HiFi visiting in Sarawak

[jb]

This week will be visiting some exciting HiFi room and system in Kuching, first to visit is Mr. Foong HiFi den, he has the original Apogee Duetta signature planar speaker in a dedicated design golden ratio Hifi room. Will be putting down my thought later...now just enjoy the view...and will be visiting a few more hifi system here..stay tune....

[watchdog]

There is another guy with a very high end setup - Joe Ling. But I believe he is in Miri.

[jb]

Ya I meet Joe Ling in Kuching...this round only for kuching visit...may be next round to Miri... So far have visit about 7 hifi room and system here. The advantage in sarawak here is most have big landed house and able to built their dedicated golden ratio hifi room. Will pen my thought and photo on each set up later

[jb]

Finally back in Singapore... It has been a fun week visiting all the Hifi kaki house and listen to their hifi set up and sound. They bring me around for good food and plan which hifi set up to visit... the Sarawakian hospitality at its best! Been listen to more than 16 hifi setup and surprise the tuning skill is very high, even for difficult room size, the sound is still sweet and have a very wide sound stage. Any serious hifi user should make a trip there...I have not visit the Miri set up yet will plan another trip in near future. lastly will like to sincerely thanks the organize hifi nuts from kuching for hosting me and the friendship.

[jb]

some of the must try local kuching food!

[collins]

Must write review on the food,too!

[sydney1128]

Must write review on the food,too!

Hahaahhhaha.....
Yeah, some review on the delicious looking food will be just as good!

[jb]

Haha, just by looking at the food , you know is delicious, a photo speak a thousand word! Anyway , where they bring me to eat are all the most famous food store in kuching... like here the Boon tong chicken or Ketong laksa. Over in kuching is best Kolo mee store, sarawak Laksa, chicken rice, tomato sauce fried noodle or kueh tiaw. all are good

[jb]

Ok, this is a special advertisement for the Kueh Chap store. As our car run onto the road curb in front of his store and unable to move at 11:30 pm near mid-night... the shop owner son have try putting wood under the wheel to free the car, finally he drived back to his house to get the car jack and finally free the car after we work on it for almost hrs. Specially thanks to him and the kampung spirit is well alive here! So the next day, we come back for his famous Kueh Chap, well I will say three chop stick for it.

I seldom take kueh chap as i don't like the strong pork smell, but this store is good as using herbal and have non of the pork smell, I highly recommend and if you are visiting Kuching, do drop by and try his famous Kueh Chap... but be warn as the queue can be quite long during breakfast.

[jb]

[jb]

The first hifi room I visited is Mr. foong house, he has the room ratio of L=24ft, w=15ft, H=7.9 ft at front and H=8.6ft at listen position. ratio is H x W X L ( 1: 1.74: 2.79). He used fiber board for ceiling front and side and various bass panel absorber. His room RT30 from 300hz to 20 Khz is within 0.3 to 0.4, from 30hz to 300hz , range from 0.5 to 0.7. This is a very well acoustic treated room, the ambient sound is just nice, not dark or over live. The waterfall or spectrogram also well behave without any resonant, only room resonant freq is at 22.15 Hz due to length of the room, but listen to music has no issue as seldom we have 20 Hz to excite the room mode.

He use AR preamp with jadis power amp to drive the Apogee signature Duetta, spk cable is Nordost valhalla and some Ordin I/C. Well, if you like Apogee sound, this is a dream hifi heaven, the Apogee spk strength is exhibit to full here! The wide sound stage and layering depth is the strength of this spk, Play some big ambient music like raining or thunder , you will be transport to nearly live! the presentation is very 3d and real...play some female vocal, the speaker can really sing as if the singer is right in front of you. For big Panel speaker, you really need the large room space for the speaker to breath... so for the rest of time, we just listen to different disc, you will never get fatigue listen to a well tune hifi system...a must visit for any user who like Apogee sound.

[jb]

I notice the Apogee is further strength using custom metal bracket to get the tight solid bass and vocal image.
jadis power amp he used









AR power amp

[jb]

Next stop is Dr. Wong hifi setup, he is a DIY guru making his own full range speaker following DIYaudio Mark design. Well I will have to say he has more option to tune the sound as he designed his own preamp, power amp and DAC , so he can make changes to any capacitors, inductors or resistors or IC to tune the sound that he like. He used ethernet CAT 5e cable for all his interconnect cable or routing wire.

Well, with the full range speaker, when the music is on, the speaker disappear and a lively wide sound stage with very real 3d image emerge. His system sound will beat many hifi system costing $$$. Another great system that must visit! If I were to nitpick on the system sound, it will be may be low bass of 20Hz where the speaker small driver may not be able give a realistic scale of the music. otherwise playing Jazz, vocal and pop song, his hifi system excell

[jb]

His computer streaming DAC system

[jb]

Next is Victor room (H=9, W=13, L=20ft) ratio (1:1.44: 2.22). It turns out he is the same guy that flight over to Singapore 20 yrs ago to buy the apogee stage from me! what a small world and great that we can make contact after so many years. He used Audio research cdp, pre and power amp to drive the Sonus Faber Elipsa red, and nordost ordin and shunyata for I/c and power cord. The Elipsa red is a beautiful speaker with very transparent sound, as any small adjustment of cdp footer the changes can be heard. Play some vocal , jazz or pop or orchestra music, the speaker is up to the task present a nice sound stage with micro details, you will not get fatigue listen to this system sound. Measuring use REW software, we did notice some mid bass standing mode from 50 to 110 Hz region that need to be absorb, as right now the room has no bass trap treatment. He is building a few more wood diffuser that will improve his system sound further and looking forward to his new improve sound.