When You Wish Upon A(udio) Star

[jadis]

Yesterday, I was fortunate to visit the listening domain of WS moderator/member AudioStar who is the ever hospitable host. I understand that he had installed a pair of newly custom-built speakers by Lin Gomez and also new 'diffuser/absorber panels made by Vicente Lim that surrounds 3 sides of his music room walls.

It was a great and enjoyable day, and thanks for the sumptuous lunch prepared by Mr. and Mrs Audiostar. The whole afternoon was a great rocking musical event, to say the least.

The new-look set-up of Audiostar: (back-end)



My memory is not that great anymore with regards to model numbers but all I know is that the speakers are composed of
JBL professional drivers and an Aurum Cantus super-tweeter.
The amps are 3 pairs of Cayin monoblocks. Two of the mono's use 845 tubes among others. As for the crossover functions, maybe Audiostar can enlighten us on this as I get lost somehow with these things.

Right side speakers with the room treatment panels:



To the Left: (with due apologies to Beyonce)



Closer look of the amps:



The Front End:



The Luxman PD444 DD table, SME 309 and ZYX cartridge:



The killer LPs on the 'Sahig':





The 'Crowd':



L-R: Vicente Lim, Robert Tan, Audiostar, Halls, Voltraizer

The 'Expanded Crowd':



RT showing some 'arm' to Audiostar:



Audiostar holding the 'arm', and FR 64FX: (Future 'arm'?)



Audiostar with his 'room treatment designer' Vicente Lim:



Photo above shows how big the speakers are. And with
the look of Audiostar, I for one can clearly see the guy is happy. Thanks again, Val.

[skeesix]

Very Impressive Congratulations Val. The speakers thou are not wife friendly. Unless of course she is also an audiofool.

[accastil]

daming bago ah!....congrats Val. this is really showing the same passion youve had for car audio. kung may competition dito malamang hakot ka nanaman ng trophies

[TheAnalogSource]

thanks val. sarap kumain dyan sa inyo tapos magpaantok sa couch

i have invited myself over dahil me natunugan akong ....BEEP BEEP BEEP

[Jon Agner]

Looking forward for next weekend ...... kaso it's mother's day pala

[Superman]

CONGRATS Val and Enteng! Those speakers are HUGE! Tama nga si Lin, pwedeng pang-Coliseum!

Looking forward to next weekend's gathering...May chicken ba sa menu?

[Mamimili]

Congratulations Val
You said you’re an audiophile second, in which case you must have a "mighty" large journalistic pen collection

[Jon Agner]

CONGRATS Val and Enteng! Those speakers are HUGE! Tama nga si Lin, pwedeng pang-Coliseum!

Looking forward to next weekend's gathering...May chicken ba sa menu?

Jen,

Malamang kasing tunog niyan yung kay Lin, wide and deep soundstage but with pinpoint imaging

[Mamimili]

There must be enough people to qualify for a "Pile on the floor" club?

[Superman]

CONGRATS Val and Enteng! Those speakers are HUGE! Tama nga si Lin, pwedeng pang-Coliseum!

Looking forward to next weekend's gathering...May chicken ba sa menu?

Jen,

Malamang kasing tunog niyan yung kay Lin, wide and deep soundstage but with pinpoint imaging

WOW Great! Dala ka ng KFC ha!

[jadis]

thanks val. sarap kumain dyan sa inyo tapos magpaantok sa couch

i have invited myself over dahil me natunugan akong ....BEEP BEEP BEEP

That is the killer instinct, halls. You got sleepy in
the couch but you were able to make a 'quick draw' reservation on something, or shall I say something black
and 12" in diameter???? IF that does not impress, I don't
know what will.

[TheAnalogSource]

philip, after you've left..... we hard a hard time distinquishing which is the narrow and the wide range........


maybe i took home the wide range many thanks val

[Superman]

Bakit wala sa picture si Tcris?

[jadis]

The day was not finished till we hit the place of JAA, a very good friend of Val, for a nightcap. Only RT, Enteng joined me as Val couldn't join us due to some commitments.

