Something about this speaker gets people feeling all romantic. When I walked into the room, I sat down behind a couple whose hands were joined and whose arms swung in the space between…
search
Take a look at this beauty, the Hartsfield from Classic Audio Loudspeakers, a tribute to the original Hartsfield, introduced in 1954 by the James B. Lansing Sound Company. In John Wolff’s version, a 15” low-frequency driver couples to a long exponential horn; above 500Hz, a 2” midrange unit couples to a horn-lens assembly, designed to provide wide dispersion and uniform high-frequency sound distribution.
Aww. Nipper sits patiently atop one of John Wolff’s gorgeous Hartsfield loudspeakers.
I ended Friday night with a trip to the Goldmine Live Music Area, where the 20-piece West Georgia Saxophone Ensemble played an exquisite, soul-stirring piece in tribute to Japan. The slow-moving, thoroughly enveloping music seemed to blossom magically and was so painfully beautiful, expressive, and mournful I wanted to cry.
John Atkinson mentioned some of the trouble faced by MBL’s Jeremy Bryan in getting the best possible sound from his demo room. Bryan went to heroic lengths to tame his unruly room. One of the most obviously sonically challenged rooms I visited at Axpona was that held by Krell, who were showing their new Phantom preamp, scheduled to be available later this summer ($17,500), along with their Primo/Duo modular speaker system ($65,000/pair; designed specifically to be mated with Krell electronics), and the big Evolution 402e power amplifier ($18,500).
We listened to Sting doing a version of…
The Krell Phanton preamp made its debut at Axpona. It shares the steely, solid, no-nonsense look and feel of other Krell components, and is meant to partner with any of the company’s Evolution e-Series amplifiers. The Phantom is the first Krell preamp to include an optional crossover, so that the user can employ a satellite/subwoofer arrangement, without compromising sound quality.
The Phantom uses a dual-monaural circuit design, and receives power from a Krell current mode analog power supply housed in its own chassis. No negative feedback is used. The Phantom should be available later…
There was nothing dirty, mean, or mighty unclean about the Audio Power Labs TNT 833 monoblock power amplifier, a pure class-A, push-pull design rated to deliver 200W into 8 ohms. Each amp weighs 160 lbs and uses 833C output tubes, 6550 driver tubes, and 12BH7 pre-driver tubes. The price will be somewhere between $150,000–$170,000/pair.
The system, including an Audio Research LS27 preamplifier, Musical Fidelity M6CD CD player, Vandersteen 3A loudspeakers, and aided by an array of RealTraps room treatments, produced big, robust voices, and had a good sense of musical flow.
Audio…
Responses to my first “Entry Level” column have been wonderful—far more detailed, thoughtful, and encouraging than I could have imagined or hoped. Many of the letters I’ve received tell stories about first experiences with hi-fi, and, within those, many readers fondly recall building their own loudspeakers.
To many of today’s teens and young adults, the thought of building a loudspeaker would be completely foreign and unrealistic, if not plain irrational and silly: Why build a loudspeaker? But, decades ago, doing things yourself, with tools and instructions, was not only the…
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dan Laufman, founder of Emotiva, and his daughter, Jessica, Emotiva’s new marketing director. So, what I’m about to say has nothing to do with business, but, then again, maybe it does: Sitting there at our dinner table, across from Dan and next to Jessica, I was soon struck by the genuine warmth, care, and admiration the two held for one another. It was sweet. And, over the course of our meal, I bought into Dan Laufman’s discussion of his company’s core values: pride, reliability, customer service, building strong relationships with…
In his WS Distributing room, Tom Myers had set up a system made of a Vincent CD-S7 CD player (available now for $2199.95 in black or silver), Thorens TD 2030 turntable with blue acrylic plinth ($3699) and Benz Ace cartridge ($700) , Vincent amplification, and Thiel SCS4 loudspeakers on Pangea speaker stands. With its top-to-bottom coherence, the system was easy to enjoy. Moving from the Vincent CD player to the Thorens turntable added measures of body and scale, which I found even more involving.
But who cares about speakers and turntables? Say hello to Miss Jessi Monroe!
When I visited his room, WS Distributing’s Tom Myers had mentioned that Jessi was supposed to be performing a few of her songs, but she “ran out to buy some records and never came back.” My kinda girl.
Just as I was about to leave the room, Jessi walked in…and I sat back down.
Jessi’s been traveling between Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville, working on her recording career. She played a few riffs for us and the sound was somewhat tentative and perhaps touched by sadness, but long-legged and…