[chosenhandle]

Hello;

Frank Van Alstine will be giving a presentation of his products at the next Audio Society of Minnesota (ASM) meeting on November 18th at 7:00pm.

All are welcome! Please come by and cheer on Frank as he demonstrates his latest and greatest products.

The meeting will be held at:
Pavek Radio Museum
3515 Raleigh Avenue
St. Louis Park, Minnesota 55416
Phone 952/926-8198 Fax 952/929-6105

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&q=3515+Raleigh+Avenue+.+St.+Louis+Park,+Minnesota+55416&um=1&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=image

For those not familiar with the ASM, we meet monthly and invite guests to enlighten us and give us the opportunity to learn about new concepts and products. We even have a speaker building contest each year...just ask Nate!

We look forward to seeing you
Audio Society of Minnesota
http://sites.google.com/site/audiosocietyofminnesota/Home

[martyo]

Congrats Frank! Should be an interesting and informative evening for the Society.

[Toka]

Any chance of video recording/webcasting for those of us who cannot attend?

[Listens2tubes]

I hope an Audio Society member will log on to give us an account of the evening and maybe a few pics.

[rcag_ils]

I drove approx. 30 miles to attend Frank presentation and it was worthwhile.

By the time I got there, the room was already full, all the seats were taken, so I just picked a spot in the back. After the brief introduction by a member of the MN Audio Society (I am not a member), Frank took the stage and gave his presentation along side with his equipment.

The equipment on display were the Insight Integrated, Ultra 550, Ultimate 70, Ultra DAC, and some Insight gear (I don't know the specific of each). I got to meet Frank and his staff, Frank has a dedicated team of staff who are like Frank, really believe in what they are doing.

Frank's presentation covered his career history in HIFI, most of them we already read about in his Audio Basic newsletter, what I didn't know was Frank upgraded his father's Sears record player in the 50's. Magic cable and capacitors were discussed, so were mil. spec. parts, I got a chuckle out of what Frank said, "if mil. spec. parts are so good, why do the military equipment. sound so bad." Well the only audio freq band that military care for is from 300Hz to 3k, if the government wanted to make a perfect stereo system, I think they can do it.

The equipment demonstration first started with the Insight Integrated connected to a pair of Magnepan 20.1, I believe they were $20,000 speakers donated by Magnepan. Well, the spot that I was standing and the room accoustic in the building was less than ideal, and the music played at the time wasn't anything that I was familiar with, so I can't really comment on the sound.

The next one up for demo was the Ultra 550, I can't remember which preamp it paired up with, judging the sound of the Insight integrated and the Ultra 550, the Insight seemed very dynamic, the Ultra 550 was very smooth, but then again, due to many variables in the demo room, that's all I could gather.

I chatted with Frank's amp builder about my Ultra 550 upgrade, he did a beautiful job on my Ultra 550, with my hard inspector eyes, I can say his workmanship was first class.

Minnesota has some major impact in the audio industry, we have Magnepan, Audio Research, and Audio by Van Alstine, Bill Johnson has recently retired after 38 years in the business, and sold Audio Research to an Italian firm, engineering will be done in California, marketing and manufacturing will stay in Minnesota. The work in Magnepan probably will be passed on to the family. I hope Frank will never retire, and keeps manufacturing genuine good sounding equipment.

[turkey]

Minnesota has some major impact in the audio industry, we have Magnepan, Audio Research, and Audio by Van Alstine, Bill Johnson has recently retired after 38 years in the business, and sold Audio Research to an Italian firm, engineering will be done in California, marketing and manufacturing will stay in Minnesota. The work in Magnepan probably will be passed on to the family. I hope Frank will never retire, and keeps manufacturing genuine good sounding equipment.

The difference is that Frank actually makes good products.

[martyo]

Minnesota has some major impact in the audio industry, we have Magnepan, Audio Research, and Audio by Van Alstine, Bill Johnson has recently retired after 38 years in the business, and sold Audio Research to an Italian firm, engineering will be done in California, marketing and manufacturing will stay in Minnesota. The work in Magnepan probably will be passed on to the family. I hope Frank will never retire, and keeps manufacturing genuine good sounding equipment.

The difference is that Frank actually makes good products.

Frank makes very good products, but I don't think AR and Magnapan are too shabby. 

[turkey]

Minnesota has some major impact in the audio industry, we have Magnepan, Audio Research, and Audio by Van Alstine, Bill Johnson has recently retired after 38 years in the business, and sold Audio Research to an Italian firm, engineering will be done in California, marketing and manufacturing will stay in Minnesota. The work in Magnepan probably will be passed on to the family. I hope Frank will never retire, and keeps manufacturing genuine good sounding equipment.

