Greetings friends, I hope you are well! 🙂

I am giddy with anticipation while I'm warming up the audio system to try the Audio Note (UK) AN-S9 SUT that just arrived, which is a recommended pairing with the Audio Note (UK) Io Ltd. field-coil, moving-coil phonograph cartridge and power supply! 

These two vinyl source components sit at the very tippy top of Audio Note's step-up transformer and phonograph cartridge product lines. You can read more about the arrival of the AN-S9 SUT HERE. 

But before I go on, take a look inside the AN-S9 SUT with me, it's a beauty! 

Check out those gorgeous fully silver wound and wired transformers with interleaved Super Mumetal 250 cores inside the Audio Note UK AN-S9 SUT.

You don't really get a feel for their size in the photos, but each is nearly the size of a 5oz coffee cup! Impressive.

And look at that massive solid copper isolation clamp that holds the transformers in place!

You'd think I'd be immune to being impressed by audio kit after nearly seven decades on Planet Earth, but Peter Qvortrup and his merry band of audio geniuses at Audio Note (UK) continue to impress and surprise me. 

Speaking of the audio system, it's a real mind-bender, with a full complement of Audio Note (UK) Level 5 components providing the juice to power my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers that are hot-rodded with custom Duelund CAST silver (HF circuit) and copper (LF circuit) components in the crossovers.

Starting at the source (above), that's my custom CTC Garrard 301 turntable in an Artisan Fidelity plinth, with an Audio Note (UK) Io Ltd. field-coil / moving-coil phonograph cartridge mounted to a Schick graphite headshell, and equipped with Acoustic Revive hybrid silver-copper PC-TripleC/EX headshell leads. The Schick tonearm was also rewired with silver wire tonearm cables. 

Below the turntable you can see the field-coil power supply for the cartridge (right), and the AN-S9 SUT (left). More about the Audio Note (UK) Io Ltd. field-coil / moving-coil phonograph cartridge HERE. 

The silver tonearm wires go the AN-S9 SUT, whose Pallas low-capacitance cables are hard-wired directly to the outputs of the silver wire wound transformers, and connects to the all silver Level 5 Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono preamplifier. The M8 RIAA connects to Ongaku 211 SET integrated amplifier, which powers my West's, with Audio Note (UK) silver interconnects and speaker cables connecting everything together. 

Man, this is one beautiful audio system, and my dream system! A big "Thank you!" to Peter Qvortrup for making it possible for me to give this amazing audio kit a listen. 

I was out on the NPR website and saw an article about Amy Grant's new album The Me That Remains, Amy's first new album in over a decade.

That piqued my interest, as decades ago, my friend Jonathan - an incredibly talented musician - had told me about playing music with Amy in Estes Park, Colorado, at a Christian music festival. That was circa 1980, or maybe a little before.

Well anyways, Jonathan was really impressed with Amy's music making, and when that memory popped into my head I thought I ought to go ahead and buy Amy's album and give it a listen. 

According to Wikipedia, this is Amy's twentieth studio album, and it is pressed on nice thick vinyl.

Through the AN-S9 SUT and Io field-coil / moving coil phonograph cartridge combo I travelled deep through the space & time layers of the recording to hear everything that was done in the recording studio and during the mastering.

The amount of  musical information recovered by the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo from the LP was nothing short of astounding, and true to Audio Note (UK) form, the music was delivered with accuracy, authenticity, and authority in its presentation to me as a listener.

Well, the album is a studio album, and there's a chorus of instruments surrounding Amy's vocals in a wall-to-wall wide, deep, layered, and voluminous soundstage with excellent imaging. I'm guessing the album was recorded in digital, and it sounds a touch "processed" in a digital sort of way. 

The emotional content of The Me That Remains comes through in spades with the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo, and you can tell this is a work of the heart by Amy. 

It's pretty apparent from the lyrics that Amy has taken an extended trip through the grinder of life's troubles, and come out the other side - The Me That Remains - wounded, changed, hopeful, and still healing. My heart goes out to her.

There's a beautiful "treasures of darkness" melancholy vibe to the A side of the album, with glimmers of hope peeking through here and there.

The AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo so powerfully relayed the dramatic and emotional content of Amy's music to me, that the music was bringing me down emotionally, so I set the album aside to listen to side B in a later listening session. Whew!

If you read my post from yesterday, I was waxing enthusiastically about Massenet's Thaïs opera featuring Renée Doria, that I have on 2 CD set on the Accord label (149179), that was released in 1987. 

I also have the original 2 LP set of the album that was recorded in 1965 on the Westminster record label (WST 236). That's it in the photo above, and I was curious to hear how the original LP would fare compare to the remastered CD.

Holy smokes! Through the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo Thaïs was transported from the recording venue in Paris to my living room in impressive fashion. I didn't attend that performance, but if I had, I'm not sure it would be as impressive in person as it sounds on my audio system.

The performance improvement from the CD version to the LP version of Thaïs through the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo was nothing short of astounding. There's just so much more of everything there in terms of sonic performance, drama and emotional engagement from the LP, that it is a bit of a shock. 

If you're thinking of adding the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo to your audio system, well you're in for a real treat. Hearing Thaïs snapped me out of the melancholy I was feeling after listening to The Me That Remains, and I just melted into the musical performance, carried away in reverie.

I'm just amazed at how much more I'm hearing with the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo from the LP. There's tons of interesting low-level musically relevant, dramatically relevant, information that almost completely goes missing in the CD version.

The ability of the AN-S9 SUT's silver wound interleaved Super Mumetal 250 cores to bring out all that extra low-level musical information adds immensely to the listening experience.

As ridiculously good as I thought Thaïs was on the CD version played through the CD 5.1x CD player with the Ongaku 211 SET integrated amplifier powering my West's, the LP played through the AN-S9 and Io FC/MC combo into the M8 RIAA phono preamp to feed the Ongaku powering my West's left me in a state of next level shock and awe.

Once again words fail, this level of performance is extraordinary. All the praise I heaped upon the CD version of Thaïs improved exponentially with the LP version: the abundance of meaningful musical information that emerges from the music signal, the impressively black background, the beautifully natural tone, the oodles of timbral textures, the expansive soundstage that fills my room, the pinpoint imaging, and the extraordinarily dramatic and agile dynamic prowess from the softest passages to the loudest.

I totally get why Peter Qvortrup told me we need a new audio reviewing language for the best hifi kit, because this kit renders the recordings in such an extraordinarily dramatic, engaging, and visceral fashion, that it is truly hard to find words to convey what is happening as I'm listening. 

The AN-S9 SUT hasn't even had time to settle into the system completely yet, so I imagine that it will get even better as it does. A scary thought!

Ok, that's all for now, as I need to go process what I'm experiencing from this setup, then I'll be back with more. I'm totally blown away!

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!