System
12 August 2000
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System |
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12 August 2000 |
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Mario has been living in Istanbul since the beginning of this year. He works for a company which is in direct competition with Paul Van Dyck's. Very recently a friend of his informed him about my web page and shortly after Mario wrote me an e-mail stating his wish to get in contact with our group of people, himself being an incurable audiophile. I immediately called him to learn the kind of equipment he's got. Most of the brands were unknown to me. My curiosity was such that I wanted to visit his place on the same weekend and he accepted. Mario is German, his wife and two kids live in Dusseldorf. He lives alone in a house overlooking the Tarabya bay, on the Bosphorus. What an exquisite view (see picture)! He says that he doesn't have WAF, FAF or NAF to worry about, but only room acoustics. Mario has two different systems which he uses depending on the type of music he listens. The speakers of the main system are driven by Mal Valve Push-Pull tube amplifier with Siemens PL519 output tubes. This amp has a very peculiar feature: its Output Transformers (OPT's) are remote. They can be placed near the speakers and thus shorten the speaker cables (see picture). In fact it is a stereo amp which acts like a mono one. Very clever indeed. Dieter Mallach is the owner and designer of Mal Valve which is a rare, German and tube devoted company. As Dieter Mallach lives in Mario's neighborhood (in Germany) he had the opportunity to meet him on many occasions. Mario says that Mal Valve amps are the best sounding tube amps he has heard to date. His preamp is also Mal Valve. They just look and feel gorgeous! Both pair of speakers are Audiodata (Elance Anniversaire are the main ones and Bijou Mk.III's are the smaller ones), which is another German company based in Aachen. The owner Peter Schippers is also an acquaintance of Mario. Mario uses solid state electronics (Fidelity) to drive his second (smaller) pair of speakers (Audiodata Bijou Mk.III). CD and LP source equipment are common to both systems. Mario likes to use his second system to listen to smaller scale music like jazz trios or chamber music. At other times he just moves the inner pair of speakers elsewhere and listens to his main system. Mario's biggest complaint is the room acoustics. His living room has very little furniture (very understandable for a person who plans to live there for a very limited period), no fabric curtains and just one "kilim", so you can well guess that it has a very "live", resonant , "bathroom like" acoustic. He wants to dampen this room as fast as possible in order to fully enjoy his excellent system. Mario will become a member of Istanbul Hi-Fi Club. He listens to jazz and acid jazz (45%), soul (40%) and classical (15%) music. The CD's he uses for equipment evaluation purposes are the followings:
Main System:
Mario's comments about his System: AA: "Mario, how would you describe
your system's sound?"
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