I always enjoy Ray Kimber's IsoMike demos more than almost any other HE Show demo. It's not the room full of pedigreed high-end gear, although he always has that. This time he demoed with four B&W 800d loudspeakers, two pairs of Pass Labs X350.5 power amplifiers, Genex Audio GX9000/DSD-BNC interface, and four channels of EMM Labs DAC8 MkIV DSD feeding EMM Labs Switchman (four channels worth, natch), not to mention a whole bunch of Kimber KableD-60, Kimber Select KS-3038, and Word Clock D-60 cables. Nor is it the meticulously recorded music that Ray has captured with his IsoMike process.

The beautiful Ascendo loudspeaker, imported by airline pilot and audio enthusiast Darren Censullo of Avatar Acoustics

Can a show report have too many pictures of oil-cooled tube amplifiers? I don't
think so.

Proving that you could create beautiful music within the confines of a cement hotel room, AAA Audio was showing off their new disc player atop the Critical Mass Systems isolation platform.

Canadian Totem Acoustic specializes in manufacturing loudspeakers that are small is size and price but big in sound. Perhaps no speaker of theirs exemplifies this better than the cheapest model in the line: the $450/pair Dreamcatcher. Here’s designer Vince Bruzzese with the Dreamcatcher.

Flying Mole Electronics is the whimsical name of a company that makes some compact, relatively inexpensive, and, from what I heard in their room, very good-sounding audio electronics. How compact? Well, just look at the picture of their CA-S3 integrated amp, with a CD box next to it for scale. The amplifier is described as "proprietary bi-phase PWM," with an output of 20Wpc, and sells for $850. The larger—but still compact—CA-S10 ($1500) puts out 100Wpc. Both are claimed to have a tube-like sound. The little CA-S3 did a good job driving both a custom system based on JBL components and a more conventional bookshelf-sized speaker from Von Schweikert.

If you're ever in LA, visit Kanpai for some of the best sushi you'll ever experience.

Leonid Korostyshevski, who hails from Saratov Russia and has written for the Stereophile web site in the past, checks out headphones and some music. When asked what he liked best about the show, Leonid said "everything."

John Atkinson and I were musing yesterday about modern tribes, riffing off the concept writer Corey Doctorow proposed in <I>Eastern Standard Tribe</I>, that you choose your tribe these days based upon shared passions and shared goals. In that sense, the HE shows are a gathering of <I>our</I> tribe and the high point of all of them is meeting (and recognizing) fellow tribe members.

Horns’n’triodes go together like...well, horses and carriages&mdash;and those who view both horn loudspeakers and tube electronics as antiquated technology might say that the simile is particularly apt. Although I would not want to argue that the way to sonic bliss is obtainable only by pairing horn loudspeakers with triode tube amplifiers, the combination <I>can</I> be magical, as was the case with the Acapella Audio Arts speakers and Wavac Audio Lab electronics on demo at HE 2006.