Wes Phillips, Stephen Mejias, and Kal Rubinson join San Antonio, Texas retailer Galen Carol on the way to the Venetian. As Galen explained to us, high end retailing is a bit of a challenge, but still viable to dealers that take care of their customers and offer old fashioned service.
The Music Player has tons of inputs: USB2.0, iPod (with control and display), S/PDIF digital coaxial, TOSlink digital optical, LAN, W-LAn, and RS232 for update and control interface.
PBN's Peter Noerback had emailed me back in December about his new Montana KAS2 tower. The 300lb, 6'-tall speaker has twin 12" woofers top and bottom powered by a 1kW amplifier, with what appear to be top-of-the line 9" lower and 5" upper midrange units from SEAS flanking a 1.125" tweeter. An active, line-level bass extender, the Olympia EX, pushes the low-frequency extension below the resonance point of the woofers. Sensitivity is specified as a very high 93dB/W/m. The sealed cabinet features a solid-maple front baffle and is an asymmetrical hexagon in shape to minimize internal resonances. Price, considering the enormous size of the speaker, is a relatively realistic $38,000/pair, which includes the bass extender.
What does $275,000 buy you these days besides a used Porsche Carrera GT with 20,000 miles on it? Yes, there is now a loudspeaker system with that asking price, which gets you 900 lbs of hardware, including two midrange—tweeter towers, two subwoofers, and two subwoofer amplifiers. Frequency response is rated from 8Hz to 50kHz, and the minimal load impedance is 3 ohms. Furthermore, the Force is made of glass.
Choose a door, any door. Confronted with three entirely different systems in the Norvinz room, for some reason I ignored my usual inclinations and moved to the far right. There I encountered veteran electrostatic guru Roger Sanders, formerly of Innersound, who now markets Sanders Sound Systems products online and through Norvinz.
Daniel J. Hodgson, Polk Audio's Senior Vice President, was very enthusiastic about the $3000/pair LSi25, a floor-standing, 3-way loudspeaker."It has a 1" VIFA ring-radiator, dual-pivot tweeter to increase dispersion," said Daniel. There are two midranges that surround the tweeter in D'Appolito configuration, and a powered 10" sidefiring subwoofer. The drivers have cast speaker baskets with aerated-polypropylene cones. He went on to point out the two small ports on the front baffle next to the midrange. "These two small ports are designed to eliminate resonance, which our company calls Acoustic Resonance Control," added Michael Cooper, Florida Regional Sales Manager for Polk.
Sumiko was showing the $2495 Primare DVD110 DVD/CD player/reciever. It's a two channel unit with a class-D 102Wpc amplifier and a couple of features you don't see on most stereo components: a subwoofer and 1080p video outs.
The PS Audio Memory Link ($1695) is a CD/DVD/RAM drive. It's a mechanical player (ie, it still spins the discs), but it has an unusually large cache. Conventional players have caches of around 8–16MB, the Memory Link has a 64MB cache. Why is this better?
Paul Barton, founder and chief designer of PSB Speakers International, plans to manufacture a new series of loudspeakers he is calling "Imagine." This line will feature new finishes and styling. The enclosures will be curved, both front to back and top to bottom. To create this shape, PSB is laminating multiple layers of MDF, w2hich is then braced to a mold. Radio frequency waves are directed at the enclosure shell for 15 seconds that quickly sets the glue. Once the enclosure is stable, holes are machined as the exact places required, which eliminates the tedious job of making ultra-precise adjustments when an enclosure is built around the drivers. PSB also uses a method of adding color after the first coat of clear sealant is applied to the veneer, so the resulting finish shows the wood grain but also has a rich, red color.
"The Sonics by Joachim Gerhard Amerigo loudspeakers ($5500/pair) are the first speakers Joachim has ever designed specifically for the American market," said Immedia's Allen Perkins. "I designed the cabinet dimensions and suggested we use an American veneer like Zebrawood or Bird's-Eye maple, then Joachim developed drivers and a crossover network. Funny thing, he said it had the lowest distortion he'd ever measured."
Anglo-Chinese brand Quad is not one of your consumer electronics companies that revamps their entire line every year (whether it needs to or not). Some might even consider their approach a bit stodgy, resisting change. So when they come out with not just one new product but a completely new series, that has to be considered news.
"Basically, what we're offering is some fun for a rainy Sunday afternoon," said Upscale Audio's Kevin Deal, who had two replacement I/V op-amp upgrades for the $2499 Prima Luna ProLogue Eight CD player. Both are ready to just pop in as replacements for the Eight's existing board. The Basic ("around" $150) has open slots for bypass capacitors and a heavy-duty PS. The Super ("around" $225) already has surface-mount caps and the HD PS installed.