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Navison Knock Out

Rives Audio's Richard Bird introduced me to Navison, a brand I was aware of but not familiar with. Navison products are aesthetic knock outs—gorgeous wood (or black lacquer), etched gold faceplates (or chrome), and deep black transformer pots. They are audio confections.

Founded by Ben Nguen in 1996, Navison are made in San Jose. Rives demoed the 150W NVS-150 OTL output transformeless monoblock amplifiers ($30,000/pair). The two-chassis design employs a ton of 633C tubes to get all of that juice, but man oh man, did it deliver the goods.

The front end was a Navison…

Unicorn Chaser

Over at the Boing Boing blog, it is customary to run a "unicorn chaser," an overly cute picture of a unicorn after posting a post that makes you go "eeeew." German Physiks Unicorn mk II ($21,500/pair) were sort of like that, only for show sound. Ahh, that's better.

Actually, there are different models of the Unicorn, one with a titanium DDD driver; the pair I heard had the Carbon DDD driver.

The heart of any German Physiks loudspeaker is its 360° DDD driver. In the Unicorn, that's the only driver (other models employ a second driver; the unicorn employs a tuned horn and a…

Magico's V2

Featured in Magico's second room in the Venetian was the new V2 ($18,000/pair), a smaller sibling to the V3 that I reviewed last May. It combines the same ring-radiator tweeter as the V3 with two 7" Nano-Tec drivers, the latter arranged so that the lower woofer rolls off at a lower frequency than the upper one to give much of the sonic benefits of a two-way design.

Magic From Magico

Magico had two rooms at the Venetian, the first of which featured the Californian company's new 4-way M5 ($89.000/pair). Weighing in at 360 lbs, the M5 features a ring-radiator tweeter built into the baffle, two 6" Nano-Tec-coned midrange units, and two 9" Nano-Tec woofers, these featuring 5" voice-coils. The sealed enclosure—no ports in Alon Wolf's designs—is constructed, like other Magico speakers, from multiple layers of Baltic Birch plywood. The convex front baffle is machined from a 200lb slab of aircraft-grade aluminum.

Alon Wolf was demonstrating the M5 with hi-rez files…

Aerial Antics

One of the most impressive speakers I have auditioned in the past few years was the three-way Aerial 20T, which was reviewed by Michael Fremer in April 2004. I spoke to Aerial's Michael Kelly a while back about getting a pair for a Follow-Up review, but he declined, saying that he was working on an improved version.

That version, the 20Tv2 ($32,000/pair) made its debut at the 2009 CES. It retains the earlier version's ribbon tweeter and midrange unit, but features two new 7" woofers, these using a cone constructed from layers of carbon-fiber, Rohacell, and glass-fiber, and said to…

Sheer See-Through Transparency

"Now that can't work," I thought, as I went into the Crystal Cable room and saw the Dutch company's new Arabesque loudspeaker (45,000 Euros/pair, equivalent to around $60,000). A glass enclosure? But as I listened to a variety of recordings that I thought would expose cabinet problems, such as female vocals and solo cello, I didn't hear any flaws that I could lay at the feet of the enclosure.

Panels of ¾" glass are glued together to form an enclosure that from above looks like a truncated spiral and sits on a heavy aluminum base that carries the crossover components. A RAAL ribbon…

A Question of Balance

I walked into Balanced Audio Technology's room and almost couldn't leave. Geoff Poor was driving a pair of WATT/Puppy 8s wth an all BAT system consisting of a VK-D5SE/Superpack CD player ($9500), VK-32SE preamplifier ($8000), and the new 55Wpc VK-55SE amplifier ($5995).

The VK-55SE employs BAT's SuperTube gain block, essentially a 6H30 "supertube" gain stage.All of the VK-55s resistive current sources have been replaced by vacuum tube based current sources and the power supply's storage has been increased five-fold. Higher quality polypropylene capacitors.

The VK-55SE can…

Moscode Knows What You Want

George Kaye had his 120Wpc Moscode 402Au Stereo power amplifier ($6495) on display. Like the 401HR before it, the 402AU accepts a variety of tubes in its front end. The 402 adds low negative feedback, optically coupled floating bias circuit, and dual mono power supplies.

Add to that a whole bevy of high-end components, such as Edison Price binding posts (soldered directly to the output module), Cardas input connectors and internal wiring), and six output devices per channel—the better to run low impedance speakers, Kaye said.

Sonically, it's far smoother and detailer than…

Blue Light Special

I never fail to check out Jonathan Tinn's Blue Light Audio systems. He's a past master of system set-up, so his rooms always sound special. This year's was no exception.

In the middle of the room was the definitely non-UL-approved test-bench prototype of darTZeel's soon-to-come 1000W NHB-458 monoblock amps (price tbd) that have so alarmed some readers. The actual working components centered around DarTZeel's new 350Wpc CTH-8550 integrated amplifier ($20,300)—but you also get an MC phono stage for that price.

The source was Playback Designs' MPS-5 Reference SACD/CD player…

Good Vibes

Frank Cheng's Acoustic System International now produces LiveLine cabling. Combining acoustic resonator technology with super thin, solid-core wire, the cabling is composed of different segments that contain wires made from different metals that are ultimately soldered together at 850 degrees. The RCA interconnect costs $995 (length not stipulated in the press materials), XLR interconnect $1450, 1.8m power cable $995, and 2.4m speaker cable $1750. One online publication gave each of these cables a product of the year award.

These cables were displayed in the Avatar Acoustics room,…