Into T.H.E. Show's Home Stretch
Brooks Berdan Ltd. of Monrovia, CA eschewed the big stuff, and displayed, in two different rooms, "realistically priced Hi Fi Music Systems"
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Dylan Sings! Take Two
Sinatra Again?
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Colin Stetson: Sorrow & Górecki
Eine kleine Nachtmusik it ain't. And yet, in 1992, lightning struck, tectonic plates shifted, and the third symphony of Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (19332010) became a bona-fide hit. Defying both skeptics and logic, a recording of this decidedly sepia-toned work, subtitled The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, by the London Sinfonietta conducted by American maestro David Zinman, and featuring soprano soloist Dawn Upshaw, eventually sold over a million copies, making it the largest-selling recording of modern classical music ever.
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JA's Day at T.H.E. Show 2016
My beat at T.H.E. Show 2016 was the ground floor. En route to the audio exhibits, I was stopped dead in my tracks by this beautiful black Bugatti. No information on this particular car was available, but I assumed it was part of the display of tasty automobiles in the Hotel Irvine's lobby and outdoors pavilion, put on by Reus Car Audio Design, Whitledge Design, Wyred 4 Sound, Magnum Automotive Design, and The Source Audio Video Design Group. Pride of place in the car exhibit was Sony's Hi-Res Audio demo vehicle, which had been shown off two days earlier at the Capitol Studios event in Hollywood.
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Nearing the End of T.H.E. Show
At one point, an attendee approached me in the hallway and said, "Is it just me, or are a lot of these rooms bright?"
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More from T.H.E. Show: Sasha Matson's Day Three (Part One)
There's more than one way to skin a cata profusion of ways to hook together audio components in the high-end world of todayand my hunch is that the number of dedicated cabling companies has increased within the past decade, and now exceeds that of any other audio-hardware category.
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Naim NAC 62 preamplifier & NAP 140 power amplifier
Back in 1970, one Julian Vereker decided to record some musician friends in his house in Salisbury, England. Using standard, off-the-shelf electronics and tape machines, he was startled at how dissimilar the recording was to the sound of live instruments. As a result, he started designing his own recording electronics, including a recording console, of which he sold several to local broadcast facilities.
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Yamaha CD-X1 & CD-2 CD players
CD player prices continue to go down and, surprisingly, sound quality goes up; the Yamaha CD-X1 is an example of both. It's a front-drawer loader with some interesting innovations. Pushing the Open/Close button opens the drawer; it can be closed either by pushing the same button again or by pressing lightly against the end of the open drawer. (We understand this was done because many such players have been damaged by users trying to force the drawer shut by hand.)
The unit has three operating modes: Auto, Manual and Single. In Auto, play begins as soon as the drawer is closed, or as soon as the AC is turned on if a disc is already loaded. In Manual, play begins only when you press the Play button. Single is the same as Manual except that the unit goes into Pause after playing a single selection. Pressing Pause then plays the next selection.
Hope Springs Eternal at T.H.E. Show
I've included the long view of this room to demonstrate the lengths to which Ocean Way Audio's Allen Sides, in partnership with Viola Labs, went to achieve reference quality sound at T.H.E. Show
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Happy Birthday Cole Porter
What a songwriter!
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