October 23rd, 2006
RMAF recovery ...
We'll have more to say sometime next week after we catch up on sleep. The show continues to grow, and I never
cease to be impressed with how many incredibly nice people I meet in this industry. The show is a blend of all
company sizes.
In the week long run-up to the show, I find myself running on fumes - the result of a two week long sleep deprivation
experiment ... as if I needed to better understand its effects. This year, the situation was exacerbated by a trip back East to
set up 3 Galibiers.
Running on depleted energy stores, I had the opportunity to "feed" off of everyone's enthusiasm (including my own) and
had a great time.
My ongoing regret is that we didn't have more folks to run the room, because it wasn't until Sunday morning
that I stepped more than 10 feet outside our suite.
I took only a few room photos which I'll post shortly - mostly of old and new friends. As far as an overview of
interesting rooms, I'll have to depend on the press as well as the feedback from friends I trust.
Speaking of new friends (and what a small world it is), I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with Dennis
and Brian Fraker of Serious Stereo. These guys don't take
themselves seriously, and their gear is outstanding.
After I learned of the shared connection between a customer whom both Serious and I are about to deliver to, I further
learned of the Texas connection - between Azzolina (my co-exhibitor), Chimera Labs, and Serious. Small world ...
I'm beginning to see a repeating pattern between the companies with whom I share customers, and I am certainly
flattered to placed in the company of the likes of Dennis and Brian Fraker. More to the point, I feel as if I have made
two new friends.
It's been two years since I met up with
Jim Hagerman and this too, was a special treat.
I've come to the opinion that one of the main virtues of a show like this is to serve as a sort of therapy session -
especially for small artisan manufacturers like Galibier, Hagerman, and Serious. It provides us with the opportunity
to recharge with old and new friends.
Thank you Dennis, Brian, Jim, and everyone else whom I'm too tired to mention.
October 22nd, 2006
we're Famous ...
Galibier Design was written up in the Erie Village Review. The article is
here
and in PDF format, here.
October 12th, 2006
RMAF Preview
RMAF Equipment Lineup at the Show - Suite 1130 (our room):
Note: a copy of our show guide can be downloaded by clicking the following two links
Turntables and Cartridges
Electronics - Phono and Line Stages
Electronics - Amplifiers
Speakers
Cabling and misc.
We'll also have turntables in the following manufacturers' rooms
- Gavia turntable
- Schroeder Reference tonearm
- EMT HSD cartridge
- Gavia turntable
- Schroeder Reference tonearm
- ZYX Airy-2 cartridge
October 11th, 2006
Grind to the nose stone, or something like that - a busy Summer ...
A lot has been going on at Galibier over the Summer and we've received no small amount of grief for not keeping this log current.
After the show, we'll try to catch up as best as we can.
Below are some highlights of our activity this Summer. This may well give you an idea of the work that goes on beneath the surface - the things
your mother never warned you about running a small audio company.
Shipping
Unglamorous, but necessary as fuel surcharges continue their unrelenting upward trend.
What began as an attempt to control costs for our customers resulted more benefits than we anticipated - improved delivery convenience,
package protection, and easier handling.
North American shipments are now shipping in a custom laser cut foam solution. This is extremely robust and handles much more easily than
crates. There is no compromise in protection and this design saves you about 100 pounds in transportation costs.
Equally important for residents in large cities, is the fact that your Galibier shipment can now be lifted (weak backs need not apply).
A third floor walk-up apartment in NYC presented quite a challenge in transporting a 250 Lb. crate the final 50 feet to its new home.
With this solution, we can now return to using Federal Express, which has the benefit of home delivery from Tuesdays to Saturdays.
Federal Express has evening home delivery (5:30pm to 8:00pm local time) as well as delivery by appointment. This has met with great success.
Your shipment is now divided into 4 packages: turntable base, platter, miscellaneous components, and battery.
Due to the vagaries of overseas exports (customs, tracking, etc.) we will continue to crate turntables shipped outside of North America.
