Finally collected my Beta 8. The room is just crowded with speakers. I wanted to move the Diatone to the store, but am more worried that it may be damaged when other items in the store is being moved around. In the end, the Diatones are moved into a corner of the audio room.

In this position, I am not able to open some cupboard doors. Hahaha... May have to find a new home for it...

I listened briefly to the Beta 8. Played some tracks from Asian Roots - Take Dake with Neptune, Joanna Wang - Start from Here (SACD) and Keane - Hopes and Fear (Dual Disc).

Really liked the extension and fast bass. Not lumpy and does not suffer from resonance effects in my room. It can play loud. At least my whole 8-10 watts of single-ended tube power is more than enough loudness for my room. I really wonder how it will sound if i go with smaller wattage amplifier. The Yamamoto A-08s is on my shortlist. ;) Unfortunately, it is not a mono-block design.

At the same time, I collected my CD Pro2 LF kit! Yeah... gonna build my CD player!

More pics of the Corals here.

The red cd at the bottom is the demo cd. The one at the top is the Start from Here SACD.

I first heard her cd in a colleague's car. Her voice sounded not bad. Then I went to her showcase at Oosh on the 24 April 2008. It was an event organized by Sony BMG. Our host was very accommodating... finding seats for all 4 of us even though it was crowded. Finger food at Oosh was great, of course, beer helped too.

Hearing Joanna live was disappointing. She talked very softly, could not really hear her. Maybe she is still new to entertaining people live. She is not very engaging with the audience, just preferring to get onto her singing, no small talk with the fans gathered at Oosh. Her singing was slightly louder, but I think the audio setup there is a let down.

The 2 piece band that came on later was much louder and better actually.

Anyways, I got one of the demo cds from Sony BMG. Listening to it back at home, her vocal was actually quite good. I then decided to get her cd when I happen to see it at the music stores.

It was not until today that I got her cd... and a SACD. I remembered seeing a review on this cd in the weekly Sunday chinese papers where there are a few writeups on audio related stuff.

The SACD was quite odd. It is semi-transparent when held up to light.

The SACD did have better details and air as compared to the demo cd. I'm just doing the comparison in normal CD mode, not SACD mode as I do not have a SACD player.

All in all, a nice cd to listen to. There are 2 new tracks (11. New York State of Mind and 12. 50 Ways to Leave your Lover) on this SACD, followed by 4 mandarin tracks that are translated from her english songs.

I also bought Saint Etienne's Travel Edition LP... Think this will be a group whose LP I will try to collect. ;)