Thursday, May 17, 2007

MAC - Melbourne Audio Club - second oldest in the WORLD!

I had been looking for the MAC for some time but for whatever reason could not find it via the Internet. My Canadian friend Gio (see his diyaudioprojects site) lead me to a local site which sells cotton insulation. From a link on that site I found the MAC site. And believe it or not they were meeting that night. You can "try before you buy" so I went along. They had two very nice pairs of Canton, German made, speakers powered by Hugh Dean's Aksa Lifeforce 100 W transistor amp and a pair of 50 W valve mono blocks (under the table). The CD player was a Marantz SACD unit and all preamped through Hugh's GK1 valve preamps (valves ECC189).

The Group meets on the third Wednesday of each month and they have also break-out groups of:- Pop, Opera, Classical, DIY etc. Plus restaurant nights. And they have been doing this for 33 years to-date. I'm off to their Hi-Fi feast night where (amongst others) Halcro will be displaying their incredible goods. I also snuck into a DIY group to be convened in early June at a members house.

Good carefully chosen music was played across combinations of amps and speakers. For my money the best sound was from the Karat (silver outside speakers) and Hugh's Lifeforce tranny amp. The speakers are voiced very accurately and for me probably a little forward. The other speakers, Ergo (brown ones), were too boomy on bassy tracks with the bass also a little muddy. The Ergo(s) didn't really shine until classical was passed through them. Great night.

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