Art Dudley

Cardas Audio used Axpona NY to introduce their new Clear cable line, with loudspeaker cables ranging in price from $1200 to $6000 for an 8' pair, and interconnects ranging from $695 to $1200 for a 1m pair. The cables at the top of that range—called Clear Beyond—were put to good use in a system comprising the Unison Research CDE CD player ($4000) and S6 integrated amplifier ($5000). The latter, which uses parallel single-ended EL-34s, seemed to be a lot of amp for the money—and sounded fine driving a pair of Opera Grand Callas loudspeakers ($10,000/pair).

Is it a trend or just a fad? That's what some of us want to know when we stumble over a new way of doing things, the implication being that a trend is somehow better than a fad.

I had it all wrong. I assumed that the "SLP" in SLP-98P stood for stereo line preamplifier. But Dennis Had, Cary Audio's founder and chief designer, told me that it actually stands for sweet little preamplifier. In a day and age when acme is a word without meaning and the fighting Irish are neither, this strikes me as a risky marketing gambit—but one that may be effective if the name proves true.

There’s already one good bit of news out of the 2017 Montreal Audio Fest, which begins at 11am today and runs through 5pm on Sunday: reconstruction of the interior of the show’s longstanding venue, the Hotel Bonaventure—a project that was in full, noisy swing during last year’s show—has now been completed, restoring the Bonaventure’s glory in general and its superb bistro/watering hole in particular. It was there that I enjoyed a short pre-show encounter with the audio-industry luminaries pictured above (L–R): Jeff Joseph (Joseph Audio), Doug Schneider (Soundstage.com), Keith Pray (Stereophile), Meredith Gabor (Nordost), and Mat and Harry Weisfeld (VPI Industries).