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Hart! Hart!

Way back in the day, when I was just a wee li'l Stereophiler, taking orders for classified advertising in Audio Mart, I shared the most enjoyable telephone conversations with one advertiser in particular, Audio Advancements' Hart Huschens.

After only a few brief chats, I got the sense that Hart was a truly gentle and honest person. Six years later, I still have the opportunity to speak with Hart. Only now, we talk about different things: the Buyer's Guide and "Recommended Components," mostly. It wasn't until yesterday, however, that I had the real pleasure of meeting Mr…

ESE Labs Phono Cartridge

The lovely little EarMax headphone amps listen along as ESE Lab's Rudi Korosec, standing here with Audio Advancements' Hart Huschens, takes some time to explain his latest phono cartridge. So new, in fact, it remains nameless, the ESE cartridge has a graphite body with a hyperelliptical stylus, a mass of 9g, and a recommended tracking force of 1.5g. Korosec seemed most pleased, however, with the cartridge's "extremely low impedance" of .85 ohms.

"Its graphite body makes it ideal for stopping vibrations," said Korosec, "and provides an excellent interface for many…

Bring Your Own <i>Battery</i>?

Also on display at the Audio Advancements' booth, the Altmann BYOB Amplifier, naked as it was, caught my attention. Why no clothes? The idea goes that doing away with the enclosure eliminates the chance for resonances which might otherwise corrupt the original signal.

And you'll never guess what "BYOB" stands for. In this particular application, it's: Bring Your Own Battery.

The Altmann Amplifier is powered by a basic car battery. Altmann, explained Hart Huschens, recommends Optima Red Top batteries, but any old battery will do. Even if it can no longer start…

Seductive Magicos

With a sound that was seductively full-bodied and convincing, the Magico room was actually the first to lure me into a listening seat. And I stayed there for awhile, happily listening to music I was not at all familiar with.

"May I take your photograph, please, standing beside the speaker?" I asked Magico's designer Alon Wolf.

"Sure."

He smiled, I snapped. "Great. Thank you."

"Does it look better than the last photo you guys posted of me?"

I took a look and thought it over, "Um."

The three-way Magico V3 ($22,800/pair) made its US…

Logical

Logitech, which has acquired Slim Devices, was showing its $499 Harmony 1000 remote. The H 1000 has a 3.5" touch screen that allows you to configure a control pad that features only those functions you need regularly. That means that Squeezebox and Transporter owners like me can say goodbye to scrolling into menus three or four command lines deep. That means heavy users like me might actually find a remote worth $499.

Harmony makes an RF extender for it, too. My wife asked, "Does that mean I can turn down his music from the other room?"

"Only if you have the remote," the…

Omaha Heat

Omaha was showing this nifty little 10Wpc No.OD-300B integrated amplifier ($1400), which was driving Omaha's Omaha Speaker (price tbd). Do I need to say that the No.OD300B uses a pair of 300B tubes? The system sounded warm and spacious. 10Wpc may not sound like much, but the Omaha speaker seemed comfortably driven. Fit'n'finish were impressive.

GamuT!

Lars Goller proudly rests on the GamuT Phi7 (price tbd), which couples five-midrange woofers in what he calls "perfect unison," thanks to GamuT's proprietary DC Coupled Midrange technology and Acoustic Coupled Driver technology. He says the tall, thin baffle, which arrays the woofers along almost its entire height, delivers excellent acoustic coupling to the listening room.

Since Goller has been Mr. Loudspeaker at ScanSpeak for the last 20 years, developing new driver technologies and writing acclaimed peer-reviewed articles about designing loudspeakers, we believed him.

…

Hot Cayin Peeper

VAS Audio's Sze Leung is one pleased papa when it comes to Cayin's new iDAC-1 USB-input DAC ("under $800!"). It has a Burr-Brown DAC, built-in remote controllable analog preamp that uses two 6DJ8s, sports an optical S/DIF digital input as well as the USB port, and even has a headphone jack.

"It's a great desktop solution, especially if you have powered loudspeakers like your NHT M-00s!" he said. "It's perfect for computers!"

Yes, Leung ends pretty much every sentence with an exclamation point. That's because he's excited about hi-fi. He's especially excited about good hi-fi…

One-Box Surround from Zvox

Sure, now he’s smiling. But when Zvox Audio’s Tom Hannaher introduced their new model 425 all-in-one-box surround sound system at a press conference on the first day of the show, he was most distressed about the fact that while the prototype unit had worked fine before he brought it to the room that the press conference was in, in the press conference room it would not make a sound at all. I was going to suggest that he take it back to the original room to see if it worked there, but I restrained myself, thinking that he probably would not appreciate the humor in my suggestion. As it…

Vinyl is dead? Apparently not!

There were a lot of turntables, and a lot of vinyl at the show, not just on demo, but for sale as well. LP vendors like Acoustic Sounds and Music Direct were doing brisk business in their booths in the Ballroom.