LATEST ADDITIONS

If the name Audio Eden conjures mental images of an unspoiled, verdant music paradise where your troubles don’t exist, then Ontario retailer Audio Eden’s room lived up to its name.

Toronto, here I come! Land of the CN Tower, Canada's Wonderland, the Blue Jays, Drake's NBA-sized basketball court in his mansion, and, of course, the Toronto Audiofest, where hundreds of audio brands representing the latest, greatest audio gear and accessories are displayed for our amusement.

Active speakers make sense. The amplifiers, crossovers, and drivers are designed as a unit, so the design isn't compromised by the need to interface with components with unknown electrical or acoustical characteristics (except for the room, and that can't be helped). Concurrent design and testing of the various pieces can result in an integrated, through-designed system. Plus, the elegant simplicity that active speakers bring to a system just appeals to me.

Like many audiophiles, I've found myself intrigued by the variety of approaches that are taken to achieve the same goals: point source, line source, panels, horns. Whenever I've heard horns paired with a flea-powered amp, the dynamics have always impressed. I've consistently heard a jump factor that makes music feel remarkably alive. The combination of these two traits, though—horns plus active—is quite rare.

Is audio reviewing a futile pursuit? As much as we reviewers may strive, through subjective observation and objective measurement, to accurately describe how a component looks, sounds, and performs, we frequently find words and numbers inadequate to communicate the mysteries that abound in the transcendent realm of music. How can we fully share what we feel when a component allows us to experience, sometimes afresh, often in a new way, sounds that elicit joy, sorrow, terror, or more subtle emotions? How do we encapsulate in words and measurements the sonic equivalent of the wide-eyed wonder that shines through a baby's eyes as she discovers something new?

Such emotions—hence such questions—can arise when we move from one music server to another, or even between different software running on the same server. They are particularly intense in the case of this review of the Ideon Absolute Stream meta edition (2024) ($24,000) and its optional add-on, the Ideon Alpha Wave LAN Optimizer ($6900), considering that the review lacks measurements.