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Kind of Blue

I wandered into the ModWright/Red Dragon/Acoustic Zen/Golden Sounds room expecting good sound because Dan Wright's stuff always delivers, but I was wowed by the system's synergy.

ModWright's SWLP 9.0SE preamp ($3995) was being driven by ModWright's upgrade on the Sony 9100ES CD/SACD/DVD player ($3500, including player). Red Dragon's Leviathan Signature monoblock amplifiers ($5995/pair) were feeding a pair of Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers ($4300/pair) via Golden Sound cables.

Wowsers! I'd never heard the Acoustic Zen or Red Dragon products before and they did not disappoint.…

Red's Dead On, Baby!

Red Dragon's Leviathan Series monoblock amplifiers deliver 500W into 8 ohms for $5995/pair. Driving Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers, they sure sounded sweet—and powerful! They're packed with cool stuff, such as Neutrik silver XLR inputs and Cardas solid-copper binding posts, not to mention ERS paper, which is "employed at key locations to absorb and diffuse unwanted EMI."

Maybe I'm just superficial, but I thought the Leviathan's wood cases and softly glowing logo lid just looked cooler than all get-out. Hey, sound is the crucial thing, but if you can look cool while performing well…

Channel Island's New D•400 Power Amp

Jon Iverson already posted a picture of Channel Island's D•400 amp ($4000/pair) and PCC•1 remote control passive preamp ($895), but he didn't mention how freaking powerful the combo sounded driving the Von Schweikert VR-5 ($18,000/pair). CIA's Dusty Vawter switched over to his also powerful-sounding D•200s and handed me a D•400—holy moly! The thing weighs a ton! The 0.25" side panels are all heatsink, which made me wonder, has Vawter produced a class-AB amp to join his class-D designs?

"Oh no," Vawter hastened to assume me, "this is our version of class-D, which means it has a…

Kind of Louis

Other Stereophile writers, most specifically Jason Victor Serinus, have mentioned how good the Immedia room sounded and they are absolutely right: It sounded wonderful. I heard it twice and both times I was tremendously impressed with how relaxed and natural it sounded at moderate loudness levels. Many demonstrations rely on loudness to generate excitement, but Immedia's Allen Perkins let his system just bloom naturally.

When I returned to hear the Allegria ($15,000/pair) loudspeaker from Sonics By Joachim Gerhard, Perkins had replaced the Ayre power amplifier with the more powerful…

Random Encounters, Random Songs

I totally agree with Wes. My favorite part of any show is meeting with fellow tribe members.

I love the random greetings and conversations.

I was relieving our marketing associate, Jaime Rosov, playing Booth Babe — handing out comp copies of Stereophile, Home Theater, and Shutterbug — when Bryan Bilgore of Polargreen, Inc., walked over.

The conversation began and ended with music, of course. "There's no point in having CDs anymore," Bryan told me.

He keeps all of his songs on music servers. He loves the random playback.

"I get to hear songs…

Nagra's CD player

Wes Phillips already described his reaction to the new Nagra CDT CD transport and CDC CD player/control center. As can be seen from this photo, a hidden benefit of the player is that it has two sets of analog outputs: one pair on the side to go with Nagra own's PL-L and PL-P preamps and another on the rear panel, to be used with conventional preamps.

Gershman Acoustics' Black Swan

The Black Swan loudspeaker ($30,000/pair) from Canadian manufacturer Gershman Acoustics is unusual in that it uses a separate enclosure for its woofer section, flanked by extensions of the satellite's side-panels. The speaker's finish was excellent and the sound, with the speakers driven by McCormack universal player and electronics via Magnan cable, was equally excellent, even taking the the small size of the hotel room into consideration.

The Heartbreaking Avid Acutus

I was fooled into believing that Ryan Adams was in the Mobile Fidelity room. He was telling me he wished I'd steal all of his records and screw all of his friends. This seemed strange, indeed.

But it wasn't Ryan Adams at all. It was just the illuminating Avid Acutus turntable ($13,000).

Bard: Wireless Without the Computer

Jon Iverson wrote about Bard's wireless system, but I think it worth emphasizing that, although Bard has a USB dongle that will transfer music from your computer to other systems, many audiophiles might be even more thrilled by the Bard One ($850), which inserts between your preamp and power amp and broadcasts to a nearby system, where it plugs into that preamp's line inputs. It's small and unobtrusive and sounded very good at HE2006, I hope to get my mitts on a sample and write about it further.

More on Bard

The guys have posted a couple of entries discussing the very neat Bard wireless music system.

Jon Iverson told me I should go check it out. I was happy I did.

What was most obvious was how simple the system is to set up and use.

"I want my mother to be able to use it," Sonneteer's Haider Bahrani told me, "without having to ask me a million questions."