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And here is Adam Shaw-Cotterill licking the Mezzo 1's Aspirated Tweeter. I'm not sure why he's licking it. He must really love it.
See this man?
His name is Adam Shaw-Cotterill. He works for Audio Partnership, parent company of Mordaunt-Short. He's got some long, fancy title, but his job is to take care of his customers. Don't let his doey eyes fool you. He's not so innocent, not so safe. In fact, he's an absolute firecracker, burning and burning and ready to explode. He wants to tell you about a loudspeaker. He wants to tell you about the all-new Mordaunt-Short Mezzo 1. And he'll waste no time about it. Words rush from his mouth like bells and whistles from the Las Vegas Hilton Casino. It's almost…
I was excited to see Cambridge Audio's TT50 turntable. On display with their small, S30 loudspeakers ($259/pair), the TT50 was looking pretty darn sexy in its high-gloss jet-black finish. If it reminds you of Pro-Ject's popular Debut III, that's probably because the TT50 was developed in partnership with that Austrian firm. It uses a proprietary tonearm, an Audio Technica AT95E moving magnet cartridge, and its elastomer-coated acrylic platter is said to "control resonance and provide matched acoustic impedance to the vinyl record for maximum detail retrieval."
The TT50 is…
Wes Phillips, Stephen Mejias, and Kal Rubinson join San Antonio, Texas retailer Galen Carol on the way to the Venetian. As Galen explained to us, high end retailing is a bit of a challenge, but still viable to dealers that take care of their customers and offer old fashioned service.
The PS Audio Memory Link ($1695) is a CD/DVD/RAM drive. It's a mechanical player (ie, it still spins the discs), but it has an unusually large cache. Conventional players have caches of around 8–16MB, the Memory Link has a 64MB cache. Why is this better?
Paul McGowan says the larger cache—about three minutes worth of music—allows the processor to handle larger "packets" of information, which in itself reduces the amount of timing jitter. The data is put through a digital lens with output jitter measured as low as 0.5ps.
The Memory Link runs Linux and, McGowan says, will be…
The Lyngdorf Server 1 is a music and video server had us drooling. Lyngdorf, of course, loves to keep signals digital until the last millimeter, building DACs into their active DSP-driven loudspeakers. The Server 1 sounded great—there was just one problem: It isn't available. Yet.
"We have the software written and the GUI is done, but we're working on lowering the jitter in HDMI and USB—which is not an inconsiderable task," a Lyngdorf rep explained. "We think we can do even better, so we won't bring the server to market until it outperforms everything else we've seen."
And…
Audio Space's DAC-1 US ($3000) is a hybrid tube/Mosfet DAC with a difference.It has two pairs of RCA analog outputs: One deriving its signal from the tube DAC; the other taking its signal from the discrete Mosfet DAC.
The tube section employs two 6922s.
Both are 24-bit and upsample to 192kHz.
We were impressed by the warm, alive sound in Audio Space's room. The Audio Space Reference 2 preamplifier ($9500 with MM/MC phonos section) and Reference 3 50W monoblock amplifiers ($7800/pair) were driving Von Schweikert VR-5 Anniversary loudspeakers.
Nils Lofgren's "…
We glanced into Oracle's room to see what was new. We'd seen the Delphi, we'd seen the CD 1500 and CD 2500 before. "Nothing new?" we asked.
Actually, yes: the Thalia moving coil cartridge ($1500). It was voiced to be used in a Delphi Mk V turntable, fitted with an Oracle/SME 345 tonearm feeding an Oracle Temple phono section.
The Thalia's body is ebony, the cantilever is boron, and the output 2.5mV. "We voiced it to be warm and have lots of body without sacrificing Oracle's traditional speed and detail," said Rusty Taub.
Based on what we heard coming out of the…
Several rooms this year are sporting 1/4" reel to reel decks as source components. The Tape Project has caught on with exhibitors in the Venetian including Pioneer/TAD & Magico. Representatives from TTP were often spotted hauling reel to reel tapes, along with the machines that play them (such as this modified Technics 1600) up and down the halls.
There's just something positively elegant about watching the reels slowly turn as incredible sound rolls out.