Harold Beveridge, like Peter, is no longer with us, but his son, Rick, who worked with his father back in the day, has reintroduced the speaker. The 6'-tall G3, beautifully finished in a 20-coat lacquer, takes…
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Many years ago, in a conversation I was having with Peter Walker of Quad, I asked him if there was a speaker he'd wished he'd designed. "PJ" thought for a moment, then said he admired the Beveridge electrostatic, where a flat panel fires into a waveguide, thus allowing the panel to overcome its Achilles' Heel: the very limited horizontal dispersion resulting from its width.
I was impressed by the extremely full-range presentation of the VMPS RMD-60 loudspeaker ($9950/pair) paired with the VMPS Very Solid Subwoofer ($1850)—especially with the system's admirable bass control. Part of the credit goes to Bybee special-effect Golden Goddess AC cables and speaker bullets, Bolder Cable interconnects and cables, the rest to the Eastern Electric M156 monoblocks (160W into 8 ohms, $7000/pair, based on the EL 156 pentode tube), and Bolder's Statement Level Modded Squeezebox 3 ($1300). If The Bolder Cable Company’s display sounded this good with brand-new amps that…
Ayre and Vandersteen are two companies whose products have achieved an enviable reputation for excellence. I was, in fact, blown away by my listening experience in the Ayre room at RMAF 2006, and looked forward to an equally enveloping experience this year.
Wisely occupying two rooms, which allowed for talking in one and concentrated listening in another, Richard Vandersteen and Ayre’s Steve Silberman seem to have opted for an industrial-strength display, far more Brooks Brothers than Yves Saint Laurent. As was the case with many of the recently set up rooms I entered on the first…
The sound in the large PS Audio room was impressive. Despite, at one point, my trying to listen to music over three conversations at once, the system on display,—all PS Audio save for the Avalon Ascendant speakers and JL Audio subs—was distinguished by its full midrange and inviting warmth. The sign on the poster behind the system—"Perfect Power Without the Box"—refers to the company’s forthcoming rack, which will have a power conditioner built into the bottom, additional power filters for every component, and the power itself carried by the tails of the rack. The initial plan is for…
Barrows Wurm urged me to "take a picture because it’s beautiful." This is PS Audio's as-yet-unnamed, forthcoming transport. A replacement for the aged PS Audio Lambda used in their RMAF rack display, it should cost under $2000. Other components included the Power Plant Premiere ($2195), GCC250 class-D Control Amplifier ($3495), and DL3 DAC ($995).
I really enjoyed the mellow sound created by the USB-input Benchmark DAC 1 and the Studio Electric T3 loudspeakers. The speaker, with its 87dB sensitivity and 4 ohm impedance, is distinguished by the 6.5" broad-band drive-unit, encased in a stainless-steel sphere, that handles frequencies from 50Hz to 4kHz. Although you can see the diminutive silk-dome tweeter in the photo, the side-firing 8" woofer, which handles the single octave from 25–50Hz, is missing from view. Very, very nice.
In Hebrew, the number 18 is called "chai," which also means "life." As my final (and 18th) blog entry from Day One at RMAF, I was happy to report how thrilled Jeff Wilson and I were with the sound in the Gill/Art Audio/Daedalus room.
Talk about system synergy. The thankfully large space easily accommodated the Daedalus Audio Ulysses speakers ($8800/pair), as well as the DA-RMA monitor which I didn't hear ($4450/pair); Gill Audio Alana preamp ($5000) and Gill Elise DAC ($6000); Art Audio Quartet monoblock amps ($14,500/pair) and unheard Art Audio Adagio ($29,000); and Empirical…
Well, not really. But the Thiel CS3.7 speakers set-up in the Denver Audio Designs room could be driven either by an all-Bryston system—the new BCD-1 CD player ($2395), BP26 preamp, and a pair 7B-SST monoblocks—or an all-Simaudio Moon system: SuperNova CD player P7 preamp, and W7 power amp. I listened to "Comfortably Numb" from Pink Floyd's The Wall with both set-ups and the differences were both audible and surprising. The Moon system favored David Gilmour's paradigmatic guitar solo; the Bryston the contribution of David Mason's drums and Roger Waters' bass. I could have lived with…
I went into the Esoteric room to take a listen to the digital components that build on the performance of the excellent SA-60 universal player that graced our October cover. But my attention was drawn to a pair of elegant loudspeakers sporting the Esoteric name. The Mg20 floorstander ($8410/pair) and bookshelf Mg10 ($5500/pair plus stands) feature tweeters and woofers fabricated from the very light metal magnesium, which is said to have an optimal combination of stiffness and self-damping. It has not been previously used in speakers (other than in alloys) because it degrades with…
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it is the "unknown unknowns" in audio that scare the pants off me at times. Synergistic's Ted Denney pulled me into his room. "Sit down. Listen to this."
We listened to a track called "Fade to Black." Was it Bob Dylan, was it Mark Knopfler? No-one knew. But the sound of the Thiel CS2.7 speakers was full and enveloping. Ted flipped a switch. The low frequencies became a bit boomier, but the soundstage expanded even more.
"Okay, I heard a difference. What did you change?"
Ted pointed to the Synergistic Enigma Transporter Active Shielding…