European Union Compliance with hazardous substance directive - RoHS and WEEE
We have been paddling diligently beneath the surface to adapt our designs to comply with the European Union's
toxic substances initiative (RoHS and WEEE). This has not been an insignificant task.
The Serac Turntable
We remain perilously close to producing the base. The above activities highlight why we're not quite there yet.
We appreciate your patience and will update the Serac status on the Serac's product page.
Amplifier Certification
These amplifiers are spoiling us very quickly. They'll be our main amps at the show
Mike Sanders' (Quicksilver Audio)
new single ended amplifiers
These amplifiers, while not an all-out assault on the state of the art (like Lynn's Karnas), come very, very close at a fraction
of the cost. Mike continues to amaze, as they embarrass many $15,000 amplifiers at about 1/5 the price. They too will be in our main
room at the Audiofest.
June 28th, 2006
Horsing around at Steve K's
Another fun evening playing with electonics. Shown here at Steve Kaufman's is Lynn Olson,
sitting in front of his
Karna Amplifiers (blue top plates).
We'll soon begin playing with these amplifiers, auditioning transformers from
Dave Slagle of Intact Audio.
Steve's monoblocks are behind that and also use Dave Slagle iron. They are a dual mono
implementation of John Pessetto's amps.
It's all too infrequent these days when we get to let our hair down and have fun with our toys.
June 12th, 2006
Graphite TPI Platter © Update
Over the weekend, we did some preliminary experimentation with the graphite TPI © on
our Serac platter. Results were very encouraging.
June 9th, 2006
Graphite TPI Platter © Update
Last month, I produced a few evaluation platter mats - for the purpose of
sending to existing customers who own the earlier Teflon/Alu platter. As
you know, the Teflon/Alu platters can be retrofitted to employ the new Graphite/TPI ©
architecture. The basic "chassis" is identical to both the Gavia and
Stelvio platters.
If your existing turntable setup allows you to raise your VTA setting by
.250", these "demo" mats may be installed on top of your current platter.
The sonic character is indistinguishable from the final product.
These demo mats are fabricated like a regular record mat - having a record
spindle hole and a 4" diameter record label rebate - as opposed to the
actual TPI © insert which has a 4" donut hole that matches the construction of
the Teflon piece in the Teflon / Alu platters.
Retrofitting an existing platter involves returning it to Galibier. We
machine away .250" of the Teflon and insert a Graphite top plate in its
place.
TPI Platter © development was delayed until such point that my
experimentation with the sealing layer was complete - both on Stelvio platters as well
as on Gavia platters. Mistakes are expensive and I wanted to limit them.
Going into this exercise, I thought that the best I could hope for was to
break even sonically. The benefit I was searching for was an effective
seal for the platter (the graphite smudges and stains) which had no sonic penalty.
My concerns about sonic penalties were very real. In early experiments with
the Graphite / TPI ©, we learned that seemingly insignificant changes have a
dramatic effect on the presentation.
In one session, we sandwiched a layer of paper (about .003" thick) between
the graphite top and a Stelvio platter's brass layer. The degradation was
not to be believed. There was blurring, a smearing of attack and decay.
Those of you who experimented with ribbon drive belts will know what I'm
talking about.
We tried various graphite sealants for the platter over the last two weeks.
We eliminated the "pretenders" - getting down to two final candidates -
both of which constitute a sonic upgrade on the order of going from a ZYX
Airy to a Universe ... perhaps more. Subsequent listening sessions
determined the winner. It was very close, and I would have been very happy with
either of the two.
On one weekend in particular, we had two listening sessions that spanned
some 10 hours over two days - using both my amplifiers as well as Lynn Olson's
Karna Amplifiers.
We listened on both a Gavia and a Stelvio turntable - using a pair of
Triplanar tonearms, along with a ZYX Universe, and a Dynavector XV-1s
cartridge.
If I were forced to choose between my Stelvio with an untreated Graphite top plate
and a Gavia with the coated graphite, there is no question that I would choose the Gavia.
