LATEST ADDITIONS

Here's designer Andrew Welker showing off his new baby floorstander in Mirage's OMD series. The OMD 15 is said to share many of the sonic splendors of the flagship OMD 28 and its general configuration, as well, in a slightly smaller size but at 1/3 the price! At $2500/pair, it offers a 1" titanium-dome HF, a 5.5" titanium-deposit hybrid midrange supplemented by a passive radiator and a 5.5" woofer operating with a down-firing port. In high gloss black, this was simply spiffy.

Late in the day at the Show, most glasses were filled or in the process of being emptied. This stack on the BG stand, however, was empty. It had been erected to show that Radia's new 210i Active Subwoofer is almost totally vibration-free in operation. At the time I took this picture, this sub, with its opposed 10" Kevlar drivers and 500w BASH amp was pumping out gobs of bass, cleanly and tightly. I could detect no vibrations at all with my hand. What's the point? Well, you can put something on top of them (vase, planter, cigar humidor!) without exciting spurious vibrations. Heck, you could even put this $1500 sub in a cabinet, if that suits your needs.

REL's new T Line of subwoofers is the first complete line since Sumiko's purchase of REL. The three subs are all dual-cone units with an active downward facing driver and a front-facing passive radiator. Powered, of course, and with the characteristic REL input and filtering arrangements that do not require an electronic crossover or any other insertions in the signal path of the main speakers. The picture shows the biggest of the three, all of which share the same technology, modern design and quality of parts and finish not generally seen at these prices.

Marantz is showing the new $1699.99 TT-1581 turntable. Look familiar? It ought to—it's a proprietary Marantz model constructed by Clearaudio, with a Marantz specced platter and cartridge.

MartinLogan subwoofers? Yup—although the Kansas company is known as an electrostatic specialist, they've been making subs for a long while. The new $2995 Descent1 seems pretty spiffy, though: Top-mounted control interface (hidden under the logo plate), three rigid-chassis, aluminum-cone drivers, triple-servo monitoring, a sealed cabinet enclosure, and three 250W Vojtko amplifiers.

Jim Thiel stands between the <I>final</I> prototype of the CD3.7 and the new SCS4, a point source stand mounted two-way with a cast aluminum baffle. Projected price is "under $1000, which seems like a bargain

Polk Audio introduced the $1200/ea. RTS100, "the first in-ceiling speaker to meet THX Ultra2 performance standards." The RTS100 has a 14" diameter enclosure containing dual 5&#188;" midrange drivers and a 1" Ring Radiator tweeter mounted between them. Polk’s exclusive Sound Shape baffle floats the sound waves toward the listening position for "imaging that seems to hover in front of the listener rather than being localized in the ceiling."