD (DSF, DFF), WAV, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AIFF, M4A and other major formats at native bit and sampling rates. It is equipped with a high performance USB digital audio output, Ethernet port, terabytes of internal storage and a 120GB solid-state drive for cached playback. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Aurender-X100-Digital-Server-%7B47%7D-Music-Player.html
Shunyata and Krispy Kables cables: Shunyata Research is well known globally as the manufacturer of some exceptional cables. And Krispy Kables manufacture high-end cables at a more affordable price point. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/categories/Cables/
SRA amp platforms: Silent Running Audio amp stands. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/categories/Furniture/Isolation-Platforms/
Gryphon Mikado Signature CD player: The Mikado is an excellent player with remarkable resolution, transparency and warmth. Cameron sold all his high-end CD players and had nothing in stock. His system deserved a good front-end, so the club sourced this player. Note that Gryphon Audio Designs is not distributed or sold by Cameron (this player belongs to a club member). Refer to http://www.gryphon-audio.dk/products/cd-players/mikado-signature.aspx
There’s no denying the Tone Audio Anima speakers were huge. Their foot print was about 900x900mm. Their height was about 1.60m. The large midrange horn floated outside their large foot print. They had an equally huge sound stage– an expansive, billowing sound stage but to their credit, they didn’t exaggerate the size of voices and instruments.
The Anima’s could play quite loud, as is typical of most horns. However, to my ears, they didn’t always sound continuous across the frequencies. And given their size, they will likely sound best in a large room and are likely not intended for near-field listening. (Their web site recommends a listening distance of > 3 metres.) Listening at a distance will likely alleviate the sense of hearing individual drivers but you may then lose a sense of immediacy and excitement, depending on your room.
The Anima’s were fast and quite detailed. They didn’t exhibit the somewhat cupped sound often heard in horns of old. Their timbre was quite good, and after a number of tweaks (with the mid and high controls) during the first half of the meeting they started to sound much better.
Horns are not known for deep bass. The Animas were no exception, but with the fairly large Wilson Benesch sub-woofer on low it tunefully filled out the lower octaves. Although the Anima’s are large, the speakers on their own shouldn’t cause a bass overload in your room.
We didn’t have a guest presenter for our member’s music segment in October. Hopefully someone will come forth for our November meeting.
And during our break, Steven Polley treated us to some very tasty profiteroles he’d made. He brought in 4 or 5 flavours. I resisted well enough to experience only 1 flavour..!
Cameron struggled a bit on the day with all the gear. He slightly under-estimated the volume he was to bring. In the end, he had to utilize 3 cars and vans and 2 strong friends – John Browne and Graham Monnox but it was all worth it! Thanks Cameron.
Tom Waters
Summary of member feedback:
The system on the day was comprised of:
Tune Audio Anima horn speakers: These are unusual speakers in their appearance, and excellent in their sound. Made in Greece, they are attracting lots of attention after many appearances at the Munich and Athens Hi-End shows in recent years. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Tune-Audio-Anima-horn-speakers.html and the Tune Audio site at: http://www.tuneaudio.com/anima.html
To quote from the Krispy Audio web site;
“Each Tune Audio ANIMA utilises a 15" woofer and 5" mid modified in house, and a 1" compression drive rwith neodymium magnet and titanium diaphragm for high frequencies.”
“ANIMA's distinguished design is built around its bass horn which stands tall and fires to the floor. Mid height on the side you have a mid-range horn and on top the high range horn. Both bass and mid horns are built from Baltic birch plywood while the high horn is built from their proprietary epoxy compound. Crossovers are located on the bottom of the bass horn. This allows the crossover parts to be well spaced to avoid any kind of interference from any driver's magnetic field. All components are hard wired.”
All internal wiring is made of high purity OFC copper with waxed cotton insulation. Brass bracing parts with felt acoustic isolation are used to minimize vibrational transfer on the contact points of the different horns. The horns themselves are mechanically time aligned for a time coherent result. Mid and high frequencies level adjustments are available to the user making it possible to fine tune the ANIMA to the listening room.
