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Having heard the complete Haniwa 24/192 system twice, at two shows, I confess that I don’t get it. The ad for this $18,000 system, which includes 4" speakers, digital preamplifier with channel divider and DSP, and digital amplifier with recording and playback capabilities, proclaims: “An authentic 3D image pops up from sharply focused, high resolution left and right images . . . .Then, an authentic 3D sound should pop up from sharply focused, high resolution right and left channel sounds…..” What I hear from digital copies of fine classical analog recordings is bright, edgy sound.
Thank goodness I wasn't shooting with film: It took several frames to get a decent photo of the Da Vinci DAC ($31,000) from the California company Light Harmonic. But I didn't mind spending all that time trying, as the music was superbly tactile and compelling—thanks in no small part to amplification from KR Audio Electronics, represented at RMAF by the enduringly gracious Dr. Eunice Kron.
I’m afraid I hit High Water Sound’s room at the end of the fourth floor at a time when, overwhelmed by how many systems I had left to visit before show’s end, could only muster the words “very nice sound” in my notes. Clearly I owe you an apology, and Jeffrey Catalano’s high-end emporium a visit the next time I’m in New York City.
What I can tell you that this was the show debut for Pure Sound’s M845 SE monoblock amplifier ($10,000/pair), L300 line stage preamplifier ($8000), P10 phono preamplifier ($1000), T10 step up transformer ($500) and A8000 CD player ($1600). These babies were fed…
Hawaii-based Emerald Physics—a company I hadn't heard of until RMAF 2012—demonstrated their own US-built loudspeakers and electronics with a Peachtree Audio novaPre preamp–D/A converter playing music files from a laptop computer. Emerald's CS2P open-baffle loudspeaker ($2990/pair) works as a dipole below 1000 Hz, with a 15" woofer and a horn-loaded 1" tweeter. The retail price of the system I heard, including the Peachtree unit; the Emerald Physics CS2P loudspeakers; Emerald's DSP2.4 active outboard crossover/EQ unit ($850); and the company's EPI100.2 100Wpc digital amplifier ($1600) was…
Vapor Audio’s Rick LaFaver had reason aplenty to smile. Playing MA Recordings’ fabled CD of Sera Una Noche: La Segunda, his system nailed the timbre of instruments spot on. I was amazed at the depth he achieved from his small speakers, and took special note of the realistic decay of the sound of brushes on cymbals and bells being struck. “The hollow resonance of the percussion seems real,” I wrote in my notes.
Doing the honors were Vapor Audio’s Joule Black loudspeakers ($8995/pair with stands), pictured beside the smaller Vapor Audio Cirrus Black loudspeakers ($3995/pair). Completing…
Steve (Sze) Leung, a neighbor of Stereophile’s Wes Phillips and a joy to boot, made my day when he played a 45 rpm audiophile pressing of Elvis’ “Are you Lonesome Tonight.” As the great one began to intone the chapters of this teenage melodrama with tongue-in-cheek sincerity, the sound was so vivid and lifelike that images of the night I tried to ask Ellen Schmidt to go steady flooded through my mind.
Me at 17, picking up the phone: “Mom, I want to ask Ellen Schmidt to go steady. Is it okay if I give her my ring to wear around her neck?”
Mommy dearest: “You are not giving anyone…
My audiophile doppelganger, Music Hall’s Leland Leard, brought props to RMAF—a pair of bright, red glasses and a stuffed kitty cat doll—and asked attendees to smile for the camera.
I can’t help wonder whether one’s truest self is revealed when donning the bright, red glasses. Or, I suppose, while petting the kitty.
My thanks to Leland for the photos, the music, the good times. And my apologies for the lack of captions: Names have been withheld to protect the innocent. Or perhaps because I simply don’t know them.
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Audio Note now handles its US sales directly from the UK. The sound in their room may have been warmer than neutral, but it had an immediacy that I enjoy. Here, the vividness of a classic recording of music from Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila struggled to triumph over the bass commentary from the adjacent room’s Göbell behemoth. When the booming subsided, Jennifer Warnes emerged triumphant.
Don’t be scared. No one was busy rounding up illegal aliens during RMAF, thank God, but the combination of the EXD model of the BorderPatrol S20 power amplifier, which came complete with two power supply units ($16,500); BorderPatrol Control Unit EXT1 preamp ($12,250); BorderPatrol DAC EXT1 ($9750); Living Voice Avatar OBX-RW loudspeakers (from $11,750/pair); Tent Labs transport; and Electrofluidics cabling was overdriving the room. There was a captivating illumination to my CD of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, but highs were wiry, and the bass boomed like nobody’s high-end audio business in…
It’s a great name, isn’t it? Your Final System, based in Rochester, NY, is an Internet-based, high-end audio consulting firm specializing in custom USB 2.0 cables and computer music servers that will travel anywhere in the US to set up their music server. Unfortunately, shit happens. YFS’s McIntosh 275 amplifier died right as the show was getting underway, they hunted around until they located Jolida electronics that were fresh out of the box. Given the insufficient break-in time, it’s inappropriate to comment on the sound of a system that also included a customized YFS HD Ref 3 Digital Music…