TAVES 2016: Day 2
The Muraudio PX2 ($US79,500/pair) was introduced at TAVES 2016, and sounded very impressive indeed
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LATEST ADDITIONS
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.
Listening #167: Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema loudspeaker
Keith Aschenbrenner, proprietor of Auditorium 23, based in Frankfurt, Germany, has long been associated with the people and products of Shindo Laboratory: From the early 1990s until the EU's 2006 implementation of the RoHS 1 regulation, which banned the sale of various old-style electrolytic materialsand thus most of Shindo's productsAuditorium 23 was the brand's European distributor and, arguably, one of its most empathetic and enthusiastic retailers worldwide. Throughout that time, and continuing through to today, Aschenbrenner has also worked as a designer and manufacturer of Shindo-friendly ancillaries and loudspeakers.
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Mytek HiFi Brooklyn D/A processor–headphone amplifier
When I moved to New York City about a year ago, I was prepared to dislike Brooklyn. Judging it by its reputation as the apotheosis of cool, I envisioned the borough full of good-looking people engaged in pointless acts of mindless, stylish conformity, from man-buns to single-origin pour-over coffee. (Anyone up for adult kickball?) As I've written before, about Portland, Mainea hipster place much indebted to BrooklynI greatly prefer deeply committed idiosyncrasy to mindless conformity.
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Bowers & Wilkins, Moon by Simaudio, Long Island Saturday
Retailer Audio Den (2845 Middle Country Road, Lake Grove, NY 11755) is holding an evening with Doug Henderson, President of Bowers & Wilkins, and Costa Koulisakis, Vice-President Customer Experience of Moon By Simaudio, on Saturday, October 29. There will be three opportunities to attend this event: 5:00pm, 6:30pm, and 8:00pm.
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Monitor Audio Platinum PL300 II loudspeaker
Monitor Audio's Platinum PL300 II loudspeakers weigh 120 lbs each, and my listening room is on the second floor, but I was spared the heavy lifting. The speakers were delivered by Sheldon Ginn, Jeffrey Ginn, and Jamie Arseneaurespectively, the VP of Sales and Marketing, Account Manager, and Service Manager of Kevro International, Monitor Audio's North American distributor. We set up the PL300 IIs, ensuring that the distance from each speaker to my listening seat was the same, then optimized the toe-in: the speakers ended up almost directly facing the listener position, close to where I'd had Wilson Audio's Sabrinas.
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