Manley Labs 300B PSE 11w monoblocks: These sensational amps are low powered but can easily drive the highly efficient Anima horn speakers (109db sensitivity). Each amp has 2 x 300B (output), 1 x 6SN7 (driver), 1 x 6SL7 (input) and 2 x 5AR4 (rectifier). Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Manley-Neo%252dClassic-SE%7B47%7DPP-300B-monoblock-amplifiers.html
Esoteric D-02 d/a converter: This is another stellar product from Krispy Audio. It’s a dual monaural D/A converter configured with eight circuits per channel and "35-bit D/A processing" capability. It has a fully discrete Class A buffer circuit and multiple filters are available. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Esoteric-D%252d02-Dac.html and http://www.esoteric.jp/products/esoteric/d02/indexe.html
Aurender X-100 Music Server: The Aurender X100 digital music player supportsDSD (DSF, DFF), WAV, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AIFF, M4A and other major formats at native bit and sampling rates. It is equipped with a high performance USB digital audio output, Ethernet port, terabytes of internal storage and a 120GB solid-state drive for cached playback. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/products/Aurender-X100-Digital-Server-%7B47%7D-Music-Player.html
Shunyata and Krispy Kables cables: Shunyata Research is well known globally as the manufacturer of some exceptional cables. And Krispy Kables manufacture high-end cables at a more affordable price point. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/categories/Cables/
SRA amp platforms: Silent Running Audio amp stands. Refer to: http://www.krispyaudio.com.au/categories/Furniture/Isolation-Platforms/
Gryphon Mikado Signature CD player: The Mikado is an excellent player with remarkable resolution, transparency and warmth. Cameron sold all his high-end CD players and had nothing in stock. His system deserved a good front-end, so the club sourced this player. Note that Gryphon Audio Designs is not distributed or sold by Cameron (this player belongs to a club member). Refer to http://www.gryphon-audio.dk/products/cd-players/mikado-signature.aspx
There’s no denying the Tone Audio Anima speakers were huge. Their foot print was about 900x900mm. Their height was about 1.60m. The large midrange horn floated outside their large foot print. They had an equally huge sound stage– an expansive, billowing sound stage but to their credit, they didn’t exaggerate the size of voices and instruments.
The Anima’s could play quite loud, as is typical of most horns. However, to my ears, they didn’t always sound continuous across the frequencies. And given their size, they will likely sound best in a large room and are likely not intended for near-field listening. (Their web site recommends a listening distance of > 3 metres.) Listening at a distance will likely alleviate the sense of hearing individual drivers but you may then lose a sense of immediacy and excitement, depending on your room.
The Anima’s were fast and quite detailed. They didn’t exhibit the somewhat cupped sound often heard in horns of old. Their timbre was quite good, and after a number of tweaks (with the mid and high controls) during the first half of the meeting they started to sound much better.
Horns are not known for deep bass. The Animas were no exception, but with the fairly large Wilson Benesch sub-woofer on low it tunefully filled out the lower octaves. Although the Anima’s are large, the speakers on their own shouldn’t cause a bass overload in your room.
We didn’t have a guest presenter for our member’s music segment in October. Hopefully someone will come forth for our November meeting.
And during our break, Steven Polley treated us to some very tasty profiteroles he’d made. He brought in 4 or 5 flavours. I resisted well enough to experience only 1 flavour..!
Cameron struggled a bit on the day with all the gear. He slightly under-estimated the volume he was to bring. In the end, he had to utilize 3 cars and vans and 2 strong friends – John Browne and Graham Monnox but it was all worth it! Thanks Cameron.
Tom Waters
Summary of member feedback:
- Enjoyment of the Meeting: 4.4
- Enjoyment of the Equipment: 4.5
- Enjoyment of the Music: 3.8
- Very enjoyable - loved the horns
- Another enjoyable afternoon. Fantastic gear - all highly desireable
- Friendly, knowledgable and inviting meeting
- Didn't like the sound initially but after it was adjusted it sounded a lot better - began to like it
- Knowledgeable club members that made the afternoon interesting
- Brilliant speakers. Very nice dynamics but needs EQ
- Wagner
- Handel
- Aphex Twins
- Missy Higgins
