My visit to Jérôme aka Jerome W

[Jerome W]

Originally Posted by bart

Boy oh boy, we do have a nice hobby.
Even in this century, full of high tech, we can come across a very agreeable surprise (aural, but also for the wallet!!), that allows us to come yet a bit closer to our passion, the music.
And through this hobby, we get the opportunity to meet such nice people, like Jérôme, his wife, and Gilles.
And the others, I have met through AA.

AudioAficionado really is the FRIEND-ly forum...

Merci Jérôme!!

Bart....

Thanks a lot for this write up and the nice comments !
I had so much pleasure to meet you finally in the real life, after all these years of "internet" friendship. We had a great time and Gilles enjoyed your presence a lot. I missed Meta and Narcisa too but she nevertheless spent a great evening !
You really met by pure chance with Gilles, since he decided his trip just a few days before our meeting.

I am happy that you enjoyed the Altec speakers. A few people came at home since I received them 2 weeks ago. Yesterday that was Cedric who came for the afternoon, along with 2 other friends. And of course, we tried the 300B integrated on them. I get always the same comments from all the visitors about these speakers: they like them a lot. Cedric is waiting for Gilles to come back from holidays to order him a pair of speakers.
An other friend came. He lived for 15 years in Japan and happened to meet Ken Shindo a few times. He owned various Shindo amps and preamps over the years, with all the Shindo cables, Mr T's and so on, and a few various Shindo speakers. When he listened to Gille's Altecs, he told me : " You are very lucky that you met this person. He is incredible. The speakers sound as good if not better than all the Shindo's I listened to".

As I expected, the sound with the 300B XLS ( XL 300B tubes from Emission Labs : a set power of 2 x 22W similar to the power you would get from a push pull of regular 300B's) was faster and sharper than with my Shindo set up. It was even more alive. More " you're just there". The Corton Charlemagne Q amps are very sweet sounding amps, a fact due to the EL34 tubes. But more alive and less sweet than the McIntosh 2301's amps. Still, I know that there are different amps in the Shindo line that would give a more "alive" sound. Especially the WE300B blocks and the Cortese.

But I do prefer the Shindo amps to the Halgorythme for various reasons. I found the Shindo more relaxing, more inviting, and I feel immersed in the music like no other amps I owned or listened to.
When my full Shindo set up is playing, preamp and amps, I connect immediately to the music. They just catch your attention and like during a meditation, your mind goes away BUT, without any effort, it always, always come back to the object : the music playing. They are just like a mystic experience when listening to music. But one has to live with them to really get the effect. They grow up on you.

I do love the sound of the Harbeth speakers in the living room a lot. But, when you discover the lifelike music of Altec speakers, it is very difficult to acclimate yourself to conventional speakers. Most of them are more or less missing the life in the music that the Altec's are so glorious at revealing.
I will replace the 40.1 by an other Altec based speaker made by Gilles. Either a smaller "Petite Latour", or a replica of the Malibu speakers, or the Valencias, or something else...

A few technical informations about my Shindo inspired speakers :
The drivers are Altec 8 1/4" 414A Alnico ( 16 ohm), Altec 807 compression, and the very rare and fabulous ( because of its wide image and low directionality ) Altec - Western Electric W32A horn. The internal volume is 183 liters. Cabinet is made from 19mm birch plywood. The absorbant inside is made of.... glued carpet ! after various try outs, Gilles found this material much more musical and efficient than the usual foams / wools. The port is at the bottom plate of the speaker, firing to the floor. The filter is a 12dB one, with only very high quality components. Crossover frequency is an unusual 2000Hz for these drivers. The impression of listening to a single driver is obvious.
I have an adjusment of the compression from -6 to +1 dB. The internal cables are from Belden.
Gilles tried various cabinets for these drivers. He has all the measuring tools and software to design the filter and the dimensions of the bass reflex vent port, and he always confirm the measures by extensive listening sessions. He has a very good ear.