EVENTS

[David Neel]

...no, you should listen to them...



;-)

Hi Sopper - I think you'll really like them... :)

But not if you look at them. :)

[Sopper]

...no, you should listen to them...



;-)

Hi Sopper - I think you'll really like them... :)

But not if you look at them. :)

I never thought about changing speakers, cause I really like my Harbeth’s.
But now since KÄLLA, these Harbeth’s may be the weakest link… especially when I read the impressions of this audio show “Lejonklou and Graham” most musical room…

[mradem]

...no, you should listen to them...



;-)

Hi Sopper - I think you'll really like them... :)

But not if you look at them. :)

I never thought about changing speakers, cause I really like my Harbeth’s.
But now since KÄLLA, these Harbeth’s may be the weakest link… especially when I read the impressions of this audio show “Lejonklou and Graham” most musical room…

There will always be something better TJ 😜. Nice to see you back on the forums again.
Gr. Martijn

[Sopper]

Thanks 🙏

[lejonklou]

Greetings from Axpona, Chicago, room 1415!

Last day tomorrow. It’s all about the music!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d64o4g0ik7yit ... 3.MOV?dl=0

[Mitmu]

Greetings from Axpona, Chicago, room 1415!

Last day tomorrow. It’s all about the music!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d64o4g0ik7yit ... 3.MOV?dl=0

Talking about 'foot tapping action' ! Looks very nice!

[mrco99]

That sounds very good!!
Also neat setup with 3 racks in a row, it may have been a tight fit with the JBLs or Quads?

Great to see some footage from your room and head bopping audience.

Any responses from the public - apart from them nodding their heads? :-)
Have a great 2nd day!

[beck]

Such a great little video. I always feel something is wrong when people sit still when listening to rhythmic music.

No problem here! :-)

[Hermann]

I recognize some musical merits there. Sounds really good. Banging heads, tapping feet, what more could a music fan ask for... Thanks for posting.

P.S. Oh yes, am sort of on my way to an all-analog show today.

[Hermann]

Such a great little video. I always feel something is wrong when people sit still when listening to rhythmic music.

No problem here! :-)

Nail on the head hit Beck. Are back from the Analog Show, what a washout. There were about 30 rooms occupied and only one system with the most expensive Technics turntable, their big integrated amplifier into Spendor LS played a little musical. Nix foot tapping, head shaking or other. All listened spellbound could be colportated, but was the music mostly dead or typical Hifi..

I hope on the Axpona are audible systems to be found, although one certainly...

[Whatsmynaim]

It sounds great and the audience is definitely having a great time!
With how awesome it is I'm surprised the room hasn't gotten any coverage by YouTubers yet. I just want to witness when their minds are blown. :)

[Arjen]

Greetings from Axpona, Chicago, room 1415!

Last day tomorrow. It’s all about the music!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d64o4g0ik7yit ... 3.MOV?dl=0

Seen Rick Becker, Enjoy the Music, for a review or interview?

[matthias]

It sounds great and the audience is definitely having a great time!
With how awesome it is I'm surprised the room hasn't gotten any coverage by YouTubers yet. I just want to witness when their minds are blown. :)

Agree,
further I found no video on YT where you can listen to a Lejonklou system with Källa as source, it is a pity.......

Matt

[Tendaberry]

Greetings from Axpona, Chicago, room 1415!

Last day tomorrow. It’s all about the music!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d64o4g0ik7yit ... 3.MOV?dl=0

One of the best clips I've ever seen/heard on this forum, great!

[matthias]

A nice show report from Hifi Pig, please scroll down to see Lejonklou:

https://www.hifipig.com/axpona-2023-show-report/

[Whatsmynaim]

Here's more room 1415 impressions, this time from the YT channel Playback Mansion: https://youtu.be/fHC6pGTNSJU?t=1484
------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, I can't find the video right now but another guy from a different YT channel praised the room as well.
Saying he really liked the room and how the people (That would be Fredrik and Thomas.) were nice. Also saying he was glad they didn't play the typical boring hifi demo music.

Whenever I find more impressions I add them to this post.

[lejonklou]

Thank you for the links!

I would never have found them otherwise. You’re just too busy with everything before, during and after a show.

I will do my best to keep in touch with HiFi Pig and Playback Mansion.

[Charlie1]

Greetings from Axpona, Chicago, room 1415!

Last day tomorrow. It’s all about the music!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d64o4g0ik7yit ... 3.MOV?dl=0

One of the best clips I've ever seen/heard on this forum, great!

Yes, that was great and defo the best HiFi show clip I've heard too. Not heard of those speakers before but I like them!

[ThomasOK]

Hello all, I have been remiss in giving a report on how the show went from my point of view. I have been quite busy at work trying to get a whole bunch of LP12s done before my retirement, which starts next week. I have been generally getting a couple out a day and am now all caught up. So on with the show!

