T.H.E. Show Newport 2013

Because the show was too big for one person to see it all, Jason Serinus and I split our responsibilities: he would cover the Hilton and I would cover the Atrium Hotel, plus some of the rooms at the Hilton that he failed to visit. The first room I visited at the Atrium was the large ballroom on the mezzanine featuring Dynaudio’s new Evidence Platinum loudspeaker ($85,000/pair). Did I say “large”? I meant to write “enormous”! The room was way too big, but with acoustic treatment from Vicoustic, the system produced much better sound than I was anticipating. I listened to Jeff Buckley’s “Lilac Wine” (from Grace), Bill Evans in hi-rez, and a live Dutch recording from David Crosby with an electric band performing a song called “Morrison”; with all three recordings, the imaging was solid and tangible, the low frequencies rich but well-defined, and the midrange uncolored.

The Platinum features updated drive-units and revised crossover compared with the older Evidence Master that Larry Greenhill reviewed in May 2000 but costs less!

The speakers were hooked up with StraightWire Crescendo cables to two new products from T+A: the MP3000HV media streamer/CD player ($12,500, left in photo above) and PA3000HV integrated amplifier ($16,000, right). The “HV” in these products’ names stands for “High Voltage,” ie, the power supply rails are much higher voltage than usual with solid-state designs, to confer some of the benefits of tube circuits. The MP3000HV features completely separate power supplies for its digital and analog circuits; the PA3000HV operates in class-A up to 40Wpc into 8 ohms, with a maximum power of 500W into that load.