CRL cables were designed by Winston Ma (First Impressions Music) and Paul Weitzel in the late 1990s. Once known as FIM Cables, their name was changed in 2002, around the time Ma sold the company to Garth…
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Visiting Kara Chafee of de Havilland, whose amplifiers invariably grace music with a wonderful sense of air, enabled me to take a first listen to Cable Research Lab (CRL) cables. CRL's mid-level "Silver" line is a very recent recipient of a "Product of the Year Award" from a certain publication known for its absolutism. Another very positive publication fed CRL an award in 2007.
Tara Labs has so many levels of cables that factory manager Matthew Sellars, who assists designer Matthew Bond with cable design and oversees implementation, had to draw a four-tiered chart just to explain where the company's newest offerings fall in the Tara Labs hierarchy. That may be an exceedingly long opening sentence. But so is Tara Labs' product list.
Tara Labs' top-of-the-line is the Extreme Series. That includes the oft-praised Zero interconnect and Omega speaker cable. It turns out that Zero and Omega have four levels. They are, in descending order from the summit, Cobalt…
Stillpoints, a vibration-control company that has been making equipment support racks since 2003, has just introduced a 40"-wide, low mass, open-air rack that allows you to stack two components side by side on each support shelf. Each ultra long support shelf holds two 20"x16" equipment shelves, each of which can hold a separate component on the appropriate support technology. Each equipment shelf also contains six pockets of Stillpoints' multi-patented vibration damping technology, making for 12 pockets of vibration control per large support shelf. Stillpoints' Paul Wakeen claims that…
RBH Sound is best-known for its home-theater speakers, but CES saw the Utah-based company launch a "Signature" series of speakers that were demo'd in two-channel systems. I listened to a Telarc Aaron Copland recording on the three-way, sealed-box 8300-SE/R towers ($8449/pair), with a Boulder 1021 CD player and Boulder 860 power amplifier, and was impressed by the natural balance, extended low frequencies, and good dynamics.
RBH's makes all its own lower-frequency drive-units, which exclusively feature aluminum diaphragms, The 8300-SE/R uses upgraded versions of the the RBH 8" and 6…
We all have different digital needs, and companies like Bel Canto are trying different combinations of features to find customers.
For example, their new FM-1 tuner not only has the requisite analog outputs (balanced and unbalanced), it also has four digital inputs as well as a 24/96 digital out. And since this tuner can control volume, what we really have here is a tuner/preamp/DAC in one box.
Add a power amp and this may be the perfect desktop system. Price is estimated to be under $2,000 when the FM-1 ships in mid-2009.
Robert Baird got the scoop on this one in the February issue of Stereophile. Check his Aural Robert column for details about the Sonic Focus technology included in this iPod dock and its surprising heritage.
But here are the simple facts. The Ultra-Dock is planned as an upsampling 24/96 iPod dock that can upconvert lowly MP3s (via Sonic Focus processing) and draws the signal from the iPod's digital out like the Wadia iTransport.
The Ultra-Dock is planning for a Q3 2009 ship date at approximately $2,500.
Once you choose which components you want, they bolt the circuit boards inside the chassis and link them together.
Not an audiophile product per se, SE2 Labs ITC One "Integrated Theater Console" takes all the components typical in a high-end audio/video rack, and strips away everything but the circuit boards and transports and puts them all in a single climate-controlled chassis.
What may appeal to audiophiles is that on the list of components that SE2 can put in their rack is the Wadia 170I transport, an iPod dock and a Bryston multi-channel preamp.
Pricing varies depending on what you put in the console which is built like a tank with cable routing and power supply needs in mind. If…
Abbingdon Music Research out of London revealed their new CD-777 at the show with US distributor Darren Censullo from Avatar Acoustics on hand to explain the details.
Based on the same "OptiSample" and "OptiClickLock" technologies as the flagship CD-77 ($9,995), the CD-777 is built around the Philips CD Pro2 transport and features an Eastern Bloc 6NP1 "supertube."
The AMR CD-777 will retail for $3,500 and comes in silver and black when it hits our shores in the next couple months. This player also has a very nice metal touchscreen remote and S/PDIF and USB inputs on the…
"You have got to check out Vitus," Jon Iverson enthused. When I did, I took his point. Vitus Audio is the love child of Hans-Ole Vitus, who takes a holistic approach to audio design. Vitus products are, he explains, the result of relationships—not just parts and circuits, but how they interact with one another. I suspect, from looking at the gear, Vitus is also concerned about beauty, too.
Vitus uses "super precision resistors, matched transistors, and direct-coupled input stages. Its locally shunted power supply provides "absolute silence," Vitus claims.
The SL-010 line…