FSI 2007

Readers with really long memories may recall the ESS Heil speakers, which had a tweeter whose working principle was described in ads as being like squeezing a cherry pit. Oskar Heil was undoubtedly a gifted inventor, and the Heil "Air Motion Transformer" principle is gathering new adherents. Elsewhere in this show report blog, I discuss the products from Adam Professional Audio, whose Accelerated Ribbon Technology is a variant of the Air Motion Transformer principle. Speakers from the Chinese company, Mark & Daniel, fall in the same category. They call their drivers "Directly Responding Emitter by Air Motion Structure" (DREAMS). The pair of Mark & Daniel Aragon Monitors (CN$5500), mounted on Aragon stands ($1900), which act as bass extenders. They sounded quite good, driven by the new Audio Oasis AMP-D1 amplifier (100Wpc, class-D, Made in Canada, CN$1495).

Adam Professional Audio is a German company that makes loudspeakers aimed at, as the name suggests, the professional market; their list of users include Abbey Road Studios and Lincoln Center. They're now poised to enter home audio. They had several of their speakers on display, but the only ones actually playing were in a large home theater demo room. The demonstration piece was the "chase" scene from the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, and all I can say about the sound was that it was loud. (Putting on my ultimateavmag.com hat, I can also say that the projector's color saturation was set too high.) However, reading the product literature, it's clear that the speakers represent a formidable amount of technology. The tweeter and midrange driver are based on the Air Motion Transformer principle developed by the late Oskar Heil, called Accelerated Ribbon Technology (A.R.T.) in Adam's implementation. (Klaus Heinz, Adam's chief engineer, worked with Heil.) The woofers have a honeycomb-structure diaphragm. The Adam Tensor Betas that served as the front L and R speakers use two 11" woofers and a 7" one, plus two midrange units and a tweeter. Powered with B&O ICE module. class-D amplifiers, a pair of Beta Tensors cost $60,000. There are two other speakers in the Tensor series, all semi- or fully active, the prices varying from $30k to $80k.

System Audio A/S is a Danish manufacturer of loudspeakers that's been in business since 1984, but I must admit that I've never heard of it before—probably a function of the fact that North American distribution has been spotty. Listening to the new SA Rangers ($4000), I was convinced that the fault was certainly not of the speakers. The sound was open, with a wide and deep soundstage, and a great sense of "quickness." (The system used an Arcam CD source and electronics, and Nordost Valhalla speaker cables.) The SA product literature also convinced me that this is a mature, fully developed product line, with some proprietary technology, including a dome tweeter that weighs just 80mg, making it possibly the world's lightest. Pictured are S/A's sales manager Frits Dalmose (left), Canadian distributor Bruno de Lorimier (right), and the SA Ranger (middle).

Turntables were very much in evidence at FSI, some being on demo by their distributors, and some being used by exhibitors who just wanted people to hear what their speakers/amps/preamps sound like with a good vinyl source. Perhaps the most interesting turntable demo that was of the venerable Linn Sondek LP12, which is the turntable that I own. Linn has recently announced a series of upgrades they say make a major improvement in the sound of the LP12. Not content merely to make promises, Linn had a comparison of two versions of the LP12 and its matching arm, one that was current as of a couple of years ago, and another that had the new SE upgrades installed, both with the same cartridge, both optimally set up by Linn setup expert Gary Dilliott (who had set up my own LP12 a few years ago). I didn't have time to listen closely to the comparison, but I overheard at least one Linn owner in the room exclaim that he wouldn't have believed that such an improvement was possible. Looks like my LP12 is due for a trip to the shop. Pictured with the two Linns is Gary Dilliott. Can you tell which turntable is the upgraded version?

Maybe it's my selective perception, but there seems to be a resurgence of single-driver speakers. The Gemme Audio Vivace ($4100) uses a 4" Fostex driver in a complex horn-loaded enclosure. Sensitivity is 92dB, which is not high by horn standards, but the claimed bass frequency extension is 20Hz, which is extremely low by any standard. They played some organ music at the demo, and I can't say that I heard anything close to 20Hz. The bass was impressive by single-small-driver standards, however, and the speakers had the coherence that this sort of design is known for. Gemme Audio is a small company based in Montreal, with only two products: the Vivace and the Tanto ($5100), a more conventional two-way system. Getting into the crowded audio marketplace is a difficult feat for any speaker company that doesn't have a full product range; the fact that Gemme has been picked up by distributors in the USA, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Ukraine tells me that they must be doing something right. Pictured: V-P Sales and Marketing Jean-Pierre Boudreau and the Vivace, with the Tanto lurking in the background.

Red Wine Audio is the name of the company making amplifiers designed by one Vinnie Rossi, "an electrical engineer with a true passion for music and implementing the electronics that recreate it," whose name, if you pretend that Vinnie is spelled with one "n," means "red wine" in Italian. (Actually, "vini rossi" means "red wines," but let's not quibble.) What makes Red Wine Audio amplifiers interesting is that they're all battery-operated. The system being demoed used a pair of the Red Wine Audio Signature 70 monoblocks ($2999/pair), driving single-driver speakers ($2495 MaxHemp or $949 Super 3XRS) from Omega Speaker Systems. The source was a battery-powered computer server, so that the only AC-powered devices in the room were some table lamps. I can't say whether it was the battery power source or some other aspect of these designs, but the sound was uncommonly natural and easy-on-the-ears. The small Super 3XRS speaker, which uses a proprietary 4.5" Omega hemp-cone driver, had a coherence and focus that reminded me in some ways of the $7000/pair Fujitsu Ten Eclipse TD-712z single-driver speaker that I reviewed in the January, 2007 issue. Shown here are Vinnie Rossi (left) with Omega Speaker Systems' designer Louis Chochos and the Red Wine/Omega system.

Dan Wright's career in audio started as a modifier of D/A converters and CD players. Although his company, ModWright instruments, still does digital source component modifications (he says he finds SACD players to be the best candidates for modification), he has also developed his own preamplifiers and phono stage. The latest of Dan's preamps is the LS 36.5 balanced tube line stage ($4995), which uses his own custom-designed MWI capacitors, 6H30 Russian Super Tubes, and a 5AR4 tube-rectified power supply. He also introduced the new SWP 9.0 SE phono stage at FSI.