Harmonihyllan

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Post by lejonklou »

magnuska wrote:I have just talked to Anders. I asked if the bottom shelf can consist of double oden instead of TOR ( one thin and one thick plane) and he confirms that its possible.That way I recycle the oden shelf thats residual. Has anyone done this for the bottom level in a Harmonyrack?
I guess its not bad it must be even sturdier.
The bottom Tor shelf IS a double Oden. Not one thick and one thin, that doesn't work in the bottom.

So yes, no problem recycling your Oden shelf.
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Post by magnuska »

Fredrik, thanks for the clarification. Maybe I thought one could choose!?

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Post by lejonklou »

No, the bottom shelf needs to be thick, because it houses the spikes. The spikes go into the wood and are not an extension of the columns, as in most racks. Therefore the normal Tor shelf is not useable.
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Post by Efraim roots »

lejonklou wrote:Efraim roots: How is it going with your Mimer 3.1? Have you reached any conclusions?

I have done a few tests as I've had to take my rack apart. It does seem you have a point in that an all Tor rack has something harmonic in its signature. When I replace a Tor shelf (top position) with a Mimer K shelf, with a unit on it that is not active in the system, the remaining Tor shelves are not quite as good as before. They seem to stiffen slightly in their sound quality. When moving Sagatun (preamp) to the Mimer K shelf, however, it performs a lot better than on the Tor shelf.

My conclusion is that perhaps the Mimer K you add needs to be used with a source - or the unit closest to the source in the hierarchy. Because maybe the remaining wooden shelves don't really benefit from the prescence of the Mimer. Please note that this is speculation based on inadequate testing.
I've been very busy and sick lately, sorry for the delay.

I have removed my Mimer 3's from level 2&3 and put one Mimer on top only instead. It was a relief, much better I think, the musicians started to have fun again. But still, I could hear that Mimer effect of actually making things worse than I was used to before Mimer.

When I got sick I was in the sofa and listening to my hard disk player Meridian MC200 (very good, something like sneaky-majik ds level) instead, this player is not on harmonihyllan at all, it stands besides it so it is not affected by the shelf. And now I was quite happy with the performance of Mimer with my preamp. I felt that, this actually could be better, maybe a little stiff but I could hear that Mimer probably was better than Tor.

When I got better I started to play vinyl again, and I felt immediately something wasn't as good as it used to be before Mimer. I have tonight changed back an all Tor rack and I think this the best shelf for my LP12 replay, but when playing the MC200 I'm not so sure.

This experiences mix very well with your conclusion Lejonklou, I would say it's likely that you actually are right!
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Post by lejonklou »

Very interesting, Efraim. Thanks for sharing!

Are all your Tor shelves of the birch type? Have you ever compared Tor with Tor Silver (made of spruce)?
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Post by Efraim roots »

Yes my Tor shelves is birch type, I've not heard Tor silver shelves in any comparison or in my own rack.

I don't know if I'll try anything more, I leave all configurations for a few days to really try to feel what they do and try to get the optimal from each. Tonight I changed back to all Tor, If I'm happy again over a few days now I think I'm done. This re-building isn't popular around the househould.
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Post by ThomasOK »

magnuska wrote:Fredrik, thanks for the clarification. Maybe I thought one could choose!?

Magnus
I was going to say the same thing as Fredrik, the Tor bottom is always two thick shelves as the spikes mount to the bottom most one. Both my rack at home and the demo one I have at the store have the Tor double-bottom. I was told it makes the whole rack sound better but haven't personally verified it. I even put a Tor bottom on my Yggdrasil!
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Post by magnuska »

lejonklou wrote:No, the bottom shelf needs to be thick, because it houses the spikes. The spikes go into the wood and are not an extension of the columns, as in most racks. Therefore the normal Tor shelf is not useable.
Yes I see it now, don`t know how I was thinking. Sorry.

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Post by magnuska »

Had a nice day yesterday in Gothenburg at Tonläget.
We made the upgrade of Klångedang to latest version. My plan was to hold with eventual purchase of Mimer K but Anders let me know that he could offer a second hand Mimer 3.1 plane instead. Was very excited after returning home. I started with just listening to the upgrade of the speakers. From first note I could hear someting positive had happened. More music, easier to listen to. As I have a floor thats not fully damped I am now experimenting with two types of cat litter filling in the stand.

Today I couldn`t wait any longer but had to install the mimer plane as well.
Right now I have the computer and the dac on that plane giving me a very nice sound right now.

