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As I walked into the E.A.R./Marten room, Nat King Cole's voice sounded as beautiful as I have ever heard it reproduced. Through the modest-looking Marten FormFloor speakers ($6500/pair) and Marten FormSub ($4500), Reference Recordings' triumphant version of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances was so thrillingly full and colorful that I could not hide my amazement. On Dialoghi, a demonstration-quality CD from Bob Attiyeh of Yarlung Records that Robert Levi of the Los Angeles Audio Society urged me to play, the sound of Elinor Frey' cello was as warm and beautiful as anyone would ever want…
After a short visit to the Daedalus room, during which time Peigen changed speakers and cables, I returned to hear the F200's big daddy, the F300 ($14,900/pair). This is a 3-way, 4-driver vented box, with a rear-firing supertweeter, Air Motion Transformer tweeter, and copper shorting ring on the woofer to facilitate tighter bass. Frequency range is 24Hz–40kHz, sensitivity 89dB, and weight 158 lbs each. The speaker comes in two parts, so that the mid-and high-range unit can be used separately as a center channel with an impressive frequency range of 40Hz–40kHz. Associated components…
There's nothing like being greeted as the audiophile equivalent of the Messiah to either make your day or impel you to run for cover. In the case of Peigen Jiang's Eficion speakers, I'm glad I got over my embarassment and stayed.
Jiang was so excited to see me because the Bay Area Audiophile Society's Bob Walters had done everything but swear on the Bible that I would be visiting the room. Thankfully, I made it just in time before show's closing to hear Eficion's small and large models. Jiang, a former chip designer who resides in Redmond, WA and manufactures his speakers in…
As Jason mentioned earlier, I gave 5 hour-long presentations at RMAF entitled "Hearing is Believing—Is Hi Rez Digital the Future of Audio?" To allow Showgoers to hear the differences between the hi-rez masters of my recordings and CD and MP3 versions, I used a system put together by HiFi+ editor Roy Gregory for his demonstrations of system tuning—Ayre A7-xe integrated amplifier, Avalon Evolution NP2.0 speakers (which I reviewed in July, Vertex AQ cables, Stillpoints rack and speaker stands, and Quantum QX4 "field generator"—to which I added a MacBook running iTunes 8 driving a…
A close-up of the Wavelength Cosecant v3 DAC ($3500) that I used for my hi-rez dems. Using a single 6GM8/ECC86 dual-triode to drive the single-ended, transformer-coupled output, this is one of a very few USB-input DACs on the market that runs the USB link in "asynchronous" mode, whereby the DAC controls the flow of data from the computer and not vice versa, thus drastically reducing word-clock jitter when those data are fed to the DAC chip. I was impressed by its sound, playing 24-bit/88.2kHz files from my laptop, so I have asked for a review sample.
I was surprised not only by the ease to the sound of my hi-rez audio files played on the system in the Wavelength room, but also by the resolution. Surprised, because I am not naturally a tube guy, and not only is Gordon Rankin's gear tubed, it is unshamedly single-ended.
The Wavelength system comprised the Crimson USB DAC ($7500, now available with 6H30 tubes and balanced, transformer-coupled outputs), the Royal 71A Directly Heated Triode line preamplifier ($7500), and a pair of 12W Cardinal 300B SET monoblocks ($8500/pair) driving Vaughan Zinfandel 3-way speakers ($4500–$6000/…
Something happened in the middle of the tenth floor. In the remaining rooms I visited to the right of the elevator—with apologies to all those systems I unintentionally missed due to the pathetic human limitation of being unable to be in three rooms at once—the sound was darker, less illumined, but nonetheless quite involving. This is actually a sound that large numbers of audiophiles prefer. It's a more seasoned and mellow sound, less apt to sound bright and edgy in live rooms, and closer to the sound in acoustically dampened environments. It's truly a case of different strokes for…
Within minutes of running into Jeff Wells, new National Sales Manager for Spectron Audio, I found myself on the tenth floor of the Marriott. Playing my own version of pick a number, any number, I decided to check out the first room on my left. There, in a display sponsored by TweekGeek.com, I discovered two Spectron Musician III class-D amplifiers ($7195 each) driving SP Technology Revelation full-range speakers ($20,000/pair).
Wynton Marsalis was blowing on the Examplar-modded Denon DVD 2900, and he sounded fabulous. Given that my previous experiences with class-D (switching)…
On Saturday night, Bay Area Audiophile Society coordinator Bob Walters gave me a list of rooms he urged me to visit. Since two were on the 10th floor of the Marriott Tower, on which I had not yet set foot, I resolved to check both out. I'm glad I did. The tenth floor of the Marriott was like a gold mine. All I had to do was walk down the hall to the next room, and more glorious sound awaited me.
That was certainly the case when I reached the Immedia room. The Berkeley-based outfit, spearheaded by Allen Perkins, distributes such gems as Sonics speakers by Joachim Gerhard, Cerapuc…
RMAF was my first chance to hear the new McIntosh MT10 turntable ($9500) that had starred in our 2008 CES blog. But after I had listened to vinyl on the McIntosh system for a while—and very good it sounded, too—Ron Cornelius drew my attention to the MCD500 SACD/CD player ($6500) at the top left of the stack shown in the photograph.
Not only does the player have a volume control and digital inputs, allowing it to be used to get the best sound quality from other source components, like the$6000 MS750 music server Wes Phillips reviewed last January (shown here on the right of the…