LATEST ADDITIONS

Review samples of some new high-end audio products do not grow on trees. They are more like dray horses trouping from one destination to another. After the US premiere of the Technical Audio Devices (TAD) Grand Evolution One (TAD-GE1), a floorstanding speaker from TAD's Evolution series, at the 2023 Capital Audio Fest, the review pair came to stay with me in Upstate New York for a couple of months before traveling on to the 2024 Florida Audio Expo for another public appearance. After that, they returned to John Atkinson for measuring—then off again on another journey.

The TAD Labs GE1 is a three-way, three-driver design. Up top is TAD's proprietary Coherent Source Transducer (CST), a 5½" coaxial tweeter/midrange driver. Two matched 7" woofers fill out the middle of the front panel.

Does this star-studded brand lineup from Quintessence Audio Ltd. of Chicago sound familiar? It should, not only because it’s frequently encountered at audio shows and dealers, but also because it consistently earns plaudits as one of my Best Sounding Rooms.

After achieving Serenity and acquiring Knowledge, do we end up in the land of Perfection? The room I visited after Perfection was Connection, which was occupied by Quintessence Audio. So perhaps we can say that Serenity + Knowledge + Perfection produces a Connection to something higher than ourselves, which in this case would be Nirvana. (There's also a Nirvana room.)

Just as they did last year, Gryphon devoted the large Schaumburg E space to static displays, including the debut of the Gryphon PowerZone PZ3.10 power purifier ($14,000) which has eight Furutech AC sockets and 20A current capacity and is said to utilize Quantum Resonance Technology.

Last year in the large Schaumburg F air-walled room in the Convention Center, Stenheim, VTL, and Nordost put together one of the finest sounding rooms I’ve heard at any show. This year, the sound was again among the best I encountered in the over 40 rooms I auditioned.

"I think both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges are terrible." That's what legendary Canadian audio designer Ed Meitner told me when I asked about the pioneering transimpedance current drive phono stage he created for his Meitner PA6 preamp some 40 years ago.

Meitner has been designing innovative hi-fi gear for the pro and consumer audio markets for more than 50 years, but for most of the last 30, he has been best known for his work with high-resolution digital audio and DSD recording. Despite this focus on digital—and despite that comment about the two leading phono cartridge technologies—deep in his heart, Ed still loves analog and has fond memories of the Kenwood optical cartridges from the 1970s, which I discussed in last month's Spin Doctor column. So when Ed read that a company in Japan called DS Audio was bringing back an improved version of the optical cartridge using modern materials, he contacted designer Tetsuaki Aoyagi to learn more.

Oh, how I love the look of Zesto Audio equipment. Here it found its ideal visual complement in Tidal Piano speakers ($57,000/pair) from Philly-area dealer The Voice That Is and a catchily titled (not) Stillpoints ESS42-26-4 rack with acrylic shelves ($13,788).