TAVES 2016: Day 3
How often do you find that a new model of a loudspeaker or other audio component is less expensive than the one it replaces
?
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Sennheiser PXC 550 Noise Canceling Bluetooth Headphones
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com
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Shots fired!
Sennheiser's new PXC 550 ($399) Bluetooth noise canceling headphone is a direct shot across the bow of Bose's battleship Quiet Comfort 35 ($349) dominance of noise canceling headphones, which I reviewed very positively. Not only do Bose own a big chunk of that market, they consistently, in my opinion, have the best isolation and sound quality performance. Let's see if Sennheiser can put a dent in that armored hull.
Shure KSE1500 electrostatic in-ear headphone system
I wrote several issues back that my first high-end headphones were Koss Pro4AAs, which I bought in 1972 following a positive review in the British magazine Hi-Fi News. Although that review didn't mention that the Pro4AAs were relatively fragile (footnote 1), I nonetheless loved their sound. They were the best headphones I'd hearduntil, a couple years later, I was playing bass on some sessions for record producer Tony Cox. Tony had a pair of signal-energized electrostatic headphones, Koss ESP-6es, which were heavy and clunkybut they opened my ears to the sound quality that could be obtained from "cans." I didn't hear better until after I'd moved to Santa Fe, in 1986, and J. Gordon Holt loaned me his review samples of the Stax SR-Lambda Pros.
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Music in the Round #81: Classé Sigma Mono amplifier, Sony UHP-H1 universal player
Last spring, when I was listening to Bowers & Wilkins's 802 D3 Diamond loudspeakers, Classé Audio offered a pair of their new Sigma Mono amps for the review. They claimed a synergyB&W's D3 series had been developed using Classé amps. I declined, only because using unfamiliar amplifiers would add to my assessment an uncontrolled variable. Now that the B&Ws have settled inthree 802 D3 Diamonds across the front, two 804 D3s at the backit seemed time to hear what they could do when driven by the Classés.
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TAVES 2016: Day 2
The Muraudio PX2 ($US79,500/pair) was introduced at TAVES 2016, and sounded very impressive indeed
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A Visit to YG Acoustics
When Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2016 (RMAF)the hot hi-fi rager of the Wild Westcame to its close, I had one more official stop to make: YG Acoustics.
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Located just 30 minutes from Denver in the city of Arvada, is the YG Acoustics facilityincluding the factory, showroom, and offices. Much like most factories, the exterior is an unassuming vanilla casing, with no evidence of the flavorful, no-compromise, high-tech, high-end speakers living (and being brought to life) inside.
The New York Audio Show Returns to NY this Weekend
Now in its fifth year, the UK-based Chester Group's New York Audio Show opens to the public this Friday, November 4, at 1pm in the Park Lane Hotel overlooking Central Park. (Friday hours are until 7pm.) The three-day show, a smaller version of what has come before, promises 30 exhibit rooms, half of which are "oversized," two ballroom-sized exhibits, and two more ballrooms filled with exhibits and vendors selling merchandise. All-in-all, the event, whose one-day visitor pass costs $30 ($26 in advance, with significant savings for multi-day passes) promises almost 110 brands.
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TAVES Takes Toronto: Day 1
Does marketing work? You betcha!
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Enough Mozart for a Lifetime In a Single Box
In honor of the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death at the age of 35, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation have together issued a whopping 24-lb box of recordings and commentary called Mozart 225. Billed as the most complete and authoritative edition of Mozart recordings ever assembled, the $480 box, in an edition limited to 15,000 copies worldwide, includes 200 CDs with 240 hours of music.
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MQA and Warner: the Real Scoop
Photo: Jason Victor Serinus
Exactly what did Bob Stuart (above) say at that press event earlier this month at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF)? StuartCEO of the company MQA, short for Master Quality Authenticatedmade an announcement about the Warner Music Group's (WMG's) transcoding of their catalog into MQA format, a project announced last May. But what exactly did he say?
Eager for answers, I arranged a conference call. Over the course of about half an hour, Stuart (with an occasional assist from Lisa Sullivan, MQA's Director of Marketing) answered all my questions and more.