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Mothers and Mentors

Written in blue ink on the white space of pages of Fast Company magazine, while waiting for the plane, yesterday morning, at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.

***

Jon Iverson once commented that my writing was of an intellectual sort. Misunderstanding him, perhaps only slightly, I disagreed. I've never thought of myself as an intellectual, I thought. Emotional, yes. But, intellectual?

Now, however, I think I see a little bit better.

As I write this, I've become suddenly aware that the words are taking me into suites I meant not to visit. I'll go along,…

Siggy's Stardust

T+A's Siegfried Amft thinks different. That's obvious from his beautifully designed tube and solid-state products, an observation that cruelly ignores how good they sound. I was happy to see that Amft made it to the show, because I reckoned that meant he had something new and startling to demonstrate. He did: Criterion TCI 2 Active loudspeakers ($25,500/pair), sarcophagi incorporating twin carbon fiber 10" woofers in a selaed enclosure, a 7" specially tuned midrange cone, and a curved electrostatic panel that Amft claims can produce SPLs above 120dB "while maintaining superb membrane travel…

Great Dane

During CES, I kept hearing about GamuT's luxury digs offsite way out in the suburbs beyond McCarran International Airport. "It's incredible," Stephen Mejias assured me. "It has a pool, a pool table, beautiful kitchen, and a Danish chef who will make anything you want." That sounded nice, but Stereophile's busy show-blogging schedule prevented me from partaking of that particular pleasure dome. "No problem," Lars Goller assured me. "We keep the house until Tuesday. Come by on Monday after the show and we'll spend as much time as you want bringing you up to speed."

He didn't need to ask twice…

Art Audio Amp Includes Soul

Used by Bösendorfer in their demo, the Art Audio Adagio has to be one of the most beautiful tube amplifiers made. If you see it and don't want it, you have no soul.

The Four Seasons with Larry Staples of LSA Group/DK Designs

Sometime near the close of Sunday, when vinyl was being slipped into sleeves and room treatments were coming down, I wandered my way to the end of a hall at the St. Tropez, where I heard such sweet music emanating from the LSA Group/DK Design suite.

Though tired — exhausted, in fact — I walked in, only wanting to stand against a wall and listen. A group of friendly faces sat happily around a pair of LSA1 loudspeakers ($1000/pr), enjoying a bit of jazz. What I noticed, immediately, was that, though I was standing against a wall, in the back of the room, my listening position obscured by…

Pipedreams: Stompin' at the Doghouse

I was sipping my gin'n'tonic, watching a hologram of a scantily clothed dancer and soaking up some serious party ambience at Stereophile, UAV, and Home Theater magazines' annual CES bash, held this year at the Venetian Hotel's Vivid night club, when a tap on my shoulder snapped me back to business. It was jolly Craig Oxford, president of former Nearfield Acoustics, the company responsible for the balls-to-the-wall, cost-no-limit, Pipedreams loudspeaker system.

"It's been a good year, Larry," said Craig, "we've reorganized Nearfield Audio into a new business, High Emotion Audio,…

Old Wine In New Skins: Quad's New 'Statics

I'd heard a lot about Quad's upgraded ESL-989 speakers, renamed the Quad 2905 ($11,500/pair), so I dropped by the company's exhibit at the Alexis Park to check out these electrostatic floorstanders.

When I arrived, IAG America's Larry Shafer was listening to 2905s driven by Quad electronics. Smaller 2908s sat by. The new Quads sure looked sweet! So, too, was the sound, which was just as pleasing as my Quad '989s in my own listening room.

Julian Maddock, Quad's technical expert, assured me that the 2905—the model number combines the year (2005) and the panel size (9)—uses…

Joachim Gerhard Returns With Sonics

Sonics is the name of a new line of speakers designed by Joachim Gerhard, the founder of Audio Physic, and imported by Allen Perkins (Immedia), formerly the US importer of Audio Physic. The top-of-the-line is the PassionS, a tall, striking-looking speaker that consists of angled modules, with each driver having its own enclosure. The price is $32,000. Allen obviously loves its sound!

Eclipse Single-Driver Speaker from Fujitsu-Ten

I've always thought of Fujitsu-Ten as a company that manufactures car stereos. However, it turns out that they have a special division producing a line of home-audio speakers using single drivers of their own design. That's right: no woofer, no tweeter, no coaxially mounted woofer and tweeter—just a single cone driver, claimed to cover the range from 40Hz to 20kHz. In the top model, the TD712z ($7000/pair), this drive-unit is mounted in a rigid, egg-shaped enclosure. The sound of these speakers, driven by an Audion Sterling Plus Mk.II tube integrated amplifier ($2950), was simply…

The Single-Ended Audiopax

Audiopax, the Brazilian manufacturer of the Model 88 single-ended tube amplifier that I reviewed most favorably three years ago, introduced the Model 55 amplifier at T.H.E. Show. Solid-state rather than tubed, the 55 is still single-ended and still features the unique "Timbre Lock" control. According to designer Eduardo De Lima, this MosFET design sounds very close to the Model 88. Price is $11,990/pair (compared to the $14,990/pair of the current Model 88 Mk.II).