As you will have heard, from the clip and from some comments and reviews, we had a very good Axpona. There were a lot of positive comments on both the sound of the room and the quality of music we were playing. The person who lent us the speakers for the show (and who is the taller one bopping his head to the music in that clip) said that he had never heard his speakers sounding that good and that we were certainly the most musical room at the show. He recently told one of the Stereophile reviewers that he missed a very musical and important room by missing Axpona. One of my dealers, who had his own room at the show with the same speakers, came up and heard our room. He commented that he probably should really get in a set of the TM3s. Also we had a guy come up who was displaying in another room (I didn't hear which) who told us another guy from his room had heard our setup and said "You have to go up and hear this room, it's really great!". He was quite impressed as well. So more word is getting around.

The great thing in doing a show like this, which makes all the work worth it, is having a lot of people just loving the music coming out of the system and commenting on it. We had a few people come back multiple times as our room was treated by a few as a musical oasis. One lady came in three different times to listen. The third time she said she really was impressed by how musical the system was but hoped she could hear some classical piano. I always bring a wide range of music and my friend, Simon, who is a big classical fan, recommended an Alfred Brendel recording of Mozart Piano Concertos. I played that and she listened raptly to a full concerto. At the end she thanked us multiple times for the choice of music and the wonderful sounding system. Simon had talked to her one of the other times when she was there and it turns out that she is a professional classical pianist! One of the people on the Linn forum found little in the rest of the show that was worth commenting on but said that our room "sounded truly special". He further commented that Frank Sinatra sounded like he was sitting on the Singularity preamps and that Fredrik was a class act.

On top of the sound we received many comments on our taste in music. One person came in, sat down and said "Finally a room where you are playing real music". We play all kinds of music and virtually none of the "audiophile standards". Rock from every decade, jazz, classical, electronic, roots, reggae, pop, motown, folk, progressive, you name it. We take requests from people in the room and otherwise just play whatever we feel like at the time. We don't choose "special tracks" for their Hi-Fi-ness but generally play whole sides, and sometimes whole albums if everyone is into it. A system like this just makes everything so enjoyable that you pull interesting things out just to hear how they sound.

I will admit that those who heard the system on Saturday and Sunday heard the best perfromance. The system was good but not quite great when we set it up and tuned it all on Thursday. On Friday, the first day of the show, it was already sounding better and we were happy with it but Saturday it was really cooking and Sunday Fredrik was liking it so much he said he wished we had another day. I think it was partly the speakers settling in as they had broad cones that couldn't pierce the industrial carpet. They seemed firmer and more musical in the bass after a day or two. But it was also the Tundra Mono 3s burning in and settling down as I didn't have time to open them up and run them before the show. All together the system was really quite good on the last two days and I appreciate the loan of the speakers.

The one downside to the show was that we couldn't use the Källa much. I had bought a 4G router and got a T.Mobile account so we could get music to the Källa. It worked OK on Thursday and Friday but was basically useless Saturday and Sunday as it would only play a couple of minutes before stopping. Fredrik found that we had very little bandwidth so we gave up and just played vinyl. We also didn't get much play out of the LP12/Ekos 2/Adikt as the full Klimax LP12 was just so much more like music that Fredrik didn't want to play the former. But that was OK as it was sounding really glorious with the full on dual-mono system.

I also had a Gielle ∏ 1.2 connected to my MacBookAir through an ESI Gigaport + DAC. I bought or borrowed several high-end headphones for people to listen to there. Very few people wanted to bother listening to headphones in the room. I think you need to be in the EarGear area to attract those people. I was surprised that one who did want to hear the Giella ∏ was most interested in hearing the Grado SR125e! But Fredrik, Simon and I did get time to do some headphone comparisons which were quite interesting. The headphones we had were the Abyss Diani TC ($4595) that were Fredrik's favorites out of the ones he had used developing the Giella, the new Dan Clark Audio Stealth ($3995) that have gotten a lot of strong reviews and are in a similar price range, the Grado SR125e with G cushions (about $200) and a couple of units I wasn't familiar with but Pierre kindly recommended. These were from ZMF and were the Verite Open ($2495) that use a dynamic beryllium driver and their top model, the Caldera ($3495) which is their first planar magnetic. As the Stealth and Diana TC are planar magnetic it made for an interesting grouping. After a bit of listening across two days we all felt that the Diana TC was very musical and preferred it to the Stealth. The Stealth holds to a frequency response curve developed by Harman and I'm not sure it is as natural and engaging sounding as some of the others, although a couple of customers listened to them in the store afterwards and were quite pleased. The big surprise was the Caldera which we all found even more musical than the Diana TC. It just had a more dynamic and musical sound and seemed very well balanced. We all felt that the Diana TC was close, but the Caldera still came out on top. They are also more efficient and easier to drive. The Grados are still an amazing headphone for the money and were very enjoyable with this system. Last, but not least, is the ZMF Verity Open which was also quite good. We all felt that it was a musical unit, more enjoyable than the SR125e, and a pretty good value for the money, but it was a significant step down from the level of musicality set by the Diana TC and the ZMF Caldera. So there you have it, some more headphones worth considering.

