LATEST ADDITIONS

Could be. I saved my visit to the Audio Unlimited room almost for last on Sunday afternoon at RMAF. There was the pair of Focal Grande Utopia EMs that apparently had NY retailer Andy Singer dancing at their launch in France last spring. driven by a pair of Boulder 2050 monoblocks. Front-end was either Boulder's new 1021 disc player/music server or the Clearaudio Statement turntable. Cabling was all Tara Labs, including Mikey Fremer's reference The Zero interconnects. Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer played me just two LPs for me to become awed by the 580 lb Focals: the Gary Karr transcription for double bass and organ of the Albinoni <I>Adagio</I>, which showed how effortlessly the speakers handled not just the spl but also the <I>scale</I> of the organ's sound, and Iona Brown's performance of Vaughan Williams' <I>A Lark Ascending</I>, which showed how well the speakers did delicacy.

And how! Spinning the vinyl in the room shared by Musical Surroundings, Boulder, and Focal was the 770 lb Clearaudio Statement turntable with its integral stand. Omigawd! Magnetic bearings, a magnetically driven subplatter, an 80kg pendulum counterweight, an automatic horizontal leveling device including the tonearm platforms...

I admit it. I have found YG Acoustics' hyperbolic promotional material off-putting. But having recently listened to the Colorado company's 4-way Anat Reference Professional speaker system in Wes Phillips' system&#151;he is reviewing it for our February 2009 issue&#151;I made a point of seeking the speaker out for a longer audition at RMAF.

RMAF was my first chance to hear the new McIntosh MT10 turntable ($9500) that had starred in our 2008 CES blog. But after I had listened to vinyl on the McIntosh system for a while&#151;and very good it sounded, too&#151;Ron Cornelius drew my attention to the MCD500 SACD/CD player ($6500) at the top left of the stack shown in the photograph.

On Saturday night, Bay Area Audiophile Society coordinator Bob Walters gave me a list of rooms he urged me to visit. Since two were on the 10th floor of the Marriott Tower, on which I had not yet set foot, I resolved to check both out. I'm glad I did. The tenth floor of the Marriott was like a gold mine. All I had to do was walk down the hall to the next room, and more glorious sound awaited me.

Something happened in the middle of the tenth floor. In the remaining rooms I visited to the right of the elevator&#151;with apologies to all those systems I unintentionally missed due to the pathetic human limitation of being unable to be in three rooms at once&#151;the sound was darker, less illumined, but nonetheless quite involving. This is actually a sound that large numbers of audiophiles prefer. It's a more seasoned and mellow sound, less apt to sound bright and edgy in live rooms, and closer to the sound in acoustically dampened environments. It's truly a case of different strokes for different folks.

I was surprised not only by the ease to the sound of my hi-rez audio files played on the system in the Wavelength room, but also by the resolution. Surprised, because I am not naturally a tube guy, and not only is Gordon Rankin's gear tubed, it is unshamedly single-ended.