Allen Perkins' Spiral Groove has expanded beyond its excellent turntable, which has won major awards in Japan, to issue a new amp, DAC, and cabling. The patented cable line, close to final production, includes speaker cable, interconnect, and digital interconnect. Price has yet to be determined. Proof of its quality is that it used Spiral Groove's two tonearms and the entire line of Sonics speakers designed by Joachim Gerhard (formerly of Audio Physic) and now manufactured in Berkeley, CA. Having heard pre-production samples several of these products at Casa Bellecci-Serinus, I know that one of Allen's concerns is to eschew hard-edged digititis and over-hyped sound in favor of the more natural presentation of analog.
CES 2009 marked the first time that Allen's distribution company Immedia displayed the German-made Lehmannaudio Linear headphone amplifier ($1149). Fitted with a single input and single output, this diminutive baby can be used with headphones and as a one-source preamp. To demonstrate its quality, as well as that of Sonics' Anima Monitors ($2600/pair), Allen paired them with the Spiral Groove SG-2 turntable ($15,000), tonearm ($6000), Lyra Olympos cartridge ($9,800), Lehmannaudio Decade phono amp ($2400), and forthcoming Spiral Groove class-A SG E60 solid-state amp (tentatively priced at $13,500), all seated on a Finite Elemente Signature E14 rack ($2925). That the sound was as full and inviting as that from systems featuring larger amps and far more costly preamps was quite an achievement. I'll bet the Sennheiser HD 800 headphones (scroll down for my report if you're coming to this blog for the first time) would have sounded wonderful powered by the Lehmannaudio Linear headphone amp.