Of course, a treated Stelvio platter experiences the same gains as the Gavia does.
The types of things I'm hearing are in the subtle decays, the tone color, the
harmonic envelopment, the rhythm ... the music is breathing and alive.
Listening on to Michael Hedge's "Ariel Boundaries", I heard beat-tones
in the long decays that I've never heard before. I mention this recording not so
much because it is an audiophile favorite, but because I am intimately familar with
the sound of my Martin HD-28 guitar, and I've never heard this level of reproduction
before ... ever! This was not of the usual audiophile drek, but rather the musically
relevant detail. This insight into recordings continued - through large orchestral,
jazz, bluegrass and rock.
There is an organic manner in which dynamics grow that I am at a loss to
describe. If you were to imagine dynamics as being a sphere growing in all
3 dimensions, then the "old" graphite platter would expand the dynamics
linearly, while the treated graphite expands them both exponentially, while
at the same time having less granularity.
I am compelled, and smitten by what I am hearing. Those of you who know me are aware
that I am not prone to marketing hype and hyperbole - that it is a rare occasion when I jump
up on a soapbox to cry out news like this.
April 18th, 2006
April 10th, 2006
March 7th, 2006
John Atwood's Web Log - Turntable Motors ...
Many of you know of John Atwood - either as the designer of the award winning Artemis Labs Electronics
or as the brains behind the transformer company One-Electron.
John has started a Web Log which can be linked to by clicking here.
Of particular interest is a thread he started on turntable motors.
John's curiosity about this topic was rekindled when he participated
in the Randall Museum Turntable Project in San Francisco sponsored by Galibier Design along
with Chris Boettcher - the museum's curator. John had previously specified an amplifier project which was built by the students
in another class.
John's thinking is always provocative, and to say the least, we're following his thoughts about motors very closely. As much as
we like our current drive system, we consider this to be the next area with an upside potential for improvement.
We strongly encourage you to read his comments in the threads entitled " Motors for Turntables" - currently in three parts, with more to
come ...
February 28th, 2006
Dynavector and ZYX Cartridges ...
If you surf the various forums, you know we make no secret of our love of both the Dynavector and ZYX cartridge lines.
We are now selling Dynavector's wonderful range of products.
How does this affect our recommendations? Not in the least. For some time now we have been advising our customers that both of
these cartridge lines are products with musical integrity - each coming very close to hitting the "musical bulls eye".
No transducer is perfect, and upon auditioning them, you will be torn between their relative strengths. Being in the top echelon
of the cartridge world, they are very much alike, with only very subtle differences between them.
Both ZYX and Dynavector excel at giving you musical insight into the performance. They expand your record collection, in the way that our
turntables do.
It is absolutely possible (and necessary) that a music reproduction system be both highly resolving as well as be able to play
mediocre recordings in a satisfying manner. It this of which I speak when I say "expand your record collection".
One of our customers, in anticipation of delivery of his new Galibier commented that he has numerous new, 180 gram pressings awaiting first
play on his Galibier. I commented that the true joy will come from hearing his old records (those in less than ideal condition) for the first
time - records he rarely listens too because of their poor sonics - in spite of their archiving a great performance.
Many of my favorite recordings are used - coming from the record bins, Ebay, etc.
An analog rig needs to honor the artist, communicate the nuance of the performance, and convey the musical intent that distinguishes it from other performances. If it succeeds with these records, then the audiophile pressings will take care of themselves.
Our goal is your goal - to help you select a cartridge that puts an ear to ear smile on your face. Both of these cartridge do this and we
give each of them our highest recommendation.
Talk to us about the one which works best for your tastes and in your system.
February 27th, 2006
Platters have been renamed:
With the introduction of the Stelvio TPI© platter, matters were getting a bit confusing for our customers.
Over the last year, a large majority of our customers have been specifying their Gavia turntable with what we used to call the Teflon/Aluminum
Composite platter. That's quite a mouthful to say.
As we began to retrofit these platters for our customers - implementing the Tunable Platter interface (TPI) © - it began to make sense
to rename the Teflon/Alu Composite and the PVC to relate to how most people have been specifying their turntables.
