The Audio Note Performance Level System
Audio Note’s product range is built around a series of ideological and technological performance platforms from which we have developed a wide and comprehensive product range, catering for as many price points and as wide a performance spectrum as possible. Our ultimate goal is to enable our customers and dealers to select and build systems of superior sound quality and enduring value.
The different performance platforms are created to illustrate that increases in price are proportionate to improvements in sound quality. These improvements also demonstrate the existence of a clear and demonstrable technological hierarchy. While, at present, it may not be possible within existing measurement technology to conclusively prove that these platforms have obvious and repeatable sonic advantages over any of the currently favored and comparable technologies—most of which were chosen for cost or convenience rather than sound quality—there are clear commercial pressures favoring cost. Many technical tests and measurements are now specifically designed to provide “proof” that reductions in cost do not compromise “quality,” a two-dimensional concept. This type of front-loaded marketing began to interfere with sound audio engineering principles as early as 1965, but it remains a sad fact of life in a world where cost takes precedence over quality.
All Audio Note products are graded into a system of seven levels, each of which primarily ranks a product based on its sonic performance. This system serves as a guideline for our customers (and perhaps competitors) in three key aspects:
- To assist in selecting the right Audio Note components for building and/or upgrading an Audio Note system.
- To serve as a technological hierarchy and guide to the best-sounding technical and acoustic principles.
- To act as a guide to better-sounding components and materials.
Above all, each Audio Note Product Level is an indicator of the sound quality that our customers can expect from the Audio Note equipment they are considering. Our aim is to help you find the highest level of sound quality for your investment. The first rule is to avoid purchasing something that you may later regret, leading to selling at a loss—arguably the most disheartening and discouraging aspect of investing in your music’s reproduction.
Standard, Silver or Silver Signature?
To further refine the options, within each level, you will find components with the designations 'silver' or 'silver signature.' These designations indicate the use of more 'exotic' and superior-sounding parts that unveil a higher level of realism. In amplifiers, the 'silver' designation can signify the use of Audio Note Copper Foil signal capacitors and IHiB Double C-core output transformers. On the other hand, the same component with the 'silver signature' designation utilizes a higher grade of tantalum resistors, stepped attenuators, and transformers with a core material of greater permeability.
In short, the quality of the 'ingredients' directly influences the taste of the dish prepared using the same recipe.
Choosing an Audio Note System
It is not mandatory to compose your system using components from only one level. While doing so often guarantees a very high value-to-price-performance ratio, you have the option to mix components from different levels. This choice can be motivated by either providing a more cost-effective upgrade path or achieving a preferred balance through a mixed-level system.
If you opt for a mixed-level system, a general guideline is that the system should be based around the level of the amplifier and should generally not include products that are more than one level above or two levels below the amplifier used. However, Audio Note cables are an exception. They are highly flexible, both physically and in terms of system tolerance, and can enhance even the most modest Audio Note system, regardless of the cable's level designation.
It is All About Refinement
Refinement is the central theme in every product, at every level, within the Audio Note product range. We do not believe in applying bigger, louder, or more complex solutions to our products. Instead, we seek to establish greater value through improved sound quality.
Through numerous experiments, we have discovered that more power, size, or volume does not necessarily make products sound better or more satisfying. Our focus is on finding solutions in technology, technique, parts, materials, and amplifying devices that can demonstrate enhanced low-level performance, as we consider this aspect to be the most crucial. It is a fact that all signals originate from silence, and it is immediately after this 'entry' point, following silence, that the sound of a piece of equipment is born.
It may seem unusual that there are no audio measurements developed to account for this consideration. However, it is evidently not a high priority for other manufacturers to delve into these matters. In sharp contrast, Audio Note is the only manufacturer unconventional enough to extensively study the behavior of audio equipment at very low levels. This research has confirmed most of the theories we've formulated over the years, all of which were based on musical experience rather than relying solely on test equipment for answers. We understand that test equipment can be easily misled by technical tricks such as feedback or oversampling.
We always recommend auditioning any hi-fi system at low volume as thoroughly as at high volume to assess its performance across the loudness spectrum. Systems that do not maintain good bandwidth and dynamic contrast at low volume will inevitably suffer from poor resolution, regardless of the volume setting. Have you ever found yourself turning up the volume to capture a better sense of dynamics? Poor resolution cannot be compensated for by higher volume because, regardless of the volume setting, low-level information remains unresolved and will always be lost from the signal. This is a significant limitation, not only in classical music but in almost all music genres.