The difference is that Frank actually makes good products.

Frank makes very good products, but I don't think AR and Magnapan are too shabby. 

You're welcome to them.

Magnepan makes some stuff that's ok, although nothing to write home about IMO. (Maybe they're an acquired taste or something.)

ARC's products are just silly. Over-priced and under-performing.

[Zheeeem]

Minnesota has some major impact in the audio industry, we have Magnepan, Audio Research, and Audio by Van Alstine, Bill Johnson has recently retired after 38 years in the business, and sold Audio Research to an Italian firm, engineering will be done in California, marketing and manufacturing will stay in Minnesota. The work in Magnepan probably will be passed on to the family. I hope Frank will never retire, and keeps manufacturing genuine good sounding equipment.

The difference is that Frank actually makes good products.

Frank makes very good products, but I don't think AR and Magnapan are too shabby. 

You're welcome to them.

Magnepan makes some stuff that's ok, although nothing to write home about IMO. (Maybe they're an acquired taste or something.)

ARC's products are just silly. Over-priced and under-performing.

Well, hopefully everyone can agree that both ARC and Magnepan have advanced the state of the art at one or another time in their corporate lives.  And, thinking back 30 years, I can recall hearing a pair of tympanies driven by a D100 and SP4 which changed my thinking on audio equipment altogether.  Yes, admittedly grot by 2008 standards.

Maggies, in particular, are no longer to my taste (though I still have the tympanis I lusted after in my HT).  I do still like ARC stuff, but there have been reliability issues.

I think that a healthy hifi marketplace suggests a diversity of products should be out there at any given time.  After all, one size does not fit all, or we'd all be listening to bose wave radios or some such.

[skrivis]

*

[turkey]

Jim Winey had a "better" idea and pursued it. I don't agree that his basic premises are superior, but his products are more or less honest ones. Magnepan has certainly advanced the state of the art if you like their style of planar dipoles.

Bill Johnson is just a charlatan. He has done nothing to advance the state of the art of anything but how to best dip into the wallets of the credulous. As I said, his products are under-performing, over-priced, and unreliable.

[martyo]

Well, hopefully everyone can agree that both ARC and Magnepan have advanced the state of the art at one or another time in their corporate lives.  And, thinking back 30 years, I can recall hearing a pair of tympanies driven by a D100 and SP4 which changed my thinking on audio equipment altogether.  Yes, admittedly grot by 2008 standards.

Zheem, at the hi-end salon here in Chicago we dealt with back then, the Tympanies with the ARC D-150 and SP-3 was THE set-up. We drove downtown many times after work just to listen. The D-76 was the amp they used for smaller speakers, like the "pans" or the Dahlquist DQ-10's my brother and I ended up with. I remember when the solid state gear came out too.

[rcag_ils]

I forgot to mention that Frank mentioned something about how did he evaluate his product at the meeting.

He said something like after he got the circuit design on paper, and had the circuit built, he would finetune the circuit based on the listening test, including playing various types of music, playing both channels in mono, and making sure both channels were identical, then determined which component in the circuit needed to be changed. Frank also said that sometimes when the circuit looked good on paper, but not performing ideally in real life.

That kind of raises the question of how should we judge audio product, does it mean that if a circuit's calculation and graphs look perfect on paper, but fails the listening test, then it's a bad design? Or if the designer somehow be able to put the right parts together, and make the circuit sound good to him, and certain people, but the math is all wrong on paper, then it makes him a good designer?

Is audio design more dependent in hearing then true science?

How can we find a true reference in this hobby?

[sueata1]

A live musical performance Outside in Free Air without Hall Acoustics & Amplification would be a good starting point.

Happy listening,,,
Mel

[avahifi]

Actually what I said is that we compare one changed channel with one original channel with mono material with the speakers side by side and the setup randomized so nobody knows which is new and which is original.  Then we ask ourselves "is there any difference" and if so, is a a good bad difference and which one is the good one?  Then we check to see what we were listening to.

Regarding measures good and sounds bad, that is simply because we were not making all the appropriate measurements needed to predict.

Regarding measures bad and sounds good, that means it is bad and you happen to like something that is changing the music from what was on the source. Or possibly what measures bad is overwhelmed by something else about the circuit that is really good so the net is a true gain.  If we had the handle on measuring everything needed to build perfect audio, the fun would be all over. 

Merry Christmas,

Frank Van Alstine