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DNM 3D-6

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.

Drunk on Fun

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.

As I Was Saying...

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,…

Silence is Golden

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…

Feastrex

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…

International Effort

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…

The Smile of Recognition

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…

This is Music

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…

Adventures in the Present and Future

It takes people of vision to advance sound quality in an error—thank you, Mr. Freud, I mean era—when record companies often seem set on anything but advancing the quality of music and musical reproduction. Hence, for his panel "Adventures in Digital Formats, Upsampling & Dithering," John Atkinson and RMAF's Kurt Bauer assembled an extraordinary panel.

First, there was John himself, examining the history of digital reproduction. As he explained in the panel handout, John's life "has been marked by the tug between science and music." Trained in violin, he assembled his first audio…

A Packed House

One feature of this year's RMAF that has catapulted it into the major leagues of audio shows was the sheer number of well-attended workshops and panels scheduled at the Hyatt. Over the course of three days, one room featured "Let's Get Digital" with Robert Harley of The Absolute Sound, "Music Everywhere" by Steven R. Rochlin of EnjoytheMusic.com, "The New Music Label" by attorney Ned Hearn, "Adventures in Digital Formats, Unsampling & Dithering" with our own John Atkinson, "Digital Playback Equipment Design Considerations" with David Solomon of Signal Path International, and "Music…