LATEST ADDITIONS

"Updating of a legend..." read the one-sheet in Barrington retailer Essential Audio's room. It was referring to the Transmission Audio M1i speaker, a much-evolved descendant of the Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker designed by Bo Bengtsson that Michael Fremer favorably reviewed for Stereophile back in May 2001. The M1i combines a dipole quad-ribbon tweeter with an aperiodically damped 5" woofer and costs $4500/pair.

Channel D's Rob Robinson was using the same combination of Joseph Audio Pulsar speakers, Hegel amplification, and a Lynx Hilo D/A processor that he used at earlier shows to show off the LP rips made with his Pure Vinyl program for the Mac, now in its v3.1 incarnation. In honor of the late Alvin Lee, Rob played me a rip from a Kevin Gray-mastered 10 Years After LP, made with an Artemis turntable/arm, Zu DL103 cartridge, and the latest version of the Channel D SETA L solid-state phono preamplifier. I have been getting increasingly impatient with the occasional ticks and pops with my LP rips, as eliminating them is too much like work. But there was no such noise on Rob's rips, a tribute to his LP player.

My drop-dead favorite sound of the show—I hesitate to call it "Best of Show," since I heard nothing on the ground and 9th floors, and only half the rooms on the 8th—filled the large corner room on the 7th floor co-sponsored by Balanced Audio Technology (BAT) and Music Direct. There, on the physical level, I encountered, as sources, an Esoteric K-05 SACD/CD player & Reference DAC ($8299) and Avid Acutus Reference SP turntable ($25,000) with Avid Pulsare II phono stage ($7000). Both fed a top-of-the-line BAT REX II preamplifier ($25,000) and BAT REX II monoblock amplifiers ($40,000/pair), which sang through Focal Scala Utopia loudspeakers ($30,000/pair). The component list, handwritten in my notepad by BAT's Geoff Poor, also includes Shunyata Triton and Typhon power ($10,000), but I don't see them listed on their website.