Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well! 

All's good here, and I am just enjoying all things music, audio, and life. 🙂

I had a nice time visiting with friends Alden and Carolyn this week when they stopped by Jeff's Place while in town. 

Alden and Carolyn have a really beautiful audio system at home with Tannoy Canterbury GR loudspeakers, a full stack of excellent McIntosh electronics, one of the cool new Thorens TD 124 DD turntables, and of course all kinds of other cool audio kit, as well as a ton of music on LP and CD!

Carolyn brought along one of her favorite LPs to listen to, J. J. Cale's Naturally (1971), a superb record by the way, to hear with the all-silver Level 5 Audio Note (UK) components: the Io Ltd. field-coil, moving-coil phonograph cartridge with power supply, AN-S8 SUT, M8 RIAA phono preamp, and Ongaku 211 SET integrated amplifier. 

CD 5.1x (top left), Io field-coil, moving-coil phono cartridge with power supply and AN-S8 SUT (right top & bottom), Tomei (front left), Ongaku (front middle), M8 RIAA phono pre (front right).

Alden brought along a couple of audio fun & games records by Martin Denny, The Very Best of Martin Denny (1975) and Primitiva (1958). 

Martin Denny's records are "audiophile spectacular" recordings from the peak of the magnetic era of recording, and they will wow you with their stereo pyrotechnics and excellent recording quality. The cover photo on Primitiva is guaranteed to get your blood boiling - wowza!

I ordered a "mint" copy of Primitiva from Discogs after hearing Alden's album, only for the music, of course! 😉 

I hadn't listened to any Martin Denny albums before, so it was a treat for me to hear some new music, and of course it is always fun to hear some "new" audiophile spectacular recordings. 

I played DJ as we listened to a whole bunch of records on the big system. My West's with the Duelund CAST silver/copper crossovers powered by the full stack of Audio Note (UK) electronics was sounding truly incredible.

I told Alden and Carolyn that at the end of our listening session that there would be a quiz, and they would have to tell me about what they heard and felt from the Audio Note (UK) Level 5 kit on my West's.

The Level 5 sounds and feels so incredible driving the West's that I've found it tough to articulate how it achieves that truly "next level" performance. I'm working on it though, so much more to come on that.

I felt vindicated when Carolyn said, "How do you describe that? There's just more there. More music, more everything."

I know exactly what you mean Carolyn, the music is so incredibly involving through the Level 5 kit, and sounds so dramatically good, that it really does defy description. It is just more. 

After being so blown away that I'm nearly speechless by this Level 5 Audio Note (UK) kit, I'm making some progress in understanding how the Ongaku is achieving such a lofty level of performance, which is quite literally "next level" performance. I've got a lot more to say about the Ongaku, so stay tuned for that in future posts. 

Long time readers know how much I love good integrated amplifiers, and I have to say the Ongaku is by far the best integrated amplifier - or any amplifier - I have ever heard by leaps and bounds. It's really incredible. I've never met an amplifier I'd rather have more.

The Ongaku is scarily dynamic, and even though it has "only" 20 watts of output power, it sounds massively powerful on my West's.

The Ongaku is the Muhammad Ali of amplifiers, in that it can "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" depending on what the music calls for. It emphasizes both the grace and agility of the music's dramatic flow, combined with delivering powerful dynamic strikes that shivers me timbers when the music calls for it. 

Every time I listen to music with the Ongaku I'm blown away by what I'm hearing and feeling. It sounds utterly natural and real, so musically engaging, while it uncovers musical information that is completely lost to the other amplifiers in my experience.

One thing that is remarkable with the Ongaku is how it elevates every album I listen to in rather extraordinary fashion. For vinyl, regular old vinyl sounds better than audiophile albums, and audiophile albums are simply out of this world. It's a bit shocking, actually. 

I've never heard anything do what the Ongaku does with albums. Every time I listen to an album it's like I'm hearing an entirely new album, with more dramatic impact, more music, like Carolyn said, "more." More of everything. 

Normally when one talks about Audio Note (UK) kit everyone talks about how incredibly musical it is, how well it conveys the dramatic aspects of the musical performance, how involving it is. 

But let me tell you, for those who like big soundstages and incredible imaging with lots of layers, the Ongaku also delivers visuospatial performance in spades.

I've never heard anything quite like the Ongaku in terms of imaging. The images radiate out an intensity and vividness that is incredibly visceral. You can hear that intensity, you can see it, you can feel it, radiating from the images. Mind boggling.

The Ongaku elevates the performance of everything attached to it, while managing to sound positively otherworldly in its performance. 

For example, I've now listened to 29 of the 50 CDs from the Decca Sound box set through the CD 5.1x CD player, and the Ongaku elevates its performance to a remarkable level.

The CD 5.1x CD player feeding the Ongaku completely rewrites the performance level that I thought Red Book CDs were capable of.

Many of those Decca Sound CDs in the box set were recorded during the peak of the stereo magnetic era of recording, so they are some of the greatest recordings ever made. And that is totally evident through the CD 5.1x and Ongaku combination. Just stunning. 

Is the Ongaku the perfect amplifier? 

Any time one uses the word "perfect" to describe anything you're asking for trouble, but maybe I can moderate that by saying it's "my" perfect amplifier. The Ongaku delivers a level of performance that I didn't even know existed. 

The Ongaku makes the music come alive with intensity and drama. Every time I listen to an album with it I'm astounded by how good it sounds, and how involving it is in delivering the full drama of the music. 

I wish everyone could hear this level of performance. In my nearly seven decades of listening to music, and after hearing thousands of audio systems over the decades, nothing I've ever heard even comes close to this Level 5 set of Audio Note (UK) kit I have here, for what I value in audio performance. Nothing. 

An Audio Note (UK) level 5 audio system is something to behold, and if you can, I encourage you to get out and give one a listen. 

Now granted, an Ongaku costs more than a 2027 BMW M5 automobile, so it should be a spectacular performer, and it is.

Even if you can't afford an Ongaku you really need to hear one just to know what's possible in audio amplification. 

Ok, I'm gushing, but I'm so impressed it's hard not to gush.

That's all for now. As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!