finally malaysia has its own high-end cables from klang. so you think klang can only produce bat kut teh (pork soup)?

visit klang manufaktur

a lot of times, i am exasperated by how audiophiles "decorate" their hifi room/listening area. i am a believer in feng shui (geomancy), naturally i believe there is such thing as hifi feng shui too.

yesterday i visited one audiophile who stays in a big bungalow. he should be rich as the bungalow is big and tastefully decorated. but when i entered his dedicated hifi room, my oh my, what a ugly mess! pillows and sofa seats of assorted sizes and colors adorned the four walls, acting as acoustic materials! his large JBL speakers are sitting on make-shift coffee tables with rollers! cds are strewn everywhere on the carpet and worse still, all the hifi equipment sit on the carpet with no supporting materials underneath! well, i don't have to mention the sound of the system, do i?

another memorable visit was this audiophile who combines his lab (he is a DIY-er) with his listening room. on the carpet, there were so many soldering blobs and cable remnants and all sorts of tools and many W.I.P (work-in-progress) kits ... one practically has to watch his step lest one steps on the wrong thing and gets electrocuted! and the room is full of dust.... it really was a disastrous environment to be in, let alone enjoying music!

another classic case was this guy who had a pair of very old magnaplanar 3 for sale. his room looked like a junk yard with gears so old that even i couldn't recognize. the grille cloth of the maggie was supposed to be white but this guy's pairs were practically black due to dirt and other forms of pollution! i told my friend who accompanied me there that the maggie 3 looks like the reverse of a gigantic pair of white-colored socks which have been worn for a month and still unwashed! my friend laughed so loud that the owner started looking at us with a scornful look! it was a hilarious visit.

more comedy came from one audiophile who decorated his hifi room with various national flags, again, supposedly acting as acoustics materials. you may wonder if you have stepped into united nations office by accident!

yet another audiophile sealed with room entirely with wooden doors! yes, wooden doors! yes, the entire room! can you imagine how dead the sound will become?

of course, the best hifi room i have ever visited belong to my good friend (that he is a millionaire is besides the point). check the archive for this audiophile who owns dcs, krell, finite elemente and apogee. he built his room based on robert harley's golden ratio and the acoustics are so good, with simple but classy aesthetics to boot. stepping into his hifi room each time has always been an aurally and visually enjoyable experience. you can ask panzer and hifikaki who have been there. no one else's room comes close to his room in my book.

my recommendations for an aesthetically pleasing and good feng shui hifi room/listening area:

1) tidy up! buy CD racks from ikea to store all your CDs; strewn CDs on the floor are bad feng shui. i know the mentality of some hifi nuts - they want to flaunt their collection but there are other ways to do it.

2) rack up all your equipment. equipment sitting on the floor is not only bad for the sound, it is hazardous as well.

3) acoustic materials - buy the professional ones like auralex and sonex. pillows are for your bedrooms and egg containers are for grocery shops! if you must use curtains, buy those materials (again, ikea is a wonderful resource) with good patterns and designs (plain ones are the best). no mickey mouse or superman imprints!

4) buy a good listening chair for the sweet spot because you are the one that you should please most since you sit there all the times! one audiophile i visited recently actually uses a barber chair (with elevation control!) used by those indian barbers!

5) reduce clutters - your stereophiles or TAS should be kept in shelves. buy lots of shelves if you need extra storage.

6) vacuum your room often to rid of the dust. a dusty place is never conducive for hifi and relaxation. you hifi may cough in unison with you!

7) have dimmer lights for that extra ambience but do watch out as dimmer lights are audibly noisy. for the bachelors who bring home girlfriends to listen to music, this is a great help....

