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Beyond Frontiers Audio (BFA) was founded by two former senior designers of Sonic Frontiers, Zdenko Zivkovic and Glenn Dolick, with Matt Brazeau, formerly with Globe Audio, handling the marketing. BFA's first product is the Tulip ($17,000), an integrated amplifier (180Wpc) with built-in DAC. It looks like a very serious product, with a parts list that reads like "the best of high-end audio" (24-bit/192kHz Cirrus Logic and Burr-Brown DAC, Mundorf supreme silver/gold/oil capacitors, Sanken bipolar output transistors, WBT speaker connectors, Cardas input RCA connectors, 1600W toroidal dual primary power transformer, Swedish aircraft quality aluminum chassis, etc.). Amplifier gain is 100% tube (JJ Tesla ECC83S and E88CC with gold pins, cryogenically treated). There is no feedback of any type in the amplifier stages. "Proudly designed in Canada," the Tulip is presently assembled in Serbia, but the plan is to bring production to Canada.

Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay are the team responsible for the success of SSI, which takes place this weekend at the Hilton Bonaventure in downtown Montreal. You could see them working hard, going around, making sure that exhibitors and attendees were happy. The evening of the designated Trade Day of the show, Thursday 3/31, there was a party that included a speech by Michel It was in French, with the English translation on two giant screens, Michel claiming that he wanted to spare the audience from his heavy French accent. (In fact, his accent is very slight.) I was too busy taking pictures to follow all the points he was making, but it was all inspiring stuff about the future of the industry, and was well received by the large crowd.

Here's a photo of SSI's Sarah Tremblay and Stereophile's John Atkinson, who is covering the Show with Art Dudley and yours truly. JA will be presenting a seminar on how to understand loudspeaker measurements tomorrow (Sunday) at 2pm.

The other recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 SSI was Vince Bruzzese of loudspeaker manufacturer Totem, which will be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year. To tell the truth, this surprised me. No, not the fact that he was given the award, which was certainly well-deserved, but it seems like yesterday that I first encountered Vince at the Toronto Show, where he was introducing a small speaker that sounded uncommonly good. Has it been really that long?

On January 5, 2011, I was flying to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (footnote 1). On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced that he would pay a minimum of $5 to eligible employees who worked an eight-hour day. (At that time, a good wage was $2.50 for a workday of 10 hours.) Ford was not being altruistic; he wanted to motivate his employees both to become more productive and to stay loyal to their employer. And there were strings attached: A Ford employee "must show himself to be sober, saving, steady, industrious and must satisfy . . . staff that his money will not be wasted in riotous living." But Ford also wanted his workers to be able to afford the products they made. It was Ford's action, I believe, that triggered the rise of the American middle class, and it was that middle class's combination of disposable income and increased leisure time that fueled the growth of high-end audio.

As explained by Ken Kessler elsewhere in this issue, the English A&R Cambridge company made their name by producing one of the UK's most successful integrated amplifiers, the 40Wpc A60. This neatly styled model was in production for a decade or so and was the basis for a large number of good-sounding but inexpensive audio systems. These days, the company, whose products in the US sell under the Arcam banner, is a major British hi-fi manufacturer, with a product line that includes integrated amplifiers, tuners, loudspeakers, cartridges, and even a CD player. A&R was, I believe, the first UK manufacturer to obtain a player-manufacturing license from Philips, and with the product under review here, has broken new territory for a supposedly "audiophile" company in having a custom LSI chip manufactured to their own requirements.

Cycles can be seen in the fortunes of companies. Likewise cycles can be seen in the performance of companies' products. A particular range will appear to have got it just right, whatever "it" is. The designer may have hit a winning streak and thus steal a lead over the competition. C-J set a new state-of-the-art preamp standard in the late 1980s with their Premier Seven, and some of that expertise and experience are beginning to pay off in the shape of new high-performance preamplifiers at realistic prices. Two important products have emerged from all this in C-J's moderately priced FET range, namely the PF-1 preamp and the matching MF-200 power amp. By audiophile standards, these are moderately priced at $1295 and $1995, respectively.