I may get punched for my title, and that’s okay. It is truth 🙂
My job , or one of them here at Audible Images AV as the Marketing guy is to experiment, test gear, etc. and then share my experience in our blog. This is a straight observation I experienced myself and I know it needs to be shared, cause it was pretty cool, and also why I believe Audible Images AV has been around for 12 years already.
So, the characters in this story happen to be Ed (my boss and friend), James, Brent, Myself and 12 cats. (1 of 12 cats looking on, from right side of couch in immediate image below) The scenario is an Audiophile who needed some help tuning his system (as a friend as opposed to being an actual customer) and incorporating a newly added subwoofer that is of a much older generation of subs, to his home theater.
Background details & slight tangent…
About 6 months or so in with my stint here at Audible Images, I met James, a friend of Ed Masterson’s who came into our showroom who had worked with Ed at Kennedy Space Center back in the early 90’s. They both worked for a major defense contractor there, and James the friend, who is also an Audiophile and a person who won a pair of Sonus Faber Venere 1.5’s at an event we held (a drawing if u will), a year or so before I got here. (I’ve been an Audiophile and here at Audible for a little over 2 years)
So going back around a year or so, James came in to pickup a center channel he was buying as a friend if you will, the “Venere Center” from Ed to incorporate a center channel into his home theater as a matching piece. (piano black is the color of his Sonus Faber Venere series at his home). Naturally when a friend, existing customer or new visitor comes into the showroom, we give them a demo for fun, so that they know what the ultimate sounding system is out there in the world. Conveniently, that ultimate system resides right here in our showroom here in Melbourne, Florida. We have three listening rooms in our showroom: 2 theater demo rooms which include one modest high performance system called “The Escape Pod” and the other Ultra High End High Performance system & room called “The Transporter” plus the third room is a medium high end two channel listening room called “The Great Room”. James had already heard our other systems, but he had not heard the latest upgrade in “The Transporter” reference/listening room, with the additional new 6 sub-base / subwoofers in the front of the room. They are the REL G1 Mark II Sub-base speakers (Subs famous for 2 channel listening & also used for LFE theater, stacked in arrays of 3.) I had been testing a song I hadn’t heard in years called “Lazy” by Deep Purple on their Machine Head album, when James came in whom I had just met that day for the first time. “Lazy” sounded incredible in “The Transporter”. (Genre: Hard rock, Heavy metal, Blues rock) James had let on that he was a hard core Deep Purple fan and after going thru a set of tracks from “Machine Head” and then from the Made in Japan live album which James had highly recommended we listen to, (1973 U.S. release album), James took off after an hour or so of listening to intense rock/metal/blues. And as a friend of Ed’s he later called and had asked Ed if sometime, Ed could visit his home to tune the system. Now this request was riding on Ed’s mind for quite a while. (a few months) Ed working 6 days a week forever, this was a hard thing to do, to take an afternoon off and evening, and make the almost one hour drive to a friends, to tune his system. Ed gets very little family time at night.
The Purpose of the Day and Events
So to bring it back on track from my tangent, back around the first of June this year (2019), while Ed was working a Saturday showroom day, he texted me about going to James house after showroom hours to tune his system. I was feeling like dung less 10%, and so I let fly back via text, lemme see how I feel later. But I texted Ed back in 30 minutes, and said let’s just get our friend James pumped and tuned.
Now Ed enjoys eating. So, when I asked him if he could swing by and just pick me up on the way North he said, don’t eat before he comes, we’re doing Kelsey’s. What’s special about that? Well, Kelsey’s is a kick ass (excuse the french) Italian/Greek restaurant (a family chain of 4 or 5 local stores in Brevard County and back in the late 80’s they even had one across from UCF when we were going there, and it was about our favorite eating spot) in which Ed, Brent and Myself love their pizza and it’s sweet dough and their almost sensuous Greek salads with a house dressing that matches the awesomeness. So Brent would meet Ed and I at Kelsey’s in Titusville, eat a festive meal, than all 3 Audiophiles would head over to James for a System Tuning and Cat Entertaining party. (James and his Wife have 12 cats, 1 outdoor and 11 that live indoor 🙂 )
When we got to James home, you could tell James was an Audiophile. How? He had delicate custom made speaker pillowcase covers for his Venere 1.5’s on stands and his gear was in a dedicated closet by the front door that normally houses coats and umbrellas for most people, lol. So, Ed and Brent worked on James system. And I kept the 11 indoor cats distracted from the tuning people. The challenge was trying to get a 15+ year old sub to play nicely in two channel mode, and also to be tuned in with the thump and boom it needed to add in 5.1 theater listening mode too. I know Velodyne makes good subs because Brent and Ed have said so. (Note: Brent, also a lifetime Audiophile, who also worked with Ed at the Cape, has a crazy high end theater. D’Agostino Momentum Mono Blocs for the fronts of his 7.2 system, and a 130 inch screen for his theater with 5 cushy theater chairs.) But I, being of a newer generation of Audiophiles, having been exposed to REL Acoustics ingenuous 2 channel setup mode that uses High level connection which has totally in my opinion, revolutionized the dynamic range listening access and experience of low frequency bass in two channel and then also LFE for surround 5.1 or 7.1 sub woofing sound.
It took about 2 1/2 hours for Ed to satisfy himself for blending the sub and tuning the system and the 2 front left and right speakers to the rear surface mounted surrounds so that the NAD 748 Receiver could deliver it’s most enjoyable listening served up. Perhaps the positioning of the Venere 1.5’s had only been adjusted 21 times, I can’t say for sure 🙂
Before we took off, I said goodbye to the affectionate and also attack cats that James owned, shot some photos of the system in his living room, and we then took off for home.
Ed dropped me off around 9:30 Pm, a long day for Ed, but a good one. We laughed our butts off a number of times while eating dinner and after dinner from a few “older” type jokes we used to employ while back as roommates in college at UCF. And we know James was stoked with his now tuned up system. Semper Hi Fi …
Audible Images AV is excited to be serving: Melbourne, Florida, Rockledge, Merritt Island, Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, Port St. John, Satellite Beach, Space Coast, Vero Beach, Orlando, Daytona, Kissimmee, Central Florida, the entire state of Florida…and even the greater USA, for all their Stereo two channel and Home Theater systems.
