Like many other industries, audio has its power couples: behind-the-scenes movers-and-shakers who shape the trajectory of the industry and who also happen to be, well, together. Angela Cardas and Josh Meredith of Cardas Audio come to mind, as do Dave and Carol Clark of Positive Feedback, Eli and Ofra Gershman of Gershman Acoustics, Luke Manley and Bea Lam of VTL, Carl and Marilyn Marchisotto of Nola Speakers, Edwin and Gabi van der Kley-Rynveld of Siltech and Crystal Cable. George and Carolyn Counnas of Zesto Audio are a hi-fi power couple I'm especially fond of; I'm always happy to see them at shows, catch up with them on the phone, or exchange emails with them. Their sweet demeanor and good vibrations always lift my spirits.
George designs Zesto's preamplifiers, power amplifiers, phono stages, and step-up transformers, while Carolyn, a talented fine-art painter, gives Zesto's products their unique organic curves...
In my realm, the most sophisticated, intelligent, difficult thing anyone can do is create something mysterious. It could be a poem, a photo, a movie, a song, a symphony, or a piece of painted wood. What's most important is the mysteryand that experiencing the mysterious creation inspires in the observer a desire to probe its hidden realms, to somehow figure it out. Human cultures are founded on mysteries: Mysteries incite art, inspire science, and facilitate dreaming.
"It's the difference between a stuffed dog and the real thing," said Gunter (George) Bischoff, of Melos Audio, on the difference between solid-state gear and tubes. "The real dog may piss on the rug, needs visits to the vet, gets fleas, has to be walked, but it's a living thinga real dog. The stuffed dog requires no care, needs no maintenance, but has no life."
When I was a young man, blind dates were always laced with anxiety. (Proms were even worse. Once, when I arrived in a rented tux and my father's prized dress gloves, my date's father ordered me to take out the trash.)
It would appear that there are still people out there who are unaware that this is the age of the transistor. Not only are tubed amplifiers not vanishing from the face of the earth, they are proliferating. Audio's equipment directory for 1977 listed three tubed power amplifiers. The same directory for 1984 lists over 30 of them, and the Quicksilver amplifier is not even included!
Although one of the most innovative firms in the audio electronics field, the David Berning Company seems determined to keep as low a profile as possible. The company advertises little, does not actively seek out new dealers, and seems content to let potential customers seek it out, as though to say "Okay, here's my product, take it or leave it." Thus, even though both Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, in a rare outbreak of agreement, a couple of years ago declared Berning's TF-10 to be one of the best preamplifiers available, most serious audiophiles are still unaware of the Berning Company's existence. Perhaps the EA-2100 will change that.
The only thing that excites me as much as finding an excitable new affordable component (which I define as below $1000, and the lower the better) is a new "trickle-down" design from a cutting-edge designer. Thankfully, such new "real-world" products are becoming more commonplace in the High End. The process begins when a talented high-end designer releases an expensive, cutting-edge product that is hailed by the audiophile press as a breakthrough, a new "reference."
From my writing chair, I can see about a dozen moderately priced tube and solid state audio amplifiers.
The five stacked next to my desk are First Watt or Pass Labs models designed by Nelson Pass. Across the room is a hybrid tube/class-D Rogue Sphinx V3 integrated. That black Sphinx is standing on its side behind one of the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers. Next to the Orangutan is a Schiit Aegir. The most conspicuous amp in the room is my BFF, the Line Magnetic LM-518 IA (footnote 1), which breaks the night's darkness with its tall, bright-emitter 845 triodes. Next to that is Ampsandsound's Bigger Ben KT88/6L6 single-ended speaker and headphone amp.
At the end of Gramophone Dreams #46, I was lost in the pristine beauty of Decware's 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier driving the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers. That was an extremely enjoyable system, and I was hoping to keep it intact for another month. My plan was simply to morph into my long-postponed opus on tube rolling using the Zen Triode as well as Ampsandsound's Bigger Ben headphone and loudspeaker amp. Both are single-ended triode, no-feedback designs and therefore perfectly suited for tube-swapping comparisons.
I am not a fan of that amp designer who promoted his products by pointing a condescending finger while scolding audiophiles, like errant children, for preferring their records to sound "pleasant" rather than "accurate."
He reminds me of my least favorite teacher, Professor Grausamkeit, who was just like that and said similar things. Every time I smarted back, "Accurate to what?" he'd whack me with a wooden yardstick.
VAC's Statement 452 iQ Musicbloc amplifier ($75,000 for a single amp; $150,000/pair mono, as reviewed) is tall, young, and lovely, but unlike the girl from Ipanema, it isn't tan. Nor, at 280lb in its flight case, is it likely to "go walkin'." Getting the pair moved into my listening room required considerable effortfortunately not mine.
Only recently did I learn that successive generations of the Chevrolet Corvette are referred to by the cognoscenti with two-character alpha-numeric identifiers: C1, C2, C3, and so on. I learned this while reading about the most recent versionC8, known to non-cognoscenti as the 2020 Corvettewhich happens to be the first version since C2 that impresses me. (I say that as one who used to work for the owner of a C3, a then-middle-aged male who actually boasted, while under the influence, that he and two of his C3-owning friends drove them solely because their juvenile styling attracted juveniles. Rest assured I left his employ within days of that revelation.)
This, our February issue, is the first Stereophile issue to arrive during the year 2020, which marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Audio Researchin my view one of the key events in the history of high-end audio. So it makes sense for this issue to include an Audio Research reviewin this case, of the $20,000 Reference 160 S stereo amplifier.
At the 1992 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Audio Research showed a line of reference products that represented the pinnacle of founder William Z. Johnson's life work as an amplifier designer. Although the all-tubed, fully balanced preamplifier and tubed monoblock power amplifiers were shown as works-in-progress, it was clear that these were products aimed at advancing the state of the amplifier art with no consideration for cost.