There I was delighted to discover the Carmel loudspeaker ($18,000/pair), named after Yoav's two-year old son, Carmel. I doubt Carmel's voice is equally flat from 35Hzצ40kHz, or can yet bring out the deep bass voices on John Atkinson's demonstration-quality While You Are Alive recording of male…
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Just as I entered Emeryville's Hilton Garden Inn on the final day of the show, YG Acoustics' Yoav Geva (fourth from left) and his extended family were making their first visit to the Hilton. Filling most of an elevator, our little passel of smiling faces made its way to the YG Acoustics room.
Bob Walters, coordinator of the Bay Area Audiophile Society, pegged Tonian Acoustics as one of the best-sounding loudspeaker exhibits at the Show. If only I could share his enthusiasm for the Tonian Acoustic Classic 7.1 ($5500/pair), a 16 ohm loudspeaker with 95dB sensitivity is inexplicably absent from the Tonian Acoustics website.
Hooked up by Tonian's solid-core copper speaker cable ($480/8ft pair) and interconnect ($350 for 1m) to a Philips CD player and Audiolab 8000 integrated amp, the system was a bit sharp and bright on an excellent Pentatone recording of Schubert's Trout…
How can you not love these adorable little components with the lovely little sound? With tube holders that glow in the dark, these cuties are manufactured and designed for Fremont, CA-based Napa Acoustic by Mistral in China.
When I entered the room, Joseph Kwong and Edwin Young told me that, after I encountered them at Axpona in Jacksonville, they had taken my criticism of their Radio Shack cabling to heart, and come up with their own speaker cable ($100/8ft. pair). Designed in Fremont from 10-gauge cooper wire and XLPE insulation, it was used with the Bow A2 loudspeakers ($2299/…
Towering Alan Dwight Hulsebus of Raven Design Studio was proud to show off the unusual skeleton of his Raven Ebb loudspeaker ($12,000/pair). Manufactured and designed in Camarillo, CA, the speaker includes a proprietary Raven ribbon and Focal drivers (including two rear-firing drivers to optimize room interactions), and is wired with Clarity cable. (Exhibitor Orca Design and Manufacturing distributes Focal in the US.) Claiming a frequency response of 40Hz–50kHz ±3dB, with a nominal impedance of 6 ohms and minimal impedance of 5 ohms, the 86dB-sensitive loudspeaker was paired with…
Several years ago, under different ownership, the magazine was moved from our 110 Fifth Avenue office in Union Square to our current 261 Madison Avenue location in Murray Hill. They put us on the 9th floor. It was nice. I made some friends. A couple of years later, we were moved from the 9th floor to the 6th floor. And a couple of years after that, we were moved again, from the 6th floor to our current location on the 5th floor.
Have I ever mentioned that we share this floor with the lovely ladies of Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly?
That’s right.…
Judging from the sound, Inex Innovation is onto something really good. Begun in 2004 "by a gang of audio enthusiasts. . . with strong engineering backgrounds in the field of fiber optics and telecommunication," the company specializes in manufacturing cables and equipment that incorporate high-end telecommunication fiber-optic technologies.
When I entered the room, I was dismayed to find Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie Titanic sounding intolerably bright. But since everything that followed sounded superb, I shall chalk that one up to a bad recording or transfer…
At the other end of the room from the JBL Everest DD-66000 I wrote about on the first day, Design Interaction was switching between the JBL 1400 Array ($11,000/pair) and Revel Ultima2 Salon loudspeakers ($22,000/pair), both speakers very well-reviewed in Stereophile. Heard through a dark-charactered Mark Levinson No.532 amp ($20,000), No.512 SACD player ($15,000), and No.526A preamp ($10,000), hooked up by MIT Oracle cables ($3500, with allocation not specified), the much fêted Revels smoked the less expensive JBLs, I thought.
Specifically, the JBLs had a bright, edgy top and…
Rarely do I have time to visit a room twice, let alone space to post multiple blogs on a single exhibit. But because deHavilland/KE Engineering's Kara Chafee first showing of her KE Engineering/deHavilland Model 222 Magnetic Tape Playback Preamplifier ($1,995) was severely handicapped by the lack of her deHavilland KE 50A monoblock power amplifiers ($9995/pair), which had been delayed in shipment, I made sure to return when I learned that the amps had finally arrived.
Kara has designed her latest preamp (pictured perched atop a vintage Ampex machine) to support her open-reel habit…
Given that the DarTZeel-Evolution Acoustics-Playback Designs room at T.H.E. Show 2010 blew both me and John Atkinson away, and earned my "Best of CES 2010," I was extremely eager to take another listen.
To say that, in an even smaller room, Jonathan Tinn of Portland's Blue Light Audio had set up a more modest reference system will have some readers guffawing at the prices. The cost of the Evolution Acoustics MMMiniOne loudspeakers ($15,000/pair), plus integrated stand system ($7000) and integrated subwoofer ($5000), is no small hunka change. Throw in the darTZeel CTH-8550 Reference…
In his second, equally well-appointed room at the CA Audio Show, Elite Audio's Michael Woods was telling a visitor "People think that Meridian equipment is only for showing movies. But it's excellent for audio as well."
Given the price of components—$19,995 for the 808i.3 CD/preamp, $7500 for the Control 15, and $34,995/pair for the DSP7200 speakers—Meridian had better sound good on audio. In fact, it does.
With zillions of albums displayed on the Sooloos Media Server's screen, I decided to wax nostalgic and opt for classic Barbra Streisand. I thought I knew what I was…