All the way across town from the audio market is the area where used equipment and parts are sold. Many small shops are specialists, such as this transformer kiosk. Not only can you buy thousands of transformers, but you can pick up plates and wire and roll your own.
Actually, I have no idea what Sheng Ya means, but at the Sheng Ya showroom, I felt right at home. There were audiophiles hanging out, listening, and, of course, yakking when we walked in. The sales guy was <I>really</I> into what he was doing and immediately began playing these interesting looking speakers made by Consonance.
Down the street, we found a store running an active demo that had these strange devices flanking the loudspeakers. Seated on their own speaker stands, they had thin wires connecting on the positive inputs of both loudpseaker and super tweeter.
We went to the "audio district" of GuangZhou—in China, all shops of similar character tend to group together, so the audio district is where all the hi-fi shops are. Actually, they're there twice: many store have display showrooms in the central mall and listening rooms ranked along a nearby alley.
An audiophile's nightmare?
Plug the CT-1 into an outlet and it will measure the THD+N noise carried on your line. You can plug headphones into the output to <I>hear</I> the noise pollution, or you can measure it with a test instrument. The CT-1 will also alert you to DC on your line.
Dussun was showing a line of power conditioners (500W, 800W, and 1200W) that offered waveform shaping, regulation, isolation, and DC suppression. Oh yeah, and they offer 85% efficiency. The X-1200 retails for $2500.
Zhou Yi of W'inner is kind of a crazy guy—audiophile crazy. His stuff is all big, and so are his aspirations. He really likes class-A, too.
NuForce's S-9 was pretty interesting, too. The cabinet is constructed of birch plywood laminations, which creates both the inner and outer profiles. The tweeter is mounted into a fairly deep horn and flanked by the twin midrange/woofers. There's a built-in switchable Zobel filter and an external crossover, which can be purchased as active or passive. Speaker wire is included in the S-9's $5500/pair (USD) price.
After my first few days wandering through the show, I began to wonder where all the Chinese speakers were—the relatively normal ones, I mean.