Lastly we also played around with the network for the Källa. The 4G router was more musical running directly to the Källa rather than through a Netgear switch. This mirrors what Fredrik found when using a similar device in Europe. We also tested 4 BJC cables that should have been identical. All were the recommended 8.5 foot CAT6a. Two were white, one purple and one black. We started with the two whites and immediately found that one was more musical than the other eliminating the possibility that color would be the only difference. Then we tried the black and all felt it was immediately better. More musical, more punch, better groove. Then we tried purple and felt that was also better than the whites but we weren't sure compared to the black. We checked both the black and the purple for direction and found that all cables had the same direction compared to the text. So we went back and forth a couple of times between the black and purple. In the end we all agreed that the purple was the most musical but the black wasn't far behind. We also felt that there were nice things about each, with the black being a little more lively but the purple more tuneful, so we would have loved a combination. One wonders how many cables we would have to try before finding that magic one?

So there is the show report. I feel it helps to keep the Lejonklou name out there and a lot of people came through and enjoyed what we were doing. We also had multiple visits from a Canadian couple who are working on setting up a shop in the Montréal area. We had a great time talking to them and went out to dinner with them once. They very much enjoyed the equipment and the sound of the room and had also been impressed by the system at the Montréal show a few weeks earlier. I wish them luck with getting their shop together and they will definitely be representing our gear when they open. So a worthwhile endeavor, not the least of which was getting a chance to visit with my good friend Fredrik after a four year (COVID-19 fueled) absence from the US. We resolved to get together more often from now on.

Oh, yeah. And the Tundra Mono 3s rock! (Like there was any doubt!)

[Hermann]

Thanks for the insightful report Tom. Working on raising awareness of Fredrik's products seems to generate a lot of interest. I'm happy about that and I'm still happy about the Tundra Monos 3.

[Spannko]

… I had bought a 4G router and got a T.Mobile account so we could get music to the Källa … The 4G router was more musical running directly to the Källa rather than through a Netgear switch.

This raises yet another network optimisation option!

If a 4G router sounds better going straight into Källa, rather than through a GS108, is getting a 4G plan a worthwhile upgrade?

[ThomasOK]

… I had bought a 4G router and got a T.Mobile account so we could get music to the Källa … The 4G router was more musical running directly to the Källa rather than through a Netgear switch.

This raises yet another network optimisation option!

If a 4G router sounds better going straight into Källa, rather than through a GS108, is getting a 4G plan a worthwhile upgrade?

Fredrik might have some input for you on that. We did it at the show as a necessity as the show wanted to charge us $550 for a wired Internet connection (and I heard from some who purchased it that they still had problems). But Fredrik has used one at shows and I think elsewhere so he might have compared them with the normal at home recommended setup.

[lejonklou]

Thank you for that summary of Axpona, Thomas!

I couldn't have written it better myself, and certainly not as long and detailed.

Regarding 4G routers, I still think my Amplifi HD followed by GS-108T is the best so far. But interestingly, most of the 4G routers we've tested have not benefitted from a switch in between the router and Källa.

At the lab I currently use a TP-Link AC750 and it sounds really good straight into Källa. Best 4G router I've tested so far. There are many out there that we haven't tested, though.

[ThomasOK]

Before someone makes the same mistake I did I should mention that I bought a TP-Link AC750 based on Fredrik's recommendation just to find out that it doesn't work in the US - different cellular frequencies. So I ended up buying a Netgear Nighthawk LAX20 4G router. It worked well initially and it did sound good when working but there was no similar item to compare it to. We did test with and without a GS308T and it was definitely better without. The big problem was with connection on Saturday and Sunday. I have a feeling that it was the cellular network that was the problem. Probably the effect of thousands of people wandering around the same building, using their phones a lot and jamming up the network. As a side note these types of devices seem to be less common in general here than in Europe. In my searching I found a number of small cheap hotspots, as they are referred to here, but none of them had an RJ45 LAN port. Then I found Netgear has a device that seemed ideal, compact, 5G capable, runs off battery and has a LAN port. But it is $700! A bit more than I wanted to put into a device I would likely only use once a year. More midrange devices like the LAX20 with a handful of LAN ports and the cellular capability are thin on the ground. Even the LAX20 was shown as discontinued by a few online electronics vendors although Netgear still shows it. It seems like the devices are either for wealthy people to use in their vacation homes or for young people wanting to share WiFi for multiplayer games, etc.

I had the MacBook Air with lots of music on an external HD (one of the recommended SSDs in a case/PS that Fredrik had recommended as being very good). This was there to drive the Giella ∏ 1.2 and the headphones. Since it supports AirPlay I decided to try using it to send music to the Källa. (I had actually put this setup together originally so I could try using it as a NAS over AirPlay and see how it worked.) That experiment didn't last long. We played a few different pieces of music that all sounded great on the headphones and found them very uninvolving streamed to the Källa. It was so much less musical than what we had gotten with Spotify through the LAX20 that we just gave up and went back to vinyl. I would feel bad if it weren't for how wonderful the vinyl was sounding. But it would have been nice to show off the Källa more as it was very musically engaging when it was playing and would have been a big contrast to other digital reproduction at the show.

[matthias]

It was so much less musical than what we had gotten with Spotify through the LAX20 that we just gave up and went back to vinyl.

Thomas,
did you stream Spotify through the LAX20 to Källa with the same Macbook or with another Apple device?
Thx