They Cost How Much?

They Cost How Much?

Roy Hall was blunt as usual. "I'm bringing in some obscenely expensive tubes. They're Telefunken ECC803Ses, which is one of the best tubes available, but Cool Valve measures them and selects the most perfectly matched, and then bonds their EAT Cool Damper to them. The result is lower operational temperatures, longer life, and lower microphonics. They cost . . . "

JM Labs Chorus 716s

Forums

I'm planning to purchase a new set of speakers & I'm very interested w the Chorus 716s (budget wise also these are the only price range I could afford right now), need some opinions from you guys out there on these speakers. I have an existing Mission 753 driven by a Krell KAV-300i, Krell KAV-250cd (use as a transport), Krell Stealth D/A Converter.

Emperor Hansen

Emperor Hansen

Hansen Audio needed a speaker that wasn't quite as, um, lordly as its $65,000/pair King floorstanders, so Lars Hansen designed the $49,000/pair Emperors. The four driver three-ways are constructed of Hansen's composite matrix material in an enclosure that employs Sound Wave Refraction Distortion Elimination technology. The midrange (7.2") and bass (10.6") drivers are all multilayer composite sandwiches.

The Sooloos Gang

The Sooloos Gang

Sooloos is a company to watch, and here's the crew assembled in one room: Angus MacDonald, Enno Vandermeer, Rob Darling & Sandro Pugliese. These guys cringed if we even discussed anything less than full-resolution CD on their system.

Sooloos CD Slot

Sooloos CD Slot

The Sooloos display comes with a built-in CD slot for loading your music onto the server. The $4400 Control:One touch-screen display/controller is pretty slick. The CD ripper is in the base—unobtrusively located, might we add? Once the disc is ripped, all of All Media Guide's metadata is automatically entered, so you could, for example, locate any recording in your collection with Phil Lesh playing bass. Oh wait—maybe we should have used an example with somebody who changed bands more frequently.

Pronounced Deeks As In "Geeks"

Pronounced Deeks As In "Geeks"

DEQX's PDC3 preamp/processor (price tdb) combines an analog preamplifier with a DAC <I>and</I> measurement-driven DSP. In a hotel room with <I>zero</I> treatment, Jon Iverson and I were enthralled by the three dimensional soundstaging of a pair of B&W 805s and a pair of B&W ASW 700s. Nope, it wasn't because the CD player was fabulous, either&mdash;it was solid, but not audiophile approved.

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