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NYC's Gryphon Audio Loft to Host Zena Preamp Debut

Stereophile Staff Oct 16, 2018

On Thursday, October 18, beginning at 7:00pm, Gryphon Audio Designs distributor On A Higher Note and New York retailer Joseph Cali Systems Design will launch Gryphon's new Zena preamplifier at the Gryphon Audio Loft at 857 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10003

Jason Victor Serinus

Pärt from Mullova and Järvi

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 15, 2018

Forty years after he wrote his two-movement Tabula Rasa for violinist Gidon Kremer, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, 83, is still alive, engaged and composing. Hence it should come as no surprise that when violinist Viktoria Mullova and conductor Paavo Järvi contacted Pärt about their plan to record five of his works for violin and various instruments for their Onyx album, Arvo Pärt, the conductor attended the recording sessions.

RMAF 2018

Au Revoir, Marriott-Hello, Gaylord Rockies

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 13, 2018

This final shot of the shipping checkout area in the Denver Marriott Tech Center may lack glamour, but so, I'm afraid, does the Marriott itself, post-renovation. The freezing lobby looks impressive, and rooms are lovely for guests, but the latters' ability to accommodate systems plus attendees has been greatly diminished. With unmovable built-in credenzas, poor acoustics, and unacceptably noisy cooling systems, the time has come to move on.

RMAF 2018

JA's Final Report from RMAF

John Atkinson Oct 13, 2018

There are always chance encounters at an audio show, and when I went to meet AVTech America's general manager Keith Pray (left) and Hi-Fi News editor Paul Miller (right) to discuss, among other things, November's Hi-Fi News Show in Windsor, England, Audeze CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram was with them holding a sample of the California company's new Mobius head-tracking headphone ($399). The Mobius uses planar-magnetic diaphragms like the upmarket Audeze cans, but once zero'd in the forward direction, will keep the soundstage aimed at that direction when the user moves his head. In this the Mobius is similar to the Smyth Realiser, but is both considerably more affordable and doesn't need an external control unit. This headphone is not aimed at the high-end audio market but is ideal for gamers, who need the stereo soundstage to remain aligned with the image on the screen.

RMAF 2018

JA's First Report from the 2018 RMAF

John Atkinson Oct 12, 2018

I started my tour of RMAF in the ground-floor room next to the restaurant hosted by Colorado dealer ListenUp. There I did a double-takewasn't that a JBL Century L100 three-way loudspeaker, with its distinctive Quadrex foam grille? No, this was the L100 Classic ($4000/pair), released by JBL Synthesis to celebrate the 48 years since this speaker was first released. "A modern take on a time-honored legend," said the press release, which is just as well because I was never a fan of the original, even though it was the bestselling loudspeaker in JBL's history.

RMAF 2018

Up to the Wire on RMAF Day 3

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 11, 2018

Although most rooms I visited at the end of RMAF 2018 offered fine sound, I single out the new Dragonfire Acoustics Mini Dragon self-powered desktop system ($10,000 total) for two reasons: a) its designer, Dragoslav Colich (aka Dr. C), who continues to design every Audeze headphone, calls these first desktop planar speakers from his new company his "life achievementthe finest transducer I have built," and, b) they sound fantastic.

RMAF 2018

More to See on RMAF Day 3

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 11, 2018

Here's a switch: Instead of a million-dollar system, we begin with a bargain-priced powered-speaker system, the Vanatoo Transparent One Encore ($599/pair). Designed near me, in Seattle, and manufactured in China, this successor to Vanatoo's original model, which was released six years ago, has a new 1" aluminum dome tweeter, more powerful 100W, four-channel amplifier with "much better" DSP-based L/R crossover, remote control, Bluetooth with aptX, and four more "automatically sensed" inputs for analog, USB, Toslink optical, and coaxial digital, the last three accepting up to 24/96 but downsampling to 24/48.

RMAF 2018

More Audio Highs on RMAF Days 2 and 3

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 10, 2018

In the Musical Surroundings room I discovered a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence: a system that contained four products that were reviewed or used in reviews in the October 2018 Stereophile, plus a somewhat more expensive sister of one of the two products that appeared on the cover: Audio Research Ref 160M mono amplifiers ($30,000/pair) and Reference 6 line stage ($14,000), Sonus Faber Aida loudspeakers ($130,000/pair), DS Audio Master1 optical phono cartridge and EQ ($22,500), and Hana ML MC cartridge ($1200).

RMAF 2018

More on Jason's RMAF Day 2

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 10, 2018

I almost missed the huge EMM Labs exhibit on the ground floor until John Atkinson told me that he had visited it, and the sound was exceptional. Don't quote me on the adjective, please. Instead, I'll own it for myself. When a system makes a recording of a 9' concert grandin this case, Murray Perahia's instrumentsounds like it really is a 9' grand, color me very, very impressed. As one should be, given a system price tag of near $1,000,000.

RMAF 2018

RMAF: Starting the Day with MQA

Jason Victor Serinus Oct 10, 2018

That title will surely get a rise out of some folks!

Be that as it may, the aforementioned company ran two MQA Live events at RMAF, during which high-resolution (24/192) MQA streams of live jazz ensembles were streamed in real time to various rooms at the show. MQA claims that the streams were essentially analog to analog, right off the desk.