The total improvement in SQ compared to what I had before yesterday is not at all subtle, very pleased.

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Post by lejonklou »

Mimer K has just been upgraded with a tiny bit of damping in between the aluminium shelf and the spruce below it. Very simple and inexpensive - and apparently very effective.

I'm very curious to try this, but I won't have time until I return from the USA in mid July.
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Post by Efraim roots »

Now I've returned my two Mimer3 shelfs, my conclusion was that there was no way to get an improvement with them in my rack and my certain stacking needs (preamp on top). I clearly prefer an all Tor rack, which probably sound really good because I'm in general very happy with my hifi, actually It was when I first got harmonihyllan that I became really satisfied with my hifi system.

My mimer experience has made me a bit doubtful about judgements regarding harmonihyllans performance relative to other good racks tho, like naim fraim for example. Unfortunaly fraim isn't compatible with Linns new akurate boxes anyway (very deep box), especially the radikal and uphorik because of cables, it is a problem with the back leg (three legged construction).
Erik, I know you had fraim and made some efforts to make the set-up right, did you ever compare fraim vs harmonihyllan A/B?

There is also a posibilty that we actually reached a conflict in judgement of musical transparency. I usually agree quite well with judgements on this forum but there is some times where my view differ, and it's mainly manifested in my preference of naim amplification over linn. Even linn klimax kontrol has been unintersting for me, it sounds like fake to me, I think it has something to do with the presented proportions of musical elements. It’s funny because Linn advocates usually say almost exactly the same things but the other way around with their preference for Linn amps over Naim, strange thing really.

To be as honest as possible about my judgement on Mimer I must tell you that I discovered quite some compromize in my hifi installation a couple of weeks ago (a couple of weeks after I returned Mimer3). It was that my distributionblock (absolut bargain thread recommended ”clas ohlson” block) was connected to the wall with the pins reveresed, Live and Neutral was reversed! I had changed powersocket in the wall a year ago or something when I was doing some major changes to my setup (change of shelfs and gear), at that time I just plugged in the distribution block in the new wall socket with a logical thinking that ”this should be right” and then forgot about it and just took for granted it was correct. Some time after I returned the Mimers I was on the bus thinking about this little strange situation and it just hit me that I never tried if I got the distribution block properly connected to the new wall socket, I came home and did some proper testing and it was clear that I have been living with this compromize for a year or something :-( The good news is that I got a free upgrade and I also tested my 3 available wall sockets which one sounded best to optimize further, and it was some clear differences between them actually.

During this time with the handicapped hifi installation I have made some source related upgrades like exchanging my older and a little dodgy Naim HiLine for a brand new one (big improvement), Dynamik for uphorik (BIG improvement), no question about better from worse at those occasions. Another example is that when I got Mimer I experimented with placement on shelfs down to millimeter precision, and when I try now I got the same result.

I’m still happy about my return, I think I could not get away from that ”fake” feeling I got with them, but maybe we just differ slightly in judgement, we are talking about the really high level of musical performance out of a hifi-system and personally I think music is such a complex thing that we cannot agree all the time, and I still think that it’s probably easier to regard Mimer as outstanding if you also already like Linn Klimax amps.....Or maybe it just was the compromize of my installation... I can't bother for some time now, I just want to listen to records instead, and I should really start with my vintage speaker renovation projects :-)
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Post by ThomasOK »

Efraim, I wouldn't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that your hearing or tastes are different than others. I feel compelled to say that the relative silence on this thread after your findings is not because none of us agree with you. More it is because we are trying to figure out how to best make these racks work. I know that myself and others read your initial findings with a lot of interest and some of us came to the realization that we had never listened to an all wood rack. So the experimenting began but it hasn't been reported on yet as we are still experimenting.

However, this has been going on long enough that I feel I owe an interim report while the rest is getting sorted out. When I read your report I had two Harmoni racks set up. My system rack at home was a Tor bottom (double thick wood), two Mimer 2.3, a Mimer 3.1 and a Mimer K. Then there was a demo rack I built that was in the store and it had a Tor Silver bottom, Odin Silver, Tor Silver and Mimer 3.1 all using locally built Sitka Spruce shelves. In order to test the idea of an all wood rack sounding better I first turned the bottom of both racks into Odin (Birch on the Mimer rack and Spruce on the Tor rack) as I didn't have enough shelves for the test otherwise. I configured the rest of the Spruce wood rack as three Tor shelves. I configured the Mimer rack as a four shelf one also to keep things similar. It had the two Mimer 2.3s with the Mimer K (with Sitka Spruce) on the top.