8) treat your room as the most sacred place in the house! as you have spent so much on your hifi, you deserve the best listening environment to derive all the joy of music!

if you have a messy hifi room, this chinese new year is the best time to tidy up and introduce good feng shui to your hifi!

the chinese believe that once we usher in the new year, your bad luck will go away and good luck will follow you for the rest of the year.

it is not the case with me. tonight, another horrible thing happened. my meridian g08.2 sucked my hugo's LPCD disc and the bl**dy disc can't be read and ejected! it is stuck in the slot drive.

as some of you may know, LPCD is actually made from CD-R, which is slightly thinner than normal redbook cd, maybe that's why the meridian can't seem to read it properly. i actually think the slot drive is a major design flaw. but i can't deny that the g08.2 is a major improvement from g08. i will give a short review once it is properly broken in.

i have put an "urgent" sticker on my task of building my hifi altar. i want to offer prayers on a daily basis to my hifi god.

you know it and you have experienced it more than once, the demo blues are the kind of situations that frustrate the most earnest kind of host.

i have had more than my fair share of demo blues over the years and i would say in 7/10 cases either (1) my system didn't sound the way i intended to be, or (2), my visitors' reactions/feedback were not the kind that i wanted them to be.

before a big demo to impress you friends and visitors, you would clean up your listening room, polish your cable connectors, re-check your speaker positioning and for those vinylphiles, you would re-check your VTA, clean and prepare the list of LPs to be demo-ed to your visitors.

the big day came. you get jittery. you are so sure that your system can impress even the most critical of listeners but you are worried that their listening skills are nowhere near your level or their tastes/demands are totally different from yours.

you get the visitors seated comfortably and you get on with your job of playing your fave discs one by one. you observe their facial expressions. all look nonchalant; some even look pensive. you yell to yourself, "damn it, can't you tell how gorgeous carol kidd's tone is thru my system - the midrange is so lucid, can't you tell?". one of them manages to utter some remotely positive remarks about your system, "i quite like the way your system portrays the depth of the cathedral". you are exasperated and yell silently, "this is a studio recording, you fool!". looks like your visitors are totally clueless about your system's strengths.

yet another comments with a tinge of sarcasm, "something about your drum, it doesn't sound like a real drum. it sounds like an oil drum, or something hitting on a tin can." now this really gets you cranky and edgy. you wanted to shove him the exit door but being a gracious host, you swallow your pride quietly. you tell yourself, "this cotton-ear should be barred from now on".

so the listening session is over. none of them seems too impressed but they are all too nice to say anything damaging but the damage is already done. their facial disapproval says it all. your are disheartened and your whole day is spoilt.

on the same night, you switch on the system again. everything seems so perfect, it is almost faultless. carol kidd is alive in your room. what happened this afternoon? why can't this bunch of cotton-ears hear how glorious my system is?

then it suddenly dawns on you that this was the same situation that happened last month, when little johnny brought his entourage of visitors to your house and none of them said anything that could tantamount to a praise or compliment. you wallowed in your misery too and did the same thing at night by switching on your system and found perfection in it.

as the night wears on and you getting a bit pacified by this sudden realization that not all cotton ears can appreciate high-end systems. carol kidd is still sounding naughty on gershwin's "nice work, if you can get it". she is so palpably real in your listening room that you can touch her. your take a slow sip of your red wine which you reserve for late-night listening.

"c'est la vie", you tell yourself. "no more demos to cotton ears."

[this article is taken from av xpress issue #3]

This year's KLIAV is here again! Hi-Fi show is a religious pilgrimage that any serious audiophile would attend annually. Malaysia has its own, called the Kuala Lumpur International Audio Visual Show (KLIAV show) which is held annually in J.W.Marriot hotel. While the show can vary year to year with different themes and products on display, it is interesting to know that the different personalities among hi-fi show goers remain unchanged over the years.

[1] Pasar Malam shoppers

This type of audiophiles comes just to hunt for bargains. Whether it is that Wattgate or Hubbell IEC plug, or even the mass-market DVD players, he comes with a purpose. He will compare prices, haggle tirelessly and even ask for complimentary gifts. He will be happiest if the item comes with EPP (Easy Payment Plan). This sort of audiophiles derives the greatest satisfaction from hifi shows because they get to spend and buy lots of things that they would normally not spend on. They help to improve the economy of the hifi shows! We need them!

