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Closing the live program Sunday at the Atrium Hotel was a concert by Audra Lee, daughter of the LA&OC Audio Society's Bob Levi. Leading a rocking trio, with a woman drummer, Audra belted her way through rock standards, including Huey Lewis's "The Power of Love." You can get a free download of Audra's single "I'm All In" here. Audra's debut album will be available in July from iTunes.
There was a continual program of live music at T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, to allow Showgoers to recalibrate their ears. A quintet led by trumpet player William Artope Jr, son of Bill Artope, the Sales & Marketing Director for cable manufacturer Dynamic Design AV, played some excellent straight-ahead modern jazz poolside at the Atrium Hotel.
Marten Design’s Getz loudspeakers made good sound within an all-ModWright system: KWA 150 Signature Edition monoblocks, LS 36.5 tubed line stage, and modified Oppo BDP-95 disc player. Everything was supported by Stillpoints feet, and cables were provided by Dynamic Design. I noted a smooth, solid overall sound, with a stable soundstage—very easy to listen to and enjoy.
Inconspicuous but attractive, the Chapman T-8 Mk.II loudspeaker ($9995/pair) holds a 1” silk-dome tweeter, 5.5” midrange unit, and a 10” woofer beneath its black grille cloth.
The T-8 seemed to partner well with Cary’s CAD 211 Founder’s Edition amplifiers ($20,000/pair), SLP-05 preamp, and CD306 disc player. Also on hand was Light Harmonic’s distinctive DaVinci DAC. Cables were from MIT. We listened to an organ piece and I noted impressive bass: relatively taut, well-controlled, and well-extended.
One of my favorite demos of T.H.E. Show Newport was provided by Mike Zivkovik and Garth Leerer, respectively of Teresonic and Musical Surroundings, who presented the Teresonic Ingenium XR loudspeakers ($15,000/pair) with Teresonic’s Ref 211 amplifier ($28,000), AMG’s beautiful V12 turntable ($16,500) with Clearaudio’s Goldfinger cartridge ($15,000), and Musical Surroundings’ Fosgate Signature tubed phono preamp ($2500). Cables were all Teresonic: Clarison Silver EXP loudspeaker cables ($3500), fully balanced Gold XLR interconnects ($4000), Clarison power cables ($395), and the Clarison…
Bijan Vahhaji of Definition Audio Video in Santa Monica presented a system made of Sony’s SS-AR1 loudspeaker ($27,000/pair; reviewed by Kal Rubinson in July 2011) with Simaudio amplification and front-end. A laptop running the Foobar media player fed signals via USB to the Sim 650D ($7999; reviewed by Mikey Fremer in November 2011). Cables were Nordost Tyr 2.
This is just a guess, but I think the Sony’s rather warm tonal balance was wonderfully complemented by Simaudio’s speed and Nordost’s clarity, providing an engaging overall sound that was marked by superfast, precise starts and…
So said the flyer drawing attention to Room 1022 at the Hilton. Intrigued, I went in, to see two pairs of Acoustic Zen Adagio mounted side-by-side, driven by an inexpensive Samsung DVD player and a Rotel amplifier. The sound was good rather than great, but considering the sub-optimal arrangement —side-by-side speakers with widely spaced pairs of tweeter, no acoustic treatment, very inexpensive ancillaries, etc —the sound was very much better than I was expecting, with precise stereo imaging. It turned out that the speakers' interaction with the room was optimized with a digital-signal…
Tucked away at the end of a corridor on the Hilton's ground floor, the Estelon Model X Diamond speakers ($64,000/pair) were being driven by Concert Fidelity's new ZL-120V2 Special Edition monoblocks ($34,000/pair) via Fono Acustica cables. Preamp was the Concert Fidelity CF-090LSX2 tube hybrid line stage ($24,000) with the SPA-4C solid-state MC phono preamp ($14,000), and sources were an Esoteric SDACD player feeding the Concert Fidelity DAC-040 tubed D/A processor and a modified Denon DP-3000 direct-drive turntable. Considering the system costs, the sound from CD was a little disappointing—a…
Tustin, CA retailer Digital Ear had several rooms at the Atrium hotel featuring Focal speakers and Devialet's revolutionary D-Premier D/A integrated amplifier ($16,500), which I am reviewing in a fall issue of Stereophile. The photo shows the Focal Utopia Scala speakers ($31,500/pair) with the black-finished Devialet hanging on the wall between them, fed digital data from a Meridian-Sooloos server. Despite the awkward-shaped room, the presentation was smooth but with plenty of recorded detail evident.
The Magnepan room in the Atrium hotel had no fewer than three Californian retailers listed on its sign: Shelley's Stereo of Woodland Hills, Hi5 Stereo of La Habra, and Inland Sound of San Bernardino. But the sound in this room was not a case of too many cooks, the sidewall-mounted, motorized Magnepan MMC2 panels being reinforced by panel subs hidden in the room furnishings and a center-channel panel to give a presentation that sounded better than the total system costs of $4700 would suggest.