Greeting friends, I hope you are well! 🙂

It's been an astonishingly busy time of late, but all is well, and I'm thoroughly enjoying my music & audio life, and life in general.

One thing I've found out about life, is to learn to cherish those times when things are going well, as inevitably there will be those times when things don't go as well, as the natural disorder of the universe will inevitably deal you a periodic bad hand.

One has learn to find beauty in the darkness during those times in order to be able to persevere through them. Vacuum tubes lighting up the darkness can help too. It's all good. Hang in there. 

Today, of course, I'm telling you about those good times that are worthy of being cherished.  

It's been a real time of growth for me in understanding a wider spectrum of audio performance, which I'll touch upon in the following updates. 

The Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA Phono Preamplifier & AN-S8 Step-up Transformer

Photo: The Audio Note (UK) Tomei 211 SET (left), M6 RIAA (center) + AN-S4 SUT, and M8 RIAA + AN-S8 SUT (right). 

One of the primary things that has been stimulating growth in my understanding of a wider spectrum of audio performance, is the "Level Four" Audio Note (UK) Tomei 211 SET integrated amplifier, M6 RIAA phono pre & AN-S4 SUT combination, and now the "Level Five" M8 RIAA phono pre & AN-S8 SUT combination. 

While these Audio Note (UK) "Level Four" and "Level Five" components are at the cutting edge of high-fidelity audio performance in ways that audiophiles cherish, they go well beyond that audiophile-style performance into realms of performance that are not easy to articulate, but are easily felt.

Simplistically, and not completely correctly, I break these performance attributes out into "left brain" and "right brain" performance attributes.  

The "left brain" is where analytical, logical, and detail-oriented thinking lives, and where I've lived much of my thought life. 

The "right brain" is where creativity, intuition, and emotional processing lives, and I'm getting a better understanding of how important that is to the hi-fi experience. 

Audiophile-style "left brain" performance includes all those typical sorts of attributes that we audiophiles normally consider to be high-fidelity performance in the categories of musicality and sound quality.  

Musicality is about an accuracy in reproducing those fundamental traits of music like timbral realism, the resolution of tone color, melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, and dynamics, for example.

Sound quality is about reproducing those inherent aspects of the recording arts like the visuospatial aspects of recordings, such as soundstaging, imaging, transparency, resolution, and soundspace (more HERE), for example.  

Yet there is more to the high-fidelity performance of these Audio Note (UK) Level Four & Five components than just musicality & sound quality.

Peter Qvortrup articulates his goals for audio performance as accuracy, authority, and authenticity, which really got me to thinking about the implications of that, and have opened up my perceptions about what is important in the wider spectrum of audio performance. 

That wider spectrum of performance has taken me into the realm of the "right brain," the world where creativity, intuition, and emotional processing lives, and where these Audio Note (UK) Level Four & Five components perform extraordinarily well, and break into new levels of performance by doing so. 

Photo: Public domain photo of Woody Guthrie in 1943 with his Gibson LG-2 (at least I think it's his LG-2), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Musicians express their creativity through live music and recordings, connecting with audiences through their personal experiences and messages. They aim to make an impact in their chosen art form, evoke emotions, and inspire change in society through their music.

Those musicians' expression of their artistry in music is largely the realm of the right brain, and if you really desire to feel the artists' intent for their music, those creativity, intuition, and emotional processing aspects of audio performance may be the most relevant experiential performance attributes as well. 

This realm isn't solely the realm of music of course, as literature and art also fall into this realm.

Gelatin silver print of Gertrude Stein in her Paris studio with portrait of her by Pablo Picasso. Public domain photo courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

One of my favorite examples, of late, is that of the contribution of Gertrude Stein, who provided an environment to mentor writers and artists in the realm of creativity, intuition, and the emotional aspects of art, at her 27 rue de Fleurus Stein Salon, in the avant-garde city of Paris in the 1920s, where the muse met with members of 'the Lost Generation' of Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse, et al, where she catalyzed the literary, artistic, and cultural explosions that occurred from those encounters in her Stein Salon. 

The first step is to realize there is more to experience and convey in art, than one thought there was, which catalyzes the exploration of those creative, intuitive, and emotional aspects of arts in new ways that create those artistic explosions. 

Here's a teaser: I don't believe that this realm of right brain performance in audio is necessarily related to musicality or sound quality per se, although those surely help move things in the right direction (pun intended), and it isn't even closely related to the level of fidelity of Planet Earth's recorded music canon.   

Paul James, my audio pal in Australia, sent me this message just this morning, "I have been evaluating some Audio Note parts in an extreme build 245 single-ended amp. One uncanny thing is beyond the usual audiophile language. It's as if you can now feel the expressive intent of a piece of music and the musicians' tactical interaction with the instruments they are using, along with a sense of ambience that extends far beyond the usual language of the sound stage. You have been touching on this as well in your reviews, and it's special to experience this firsthand." 

By the way, Paul writes articles for Richard Varey's hi-fi music listening experience blog, Music & Hi-Fi Appreciations, which you can read HERE.  

What a timely message from Paul for this article, thanks Paul! 

I messaged Paul back and said, "I'm finding with the very best audio kit, my major measure of performance has become how well it conveys the expressive intent of the musicians through their music. I have some ideas about how this happens, and it is unrelated (mostly) to the sound quality - in the audiophile sense of that term - of the audio kit, or the fidelity of the recorded media. I hope to go into this more in a future article. It is harder to articulate this performance attribute, mostly because it is in the realm of feelings / emotions rather than in realm of intellectual left-brain thought. I am pleased that you are experiencing the phenomenon, once felt it opens up a whole new world of listening pleasure & perception."

These "right brain" aspects of audio performance are an art form in themselves, and are above & beyond the more technical aspects of creating fine audio components, and are an art that Peter Qvortrup has mastered in his Audio Note (UK) "Level Four & Five" components. 

I'm almost ready to start writing my review for Positive Feedback of the "Level Five" Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono pre & AN-S8 SUT combination. 

These heady components require 100 hours of LP playing time for complete bedding-in, to reach their full performance level, and that has taken me a while due to other competing life commitments. 100 hours translates to about 134 LPs, and I'm at 118 LPs at the moment, so not too much further to go.

Expect to see a "sneak peek" into the article here at Jeff's Place in the next few weeks, with the full feature review at Positive Feedback a few weeks after that. Stay tuned.

Previous Articles In This Series

1. Today's Fresh Catch: The Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono preamplifier and AN-S8L step-up transformer! HERE
2. Listening: The Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono pre & AN-S8L SUT! HERE
3. Audio Note (UK): M8 RIAA & M6 RIAA phono preamplifiers photographic "walk-through"! HERE
4. Jeff Checking In: Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA & AN-S8L SUT, Duelund-Corona Project, Ortofon SPU GTX S phono cartridge, and more! HERE 

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