LATEST ADDITIONS

The Talon loudspeaker brand has been revitalized since it was purchased by Richard Rives Bird. Richard is see here with the new Phoenix, a floor-standing three-way with ceramic drive-units. The Phoenix costs $72,000/pair in passive form, which is what was being demmed at CES, driven by VAC amplification. The crossover is mounted in a separate compartment at the rear of the woofer section and an upgrade (approximate price $15,000) is planned whereby the passive crossover module can be replaced by one containing a line-level crossover, Rives' PARC bass equalizer to provide room correction, and a class-D amplifier to drive the woofers.

NuForce’s Jason Lim explained that the people behind NuForce and Oppo have been friends for a long time, and now that friendship has produced the NuForce Edition Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player ($899), scheduled to be available by the end of this month. The NuForce user-upgradeable output board, seen here, will add $400 to the cost of existing Oppo BDP-93 players. “It sounds as good as our CDP-8,” Lim smiled.

An “Extreme” version, featuring synchronous re-clocking of all eight channels, will be available in March for around $1300.

The Lotus Group's Granada speaker ($125,000/pair) combines 21st-century technology—a digital-domain crossover realized with DSP, including room correction—with distinctively retro loudspeaker engineering—frequencies above 200Hz are handled by a single Feastrex unit featuring a field-coil magnet and a paper diaphragm with a coincident "whizzer" cone. The paper used for the diaphragms is sourced from a Japanese "National Treasure" paper maker, Ichibei Iwano, and the surrounds are made from lambs' skin. Two woofer handle the bass and all three drivers are open at the back to give a dipole radiation pattern. There is also a rear-firing 0.75" dome tweeter to maintain the speaker's power response in the top octave. (The treble energy from the whizzer is emitted in a quite narrow frontal beam.)

My photo doesn't do justice to the beauty of this speaker; the rest of the system included Musical Fidelity AMS-50 class-A amplifiers, a Steve McCormack VRE-18 preamp, a Hanss T-10A turntable with phono stage and fitted with Dynavector DRT XV-1t cartridge,with interconnects and power cabling by Pranawire and speaker cabling by Acoustic Revive. Total system costs was $324,245! Listening to Joan Armatrading's "Show Some Emotion" then the Roy DuNann-recorded The Eleven LP by Art Pepper, I was struck by the effortless nature of the sound and the sheer musicality of the system, though I have to admit that instruments didn't quite sound tonally correct.

The electrostatic Kingsound speakers were hits at 2010 Shows, so I was anticipating good sound in the room where VAC was demming their tubed electronics with the King II speakers ($11,500/pair) and a Spiral Groove SG2 turntable and arm fitted with a Lyra Kleos cartridge. Stands were all-Symposium.)

The bugbears of electrostatic panels have been limited treble dispersion and a lack of low-frequency definition, but listening to Hans Theesink's and Terry Evans' rendition of "You Can't Tell a Book," from the LP Vision, where the guitarist and singer were accompanying themselves with footstomps, the bass remained in control and the top-octave sounded airy and spacious.

I was sort of shocked to see the Kiso Acoustic HB-1. While I’d never heard of Kiso Acoustics, the speaker looked so darn familiar. The HB-1 is nearly identical in size and shape and design philosophy to the Onkyo D-TK10, a collaboration between Onkyo and guitar-maker Takamine, which I discussed back in late 2006...

Bladelius has created a gorgeous product that includes a touch screen on the front and can play discs, stream media and store music. Hand made in Sweden and retailing for around $9,000, the Embla features internal flash memory for storing music (upgradable to 2TB!!), USB and Ethernet on the back, and built-in analog preamplifier.

Qsonix has been providing a touchscreen-based product line for several years, and have recently teamed up with Wadia to collaborate on the DAC side. The Q205 is a one box single zone system with either 1TB or 2TB of storage, and a touchscreen ranging in size from 15" to 19". Price ranges from $7,450 to $8,250 and comes in six configurations.

The Q210 is a one box five zone system with the same screen and storage options and ranges in price from $7,750 to $8,450. The company also has a standalone server without the touschscreen (but can be controlled by the qsonix app) for $6,650 to $7,150 depending on storage and number of zones.

Qsonix's Mike Weaver was on hand to demonstrate the company's new iPad app which should be available later this quarter. I found I liked how the app was laid out better than their touchscreen software, and it offered real-time scrolling of album covers for browsing a collection, something I haven't seen in other iPad apps yet.