Advice: Bring a credit card with enough credit limit

[2] Flyers collectors

He would collect any papers in sight, from any booth, anywhere… nothing can escape him. He would end up with a bag of flyers and promo materials, ready for home reading. Some fanatics even keep flyers from previous years as collector’s items. For those with ulterior motives in mind, it is also a chance to chat up the sexy promoters who always dress up in skimpy shorts and revealing tops, and ask for their phone numbers or MSN contacts.

Advice: Bring a bag big enough to contain all those flyers. Also, some extra business cards for those sexy promoters.

[3] Talk-Cock-Sing-Song-ers

Ha, the same old faces surface in every hifi show! Ubiquitous. Omnipresent. You see them everywhere. They are the perennial feature in hifi shows. You see them in Amcorp Mall, in City Square, hanging out in all the hifi shops in town. They would go from showroom to showroom, looking for their friends to chat, the more the merrier. Most of them get their complimentary passes from their dealer friends and they will hang out till the last minute every day. Topics of discussion range from the latest hifi upgrade, the latest visit to an audiophile’s home, which room sounds the best/worst, to the prettiest promoter with the shortest skirt in the show.

Advice: Bring a stool or chair if you get too tired standing

[4] Serious listeners

Don’t ever disturb them if you find them with their eyes closed, sitting still in the sweet spot inside the showroom, else you risk getting a verbal wrath from them.

These audiophiles are a serious bunch. They have waited for the hifi show to sample the latest esoteric gear. Even with another 50 persons camped inside the claustrophobic showroom, you won’t distract them from concentrating on the music. And they are the ones that will talk to the designer/manufacturer in great length and detail. They would also attend the show every single day to make sure they get to listen to the system for a 2nd or 3rd time!

Also, they will come will their own audiophile-approved CDs!

Advice: Wear a T-shirt printed with “Leave Me Alone” or “Silent, Please”.

[5] Cheap CD hunters

Yeah, they come solely for the CDs! Plenty of audiophile CDs would be on discount and it is a delight for those who really want to buy the latest software!

In recent years, Chinese audiophile CDs is a big hit. Selling at below RM30, most Chinese folks find them affordable.

Buying CDs is the greatest reward for any visitor to hifi show. At least you don’t leave the show without buying anything!

Advice: Defer all your CD purchases until you visit the show!

So, which type of personality are you? Whichever, do enjoy this year’s KLIAV show!

if you have an LP like wilson-philips here, can you concentrate on your music? or are you going to keep dusting the cover?



vinyl has made a surprising comeback in some retail circles of late with some music labels bringing in LPs, both new and old titles. this is happening in malaysia as well. it seems that LPs bring in more stable income while CD sales keep spiralling downwards.

latest to bite the dust is tower records, KLCC. rumoured to owe a debt totalling millions of ringgits to various music labels, news of tower klcc closing down had been circulating months ago. i was late in catching its last breath - sale as graet as 70% off retail price - was held on the last few days before the closure. i was told there was a mad rush among the (lucky) early birds. dang, i missed it.

note: i just found out - to my utter shock - great differences in my blog's presentation when i switched from my normal firefox browser to internet exloper! a lot of things are missing! please, readers, if you can, stick to firefox ;-)

[click to enlarge]

the last few posts have been heavy going, let's chill and grin to our cartoonist's latest poke on audiophiles....

if music reproduction by hifi systems be as good as DHL's no-compromise, 100% faithful delivery, then we would all be willing to spend our lifetime's savings on hifi ;-)

click to enlarge.

in fine print - "life was so much easier when we had single-ended triodes"

this is damn farnie.....

does rowan remind you of any local hifi dealer or does the customer remind you of any of your friends, or even yourself? hahahaha....

many people don't know that before rowan atkinson made it big as mr.bean, he was already quite famous with comedy show "not the nine o'clock news" and "black adder".