Accordingly, the 3 platter names match our 3 turntables:
- The Stelvio:
the evolution of the Teflon/Aluminum Composite. We introduced this platter at last year's Rocky Mountain Audiofest (2005)
- The Gavia: The evolution of our Teflon/Alu Composite - benefiting from our research and
development of the Stelvio Platter.
- The Serac: Our solid PVC platter.
The links above to our Platters Page describes it all. Once again, our intent is to simplify, and as always our commitment to you
is one of flexibility and adaptability. Contact us if you'd like to retrofit your Teflon/Aluminum Composite platter to the new TPI
© architecture.
February 8th, 2006
The Serac gets the Gavia's Platter!
As noted earlier, the concept of the Serac has been the subject of quite a bit of brainstorming over better part of the last two years.
An unwillingness to compromise has led us to the point of a pre-production model that we're very excited about.
We've made some important design decisions over the last few days ...
The Serac will be provided with the Gavia's:
- PVC Platter
- Motor Controller
- Bearing Assembly
- Armboard and Front Pillar
As you can well imagine, these are
critical components in a turntable's design. For a detailed description of the design, link to the
new Serac turntable page.
The initial design employed a 1" PVC platter and a shorter version of the Gavia / Stelvio bearing. The 1" platter was an
attempt to control costs and bring the product in at $2,000 (without tonearm). The shorter bearing matched the 1" platter.
As we studied the design, we sharpened our pencils to determine the price at which we could deliver the Gavia's full-height PVC platter.
To say that we're excited that the premium is only $250 is quite the understatement - it's the best $250 you could spend on a Galibier.
Beyond the initial performance improvement of moving to the full-height platter, this provides an architecture that is both flexible and
completely compatible with its big brothers - the Gavia and Stelvio.
Couple this with an upgrade / trade-in policy (see the Serac page for details) and you have a turntable that can't be beat.
February 3rd, 2006
Progress on the Serac Turntable.
We're very excited with our progress on the Serac turntable design. The topic of producing a turntable in the $2,000 range that
makes an impact in the analog world has been on our mind for several years now.
As we note on the new Serac turntable page, we refused to compromise in the area of motor drive, bearing and
platter.
We are absolutely thrilled to be able to provide the owner of the Serac with the idendical motor controller and top plate as its big
brothers - the Gavia and the Stelvio. Even the motor we are using on the Serac was a finalist in the evaluation sessions for the Gavia
and the Serac.
The bearing is machined to the same tolerances, but its dimensions have been changed to accommodate the 1" tall PVC platter.
January 1st, 2006
The ZYX Universe Warps Space and Time.
Its name is appropriate. It really is a space-time machine. Sounds corny, but our recent acquisition of a ZYX Universe which we'll be
showing off at CES is nothing short of a revelation. We'll have much more to say about this cartridge after we return from CES.
Its most important attribute is that it honors musicianship in a manner that we strive for with our turntables. It's the cartridge
we would have designed had we been doing so.
Like our Stelvio Tunable Platter Architecture (TPI)©, there is an uncanny ease and naturalness of presentation with this cartridge.
Do not for one moment assume that this cartridge glosses over fine detail anymore than our Stelvio does. Both products dig deeply into
the mix.
Like our turntables, this cartridge does everything expected of a world class cartridge, from detail retrieval, to tracking impeccably,
to being astonishingly quiet in the groove.
We've heard several world-class cartridges which do all of the "audiophile things" well, but none which balance this with an ease of
presentation which breathes life into a performance and transports you to the musical event.
One thing we strive for at Galibier is to both design and source products which expand your music library while not sacrificing
resolution. We've all discovered components which "resolve" more information only to find ourselves listening to only our best recordings -
relegating our less than stellar recording to the scrap heap. This is unacceptable..
The Universe - especially partnered with and our turntables returns your entire record collection to you. We can think of no
higher praise than this. In the final analysis, everything else is audio-babble.