The Most Complete Product Range
Audio Note is also the only specialist audio company to conceptualize, design, and manufacture a complete range of audio products, from turntables, tonearms, and cartridges to cables, MC-transformers, CD players (using patented worldwide circuitry), amplifiers, speaker cables, and loudspeakers. Our product range is comprehensive and covers a wide spectrum of cost and performance, catering not only to the hyper-expensive but also offering a complete end-to-end top-to-bottom product range.
To make this diversity possible, Audio Note sources, specifies, and designs a wide range of proprietary parts. This includes precision carbon film and tantalum resistors, copper and silver foil capacitors, high-content nickel transformer cores, and, most importantly, 99.99% pure cold-drawn silver wires for use in cables, coils (all our MC-transformers use 0.05mm pure silver wire!), and inter-stage, interface, and output transformers.
Manufacturing a wide range of complete systems leaves us with nowhere to hide. We take full responsibility for the end result—the overall sound of any complete Audio Note system. When set up according to its design requirements, it comfortably and comprehensively outperforms any system from any other source, whether mixed and matched from different manufacturers' products or offered as a one-manufacturer system.
Logically, it is especially challenging to see how the widely accepted practice of mixing and matching components from different manufacturers can ever provide anything beyond the lowest common denominator in terms of sound quality. Logically, it seems inconceivable that assembling a system from components designed and developed by different companies with widely varying technologies, levels of understanding, and, most importantly, views on how a component should sound (sonic aesthetic) can possibly yield results above the average. Nevertheless, this practice has been endorsed by the most established hi-fi industry, and the reviewing process is designed to mitigate its shortcomings rather than criticize its results to improve overall outcomes.
A good example of Audio Note's upgrade philosophy is reflected in the design, configuration, and specification of Level Three, Level Four, and Level Five pre-amplifiers. We begin by developing the very best circuit and power supply configurations and then refine the parts and materials towards higher sonic performance as we progress to the higher Levels, all while maintaining a quality-to-price relationship.
Understanding how components affect the sound and behavior of one another is a vital part of the comprehensive knowledge necessary to create great-sounding audio products. Surprisingly few audio companies investigate or test sophisticated passive parts such as Black Gate, Cerafine, non-magnetic resistors, silver wires, or other esoteric (and therefore, necessarily expensive) components and parts. While many valve amplifier manufacturers focus on obtaining what they believe to be the 'best' valves for achieving high power, Audio Note dedicates an incalculable number of hours to voicing every product we make.
This ensures that each product maximizes its performance within its price envelope.
Audio Note Sells No Old Wine in New Bottles!
An accusation often levelled against anyone making valve amplifiers is that we love things from the past, have issues with the present, and prefer a nostalgic, rose-tinted view of the world that refuses to acknowledge the advances made in technology.
You can hardly have overlooked the craze over the past few years for retro models of classic amplifiers like the McIntosh MC275 and the Marantz 8, among others - old wine in new bottles, still great amplifiers in many ways. This fact perhaps says more about the incessant annual claims by manufacturers and reviewers alike of vast and revolutionary progress year after year in amplifier quality over the last 30-40 years than it does about the absolute quality of these amplifiers themselves. These are narrow and primitive views that fail to distinguish between genuine progress and instead seek to prevent real development because they create and support an illusion rather than provide criticism where appropriate.
In contrast to this, Audio Note takes a historical overview when studying and choosing which technology to base a design on, and more often than not, we end up with a mixture of old and new. We voice our products with absolutely no regard for the dogma ruling at the time and without consideration for commercial expediency or catering to reviewer preferences or prejudices.
We seek timelessness in our designs, just as the greatest exponents of each genre are remembered. Hopefully, our approach will be remembered in the same way.
We prefer stand alone, if necessary and feel that time and our customers’ should be our only Judges.
It should go without saying that the combination of circuit and power supply topologies that more eloquently reveals clear and unequivocal differences between parts and materials must be the best at enabling you to select the most suitable parts and materials. This is because it is nature's way of demonstrating the inherent absence of an 'own' sound in these circuits and topologies, allowing the sound of the parts to exhibit their inherent colorations or lack thereof.
Consequently, this allows you to maximize the quality-to-price relationship at all levels. This is precisely because such circuits and topologies inherently have very little sonic imprint of their own. Thus, they can transmit the improvements generated by better parts and materials more distinctly and independently. This is what we at Audio Note™ strive to perfect within each price point and each product until it is achieved.
The true beneficiary is your music, which is then presented with authenticity, authority, and accuracy. It distinguishes the truly exceptional from the merely good, enabling you to expand your range and appreciation of music that touches your soul and excites, pleases, relaxes, and challenges you to the greatest possible extent.