The curio item here is a pair of 'old' Dick Sequerra Near Field Monitor or NFM loudspeakers and Sequerra woofer modules from the famed Sequerra Signature speakers of the early 90s. Hooked into bi-amp or tri-amp configuration with a German made supertweeter, the sound it produced was something I was not prepared for.






Again, due to my lack of RAM bits, aka 'plain laziness, I wish JAA can supply us with the necessary info on all this complicated hook-up, set-up and the like. I stopped memorizing after 'input-ing' Electrocompaniet and Musical Fidelity.. Oh, I do recall the cartridge is a vintage Fidelity Research FR-1.











And I was not prepared to absorb the sound that this system produced. When I walked in and saw the the speaker configuration, I said to myself this was the most un-orthodox method of speaker placement I have seen by far. BUT, when the music played, I was in for some shock as it produced a very coherent and balanced sound that does not consumate or translate to the odd way the the speakers were positioned. And for sure we 3 guests were bowled over by the rock and sock dynamics with little or no sense of fatigue. Playing JAA's valuable 'hot stamplers', the most notible of which was a Sergio Mendez Brazil 66 album called 'Stillness', wow, was I in for some amazing musical treat. These small speakers can rock the house and sound so open like no other. There is virtually no speaker and the soundstage even transcend its dimimutive size. And the James Newton Howard and Friends D2d album just sounds superb on this system. And to think that the bass amp was only 75 watts? I can't wait for another session with a 100 watt bass amp. Thanks for the time and the hospitality, John.

[jadis]

philip, after you've left..... we hard a hard time distinquishing which is the narrow and the wide range........


maybe i took home the wide range many thanks val

Noly...You just impressed me even more. Can you vist me today? For some tips?

[randybarba]

Wow. Thanks for posting the pictures Phillip. Now I'm really excited to visit Val's place this weekend.

[Jon Agner]

philip, after you've left..... we hard a hard time distinquishing which is the narrow and the wide range........


maybe i took home the wide range many thanks val

Noly...You just impressed me even more. Can you vist me today? For some tips?

Jadis,

I think you have a new student

[quarterback]

congrats val. now i really have to find time to visit your den. it's really good to have your own playground.

kung sa akin ito matagal na akong napalayas.

[audiostar]

Hey Phil, thanks for posting.

My set up actually stemmed from my curiosity about how horns can be set up to recreate a sound stage. While it is a given that horns specially the Altec 290s - (used widely by the Americans during the Vietnam war as a public adress system to alert the GIs on an incoming dangers) sound good when used in the mid-range region - many have this notion that it cannot image the way hi-end speakers of today do. That is the first challenge.

The second to many other challenges was how a d' appolito configuration would sound using vintage drivers. I first heard this configuration during one of my trips to the US years ago. One of the speaker sytems that Westlake audio is famous for have this same config. I was awed by how the speakers sounded. Upon reaching home, I immediately contacted my friend Lin Gomez in Dau, Pampanga and asked him if it was possible for him to develop a loudspeaker system adapting Westlake's config. Yes he said, then he started making a prototype which eventually became a fixture in his listening/iving room.

The choice of vintage drivers was another challenge. What vintage woofers were best suited to sandwich the mid and the tweeter? Lin and I went to great lengths to test which woofers could give us a flat response in the config. The 15-inch JBL D-140 was the obvious choice for woofers and JBL 075 for the tweeters. Another problem - JBL 075 can only give us up to 14kkhz of highs. This is where the Aurum Cantus ribbon tweeters came in. For added lows, we chose the Vanderstein subs.

How can they recreate a soundstage? Now, this is where Vicente Lim's(Enteng) expertise in sound treatment came in handy. Enteng is not into the acoustic business. Like most of us, he is an audiophile who is seriously into the hobby. He had transformed his less than 20 per sq. meter room into a music hall, using knowledge he paintakingly learned from books and the internet. So the team - me, Lin and Enteng worked on this concept, without really knowing what the outcome would be.

MORE IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT - I have to work too guys

[Bedroom Eyes]

Great Set UP Congrats pareng Val