So on to the comparisons. Now I had just gotten the Mimer K installed a couple of weeks before and found it to be the first time that any rack had been better than my longstanding reference Archidee floor stand as a platform for the LP12. As good as the Archidee had always been, and I demonstrated this to Fredrik while he was here, the Mimer K was more musical, more tuneful with better flow and more punch. Imagine my surprise when upon moving it to the Tor rack I found the music better yet! I can't say that the Tor was better in every way - there was a precision to the Mimer K that I would have liked a little bit of on the Tor, but the Tor was just more harmonically rich, more flowing and did seem to have more texture. No question that I liked it better.

Since then I know that Anders is working on improving how the Mimer K works and has added a small amount of damping to it. He has also found that a bottom shelf, which he calls simply the"K" and uses the thick wood shelf on the bottom with the thin shelf above it, makes the whole rack sound better but it requires that you keep that shelf empty. So work is continuing on getting this whole thing figured out.

Now I don't have the proper new damping but Fredrik and I did experiment with some small damping pads when he was at my house but whatever we tried we were still not able to get the Mimer K to be as musical as the Tor. And I did have two components on the other shelves of both the Tor and Mimer racks to keep everything balanced. So right now my system has the LP12 on the top of the Tor rack with the Sagatun Monos on the two Tor shelves below that and the Radikal on the Odin bottom. My ADS and Kremlin reside on the Mimer 2.3 shelves on the other rack. My vinyl has never sounded better but then the Sagatun Monos play a big part in that.

I plan to experiment more as I have time although, since I will be out of town the first week of August, this coming weekend will be the only one I have here for a few weeks. Therefore it may be a month before I can get back to this. I know Fredrik, Anders and others are experimenting with this too so hopefully we can get something more definitive in the next couple of months. Meanwhile I agree that the Tor is more musical.
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Post by magnuska »

Efraim roots wrote:It was that my distributionblock (absolut bargain thread recommended ”clas ohlson” block) was connected to the wall with the pins reveresed, Live and Neutral was reversed! I had changed powersocket in the wall a year ago or something when I was doing some major changes to my setup (change of shelfs and gear), at that time I just plugged in the distribution block in the new wall socket with a logical thinking that ”this should be right” and then forgot about it and just took for granted it was correct. Some time after I returned the Mimers I was on the bus thinking about this little strange situation and it just hit me that I never tried if I got the distribution block properly connected to the new wall socket, I came home and did some proper testing and it was clear that I have been living with this compromize for a year or something :-( The good news is that I got a free upgrade and I also tested my 3 available wall sockets which one sounded best to optimize further, and it was some clear differences between them actually.
Thanks Efraim Roots for pointing this out - something thats easily forgotten sometimes. I have always problems with how to connect the powercable to the wall socket. Especially if you have to use distribution blocks as well.
It would help if you or somebody could share your findings in detail. ( People from Uk can stop read now, their system is bombproof)

To Thomas Ok, I have also heard that Anders is working on a new bottomlevel. We talked about making a version for accomodating the external crossovers for klångedang, I wonder if its possible with this "K" plane or only as an empty shelf?

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Post by ThomasOK »

magnuska wrote: To Thomas Ok, I have also heard that Anders is working on a new bottomlevel. We talked about making a version for accomodating the external crossovers for klångedang, I wonder if its possible with this "K" plane or only as an empty shelf?

Magnus
I believe Fredrik said that putting the crossovers on the K bottom setup was tried but the whole rack was not as good when used that way. It appears the bottom shelf has to be empty for optimum performance. This is as reported by others - I have not tried the K bottom shelf yet.
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Post by magnuska »

ThomasOK wrote:
magnuska wrote: To Thomas Ok, I have also heard that Anders is working on a new bottomlevel. We talked about making a version for accomodating the external crossovers for klångedang, I wonder if its possible with this "K" plane or only as an empty shelf?

Magnus
I believe Fredrik said that putting the crossovers on the K bottom setup was tried but the whole rack was not as good when used that way. It appears the bottom shelf has to be empty for optimum performance. This is as reported by others - I have not tried the K bottom shelf yet.
Thanks Thomas! Seems that I have to settle with double oden for my crossovers at bottomlevel.

It would be interesting to find out how and if you can add a third thick shelf above the thin one in Anders new "K" configuration? The bottom shelf would then be 3 planes thick/thin/thick.

