The Galactus-sized Audio Research Reference 610T monoblock amplifiers ($20,000/ea) put out 600W. They require 8 matched pairs of 6550C output tubes, one 6550c regulator, one 6H30 as an amplifier regulator, a pair of 6550Cs as drivers, two 6NIP input tubes, and a 6H30 follower—that's a <I>ton</I> of tubes.
A bird's eye view of the ARC Reference 610T. The thermal updraft was fierce!
I always look forward to visiting recording engineer René Laflamme of <A HREF="http://www.fideliomusique.com/">Fidelio</A> at FSI, because he always has new fun recordings to play.
While Thiel's Ken Dawkins and I were talking, he said, "Have I told you about the SCS4?"
I dropped by Thiel's room to tease them about the fact that I had heard that <I>Rolling Stone</I> had a pair of CS3.7 loudspeakers, while a certain audiophile magazine did not.
The slot-loaded two-way <A HREF="http://www.jm-reynaud.com/jmr_us/jm-reynaud_fr.html">JM Reynaud Duet</A> loudspeaker ($1525/pair) sounded quite special, driven by the Blue Circle FtTH. "That was surprising," the Reynaud rep explained. "We had Gilbert's top-of-the-line preamplifier and a pair of Blue Moon monoblocks, which we had intended to use. While we were setting up, we connected the FtTH and the synergy between that amp and these speakers was just magical—so we knew what to do."
Yeung was demonstrating a few new <A HREF="http://www.bluecircle.com/">Blue Circle</A> products, an inexpensive USB DAc and the $4895 95Wpc FtTH integrated amplifier. Yeung calls the FtTH his "statement" preamp, saying that it employs Blue Circle's True Balanced Audio technology, which, he says, "drives both the positive and the negative output terminals for better control of the loudspeakers."
In a show that is distinguished by very good signage, <A HREF="http://www.bluecircle.com/">Blue Circle's</A> room is marked by what designer Gilbert Yeung proclaimed "the ugliest signs in the show." Yeung, an indefatigable self-promote, arrived at FSI, only to discover the show had provided no signs for the room. Yeung ran with the concept, deliberately lettering his own signs in a childish "Chinglish."
Dynaudio's 30th-anniversary Sapphire speakers had impressed the heck out of the magazine's scribes at other Shows, so I made a point of taking a listen in the room the Danish manufacturer was sharing at FSI with home-team electronics manufacturer Simaudio. The system included Simaudio's Moon SuperNova CD player, Moon P-7 preamplifier, and Moon W-7 power amplifier, all wired with Siltech cable. The speakers are not that large, visually, and use a pair of 8" woofers per side, but they appear to have excellent bass performance, to judge by the ease they reproduced some subterranean stirring on a performance of Miles Davis' "So What" from a Flanger CD called <I>Midnight Sounds</I>. Then I noticed that there wasn't a CD playing!
I was as impressed as <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fsi2008/040408muon/">Robert Deutsch had been</A> with KEF's $140k/pair Muons, and enjoyed a couple of tracks from the late Joe Zawinul's <I>Faces & Places</I> CD, Musical Fidelity's new 750k Supercharger monoblocks driving the speakers to satisfyingly high levels. Except there was no CD playing. It turned out I was listening to a 320kbps AAC file on an iPod sitting in the Wadia dock you can see in the photo. This takes an I<SUP>2</SUP>S digital output from a late-generation iPod and KEF were using the S/PDIF datastream to drive the digital input of the Musical Fidelity CD player at the top of the equipment stack. Given how much <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/">ink I have spilled recently</A> on the dangers of lossy-compressed file formats, my face must have been as red as the room’s illumination had been at the time.