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Standing beside my friend, the Gradient Helsinki, is the Harbeth M40.1 ($12,995/pair), recently reviewed by Art Dudley. It's actually larger than it appears in this photo. I love its old-school wide-baffle design.
And here is Walter Swanbon of Fidelis AV, importer for Harbeth and Gradient loudspeakers. Here you can get a better sense of the size of the M40.1 loudspeakers. To Walter's left is the newest member of the Gradient family, the Laura ($3995/pair). Intended for use in conjunction with the Helsinki or as a stereo pair, the Laura employs a coaxial drive unit and is designed to be positioned in close proximity to the front wall of your listening room. It's pretty, too.
Is this not the coolest-looking preamp you've ever seen in your life?
No?!
Are you kidding me? The DNM 3D-6 preamp ($13,995 with power supply) is cased in smoked acrylic and it shimmers and it glows. Who cares what it sounds like? How do you not just want this thing? To be in its presence is to want it. Ask Art Dudley.
Seriously, it's almost as if I haven't listened to any music at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. I just walk from room to room, running into people in the halls. These two weren't even exhibiting. They were simply here to have a little fun.
"Hey, Stephen! How are you?"
"Good! Just feeling a little worn out."
"Would it help if I offered you a scotch?"
Music Hall's Leland Leard (l) and Roy Hall, two of the happiest drunks in hi-fi.
I’ve been off the past several months, writing a book. It’s finished; I’m back. Consider this a catch-up column, touching on some of the new jazz CDs that have roused me the most since summer.
PAUL BLEY, ABOUT TIME (Justin Time). Paul Bley is one of the melodic avant-gardists who emerged in the mid-to-late ‘50s, searching for a way out of be-bop’s harmonic maze in the wake of Charlie Parker (others included Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Charles Mingus, and George Russell), and Bley—who’s played piano with all of them—may possess the subtlest charms. His solo albums are gems, and this,…
Physicist Jack Bybee of Bybee Technologies has now licensed his quantum purification nanocarbon technology to David Caplan's new company, Bybee Wire. Distributed by Laufer Teknik, the new Bybee Wire cables and power purifier include Bybee devices that clean up quantum mechanical noise at the sub-atomic level.
To these ears, the Bybee products made the happiest sound in the Tweek Geek room. There, Analysis Audio Omega speakers ($22,000/pair), which actually needed more room to breathe than the room allowed, Modwright SWL 9.0 preamp ($2500), Spectron Musician 3 Mk.II monoblock…
In my last blog report from T.H.E. Show in Las Vegas, I waxed ecstatic about the extraordinary, highly efficient, hand-made washi-paper Feastrex drivers distributed by Joe Cohen's Lotus Group of Northern California. The units are hand-crafted in Japan by Haruhiko Teramoto, who hand-rubs the frame, phase plug, and voice-coils of both his Feastrex D53 III 5" field-coil drivers ($39,000/pair) and D9e II 9" field-coil drivers ($31,500/pair) with traditional urushi lacquer.
The Feastrex drivers are completely organic in every sense. Everything is hand-crafted in a communal effort by…
In one huge room at Hyatt, I encountered a truly international effort. While some parts of this system are available in the US, others are not. Hence the prices in Euros.
You know something is right when you play Mahler's Symphony No.2 through 50W Mastersound Finals 845 SET monoblocks (10,000 Euros) and not very large Kaiser Kawero 92dB-sensitive speakers ($50,000/pair) and experience an image of tremendous size and weight that effortlessly captures the essence of the symphonic experience. Much credit also goes to LessLoss products from Lithuania: the LessLoss Dynamic Filtering…
One of the joys of John Atkinson's RMAF panel session was discovering a remarkable unanimity of understanding and vision amongst a group of men who work in different countries on different areas of sound reproduction. Amidst scribbling seven pages of notes that barely scratch the surface of the knowledge and wisdom shared by panelists, I looked up to discover John and everyone having a ball as they spoke with one mind about the current state of the commercial recording industry, and the future of high resolution formats.
To give you a hint, many of the panelists agreed that the…
Much of Keith O. Johnson's invaluable presentation consisted of a series of graphs that demonstrated everything from jitter to the noise created by certain power cables. One of his many messages was, if folks think there are no differences between cables, I have the graphs to show otherwise. He also exhibited graphs that show how the quality of manufacture of CDs makes a huge difference in the ultimate analog signal. Want to see what a bad DAC or amplifier does, and compare it with a state-of-the-art unit? Keith can show you. Pictured is a tone-cluster wave he developed as a diagnostic…