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Post by Linncredible »

A couple of weeks ago I finally became owner of a Harmoni rack (for spec. see http://lejonklou.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2399) thanks to at decision by Fredrik L. to sell his old one. Due to a holiday trip, the rack first became standing unused in my home in a temporary position for a week or so. Back at home I finally had the time to put the rack in it’s proper and final position. It’s now housing my system (ADS/0/1, Kikkin 2.2, Tundra Stereo 1.2) that was earlier placed in a Quadraspire Q4 rack.

After this I have now also had the opportunity to listen to the system on and off for almost a week. During the first day or so with the Harmoni rack in it’s final position, the music sounded a bit strange, words as disintegrated, not coherent comes to my mind. I guess this could be the same thing that Fredrik wrote about in the first post in this thread: it seems that the Harmoni rack needs a day or so to settle down in it’s new environment and final positioning to perform.

After this first day or so, what about my impressions and what about the most important stuff – the music?

I can sum it up in one word: WOW!!! The improvement is indeed veeeery big and the system now plays absolutely stunning compared to before! The music comes to me effortless, swingin’ and organically in a way much, much better than before. Precision, musicality and joy - this regardless of if it is Miles Davis, Academy of S:t Martin in the Fields or Eva Cassidy that is playing/singing. It’s not a subtle change, I’m talking about a really big improvement! It is truly amazing that a rack can make such a big improvement, I would not have guessed beforehand that the improvement was going to be of this magnitude.

As I said, you really have to hear it to believe that it’s possible for a rack to make this kind of change and I recommend everyone to hear it if you have a possibility. (If you happen to pass by Stockholm and would like to come by and have a coffee and a listen, please PM! Though please at least a couple of days in advance, my daily schedule is often quite packed.)

Finally: much respect to Anders at Tonläget who developed this truly amazing product. What an achievement!
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" K Reference bottomshelf"

Post by magnuska »

I finally got the chance to upgrade one of my Harmonirack with the new bottomlevel K.

Its like an upside down TOR but with the addtiton of a pillow only for that shelf. You can`t have anything placed on that shelf but the pillow thats suited for damping. I bought a pillow cover, 40x40cm on Jysk in grey and placed the supplied filling inside it.

I was very curious about this, would it really work? Especially since my rack is a Mimer 3.1 at top level and this K shelf is mostly developed with Mimer K.
But as always with Anders inventions and upgrades even this one prooved to be a good upgrade. It took around 20 minutes for the rack to begun sounding as its best since it was fully rebuilt again. It seems that all shelves in the rack benefits greatly of this. The general feeling is that music comes forward in a more easy way. It calms everything down if you know what I mean.

It would be interesting if any other harmonirackuser have done this as well?

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Re: Harmonihyllan Mimer recut

Post by magnuska »

Out of curiosity.

How many of you, or if anybody, anticipate delivery soon for a Mimer recut shelf?

I had a version 3,1 wich will soon be recutted to a Mimer K. I have also ordered a new TOR shelf

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Re: Harmonihyllan Mimer recut

Post by Music Lover »

magnuska wrote:Out of curiosity.

How many of you, or if anybody, anticipate delivery soon for a Mimer recut shelf?

I had a version 3,1 wich will soon be recutted to a Mimer K. I have also ordered a new TOR shelf
Have 2*Mimer 3.1 + 2*Mimer K today.
Soon to be 4*Mimer K
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by magnuska »

@ML great.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by kallesprätt »

I am waiting for two Mimer K to go along with my two Mimer 3.1.
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by magnuska »

Now the Mimer recut is delivered and on place instead of a Mimer 3.1.

I agree with all others , the difference between the two Mimer shelves is big.

At first I didn`t receive any washers so I had to temporarily use some bigger 3 mm thick washers. It was again
much better when the correct washers arrived today actually.

The one I got is placed on top where the source is. In my case a little PC with an external usb/spdif convertor and
the dac. Meaning 3 little boxes share that shelf.

Next move would be the second shelf where my pre and powersupply is. I´m tempted.

Even if its a lot money for a single shelf I´m prepared to say that this upgrade actually is quite cheap in the context of what kind of musical lift you get.

Hats off to the designer!!

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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Ozzzy189 »

Can you guys who own these racks please post some pictures?
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by magnuska »

I´m a novice when it comes to posting pictures.

Hope the link works.

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/4xd1qf73dbwn ... NE3PN88cea
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Re: Harmonihyllan

Post by Ozzzy189 »

Thanks magnus. The website doesn't do the ranks justice. That looks fantastic, and I bet it sounds brilliant.
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