Gerard and Lionel
Gerard Rejskind (left), editor of UHF magazine, and last year's recipient of the SSI Lifetime Achievement Award, is pictured here with Simaudio's Lionel Goodfield (right).
Continue Reading »
LATEST ADDITIONS
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard Petit
One of the two Lifetime Achievement Awards was given to Richard Petit, President of KeébecSon. The presentation was made by Richard's daughter, Marie-Eve, and was the most touching event at the party.
Continue Reading »
Lifetime Achievement Award: Marc Denis
As B&W's Doug Henderson pointed out in his presentation speech, being a manufacturer's rep in audio is often a thankless job. If sales are slow, the rep gets blamed, but it they're going well, that's just taken for granted. But not this time: the Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Marc Denis (pictured), rep for B&W, Rotel, and Classé.
Continue Reading »
Audioville and KEF
The speaker of choice in the Audioville room was the brand new KEF Blade ($30,000/pair): a consumer-friendly version of something that started life as a KEF concept speaker. (In particular, in order to reduce costs, the latter's carbon-fiber enclosure has been replaced with one made of a composite resin.) Mid frequencies and treble are handled by the metal-diaphragm KEF UNI-Q array, while low frequencies are given over to two pairs of side-mounted 9" drivers, working in tandem so that bass energy is neither wasted nor allowed to travel through the enclosure structure to modulate the higher frequencies.
Continue Reading »
Audioville and Chord
In the Audioville room, Chord Electronics of England demonstrated their Red Reference CD player ($26,000), now in Mk.III form. Refinements include a fully motorized transport door, plus a true asynchronous USB input. The player's D/A section, which offers up to 192kHz capability, eschews the use of DAC chips from other manufacturers, its pulse array being designed and constructed entirely by Chord. Styling is on a par with the underlying technologywhich is to say, a bit breathtaking.
Continue Reading »
Coup de Foudre: Wilson Audio
The Montreal audio-video store Coup de Foudre has a reputation for assembling ambitious music systems in the Hilton's Longueuil salon during SSI. Although this year was no exception, the cost of that system had been scaled-back somewhat for 2012with interesting results.
Continue Reading »
The loudspeaker of choice was the Wilson Audio Specialties Sophia Series 3 ($18,550 per pair in Macadamia finishwhich bore a striking resemblance to the metallic brown paint on my long-gone 1985 Alfa-Romeo GTV6). Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath, also the recordist behind most of the music selections I enjoyed in that room, said there have been no running changes in the Sophia since the introduction of the Series 3.
Coup de Foudre: VTL
The VTL MB185 Series IIIs, which sounded great driving the Wilson Sophia Series 3 loudspeakers, offer a choice between XLR and RCA inputsand, according to designer Luke Manley, they can develop fully balanced performance with single-ended inputs. Their EL34-based output sections can also be switched between triode and tetrode operation.
Continue Reading »
Coup de Foudre: AMG
Happily, the big Coup de Foudre also included an analog front: a combination turntable and tonearm package from German manufacturer AMG, bundled with a Benz LP phono cartridge ($21,500 for the package).
Continue Reading »
Theory + Application
Munich-based T+A, which is distributed in North America by Dynaudio, displayed a prototype of their forthcoming DAC 8 D/A converter, which is projected to sell for under $3000. Built around dual 32-bit Burr-Brown DAC chips, the DAC 8 offers a choice of true balanced or single-ended operation, with all proprietary digital filter designs and sampling rates up to 192kHz.
Continue Reading »
First Dragonfly of Spring
What's 2" long, comes out in May, and responds to external stimulus by changing color? The AudioQuest Dragonfly ($250), a USB D/A converter designed for the company by Wavelength Audio's Gordon Rankin (and whose proprietary software allows it to function as a true asynchronous DAC). The Dragonfly, which is powered by the USB bus, performs at 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96kHz; the dragonfly icon on its plastic case (not shown here) indicates the sampling rate in use by glowing green, blue, amber, or white, respectively. Features include separate clock oscillators for 44.1/88.2 and 48/96; a 64-position analog volume control that overrides the digital volume control in iTunes/etc.; and proprietary USB input and 3.5mm output connectors.
Continue Reading »