search
The press conference that I personally found the most exciting on the Show's first day was by Ralph Glasgal (left) on his Ambiophonics system. I knew about Ambiophonics (a signal-processing system
designed to cancel out interference between a pair of loudspeakers,
creating something akin to binaural listening but from speakers instead of headphones), but somehow I’ve never heard a demonstration, or at least not a convincing one. The demo setup at HE2007 was rather unusual, with a pair of giant Sound-Lab electrostatics at one end of the room, and another pair of floor-standing TacT…
Free jazz quartet Attention Screen, which I recorded live at Manhattan's Merkin Hall in February, are performing a 60-minute set Saturday May 12 at 12:30pm, to celebrate the release at HE2007 of the resultant CD.
The set list includes four of the CD's six cuts, but as it's jazz I am sure the musicians—Bob Reina on piano, Chris Jones on fretless Fender bass, Mark Flynn on drums, and Don Fiorino on electric and lap-steel guitars, lotar, and ukulele—will use the recorded improvisations as starting points rather than destinations. They are going to rock the house!
Later: while…
An unusually sleepy-eyed Lionel Goodfield in Larry Greenhill's photo stands beside the newest additions to Simaudio's Moon Classic series.
Here, technology has trickled down to products that a wider audience of music lovers can possibly afford. The CD1 offers a 24-bit/192kHz DAC within a simple, yet handsome package. The i-1 integrated amplifier boasts an oversized power supply using a custom toroidal transformer design, and is rated to deliver 50Wpc into 8 ohms. It offers six line-level inputs including, of course, the 1/8" mini-jack for your iPod, as well as a handy-…
As co-blogger Bob Deutsch noted, the audiophiles indeed turned up for the Show. In buzzing, whirring droves. Opening day attendance was pretty damn staggering.
I wish you were here.
And, here, in the TAD Audio suite, we have a group of engrossed listeners all wrapped up in musical bliss. Let us watch as they strike the audiophile pose—arms crossed, hands on chin.
Shh!
Also in the Dynaudio room, Mike Manousselis was jazzed like Attention Screen over his small and wily desktop computer speakers, the sharp MC15s ($1299/pair). First spotted at CES, these active minis, featuring two integrated 50W amplifiers, were born from Dynaudio's pro-audio technologies, explained Manousselis.
Playing modest MP3s from Mike's new laptop, the MC15s had absolutely no right to sound as good as they did.
Playing MP3?! Say what? Oh, no he d'in't!
Oh, yes. He did. Intensely fun nearfield listening.
A tradition at HE SHows is the "bazaar: in one of the hotel's ballrooms, where record companies and accessory manufacturers do a brisk business. Here, Marcia Martin of Reference Recordings shows off their latest release Serenade, a recording of the same vocal group, the Turtle Creek Chorale, as in their best-selling Rutter's Requiem CD.
Verity Audio had Nagra's CDP CD Player ($13,495) driving its P-LP line stage ($11,495) and pyramidal PMA mono amplifiers ($10,995/pr)—all connected with Silversmith Audio Palladium interconnects ("starting at $4000/pair). At the other end was a pair of Parsifal Ovation loudspeakers ($19,495/pair).
The Parsifal's looked like large speakers for such a small room, but Verity's John Quick explained that the PO's rear-firing woofer module actually helped in small room placement. He might be right—Art Dudley and sat there for ages (in show time) feeding in CDs by the Move, Tierney Sutton…
Proclaim Audioworks' Dan Herrington had a revelation one day while sitting in the smallest room of his house. "I was reading old JAES papers," he said, "when I read a measured analysis of speaker radiation patterns based on cabinet construction. A sphere was extraordinarily close to the perfect form, but then you had to deal with using multiple drivers."
His solution?
Multiple spheres. He also came up with a nifty "stand" mechanism that allows the consumer to adjust the position of the three drivers relative to their listening position and the room in which the speakers sit…
Art Dudley and I didn't so much enter Hyperion Sound Design's room as get dragged in by our ears. Standing in the Hyatt's hallway, we heard some close harmony quartet singing that sounded mighty darn real.
We went in sat down and were given a demonstration of how to run a demo right. The room was modestly treated with RealTraps, the speakers were artfully placed to minimize boundary issues, and the music was playing at sane levels and was absolutely mesmerizing.
The best part? "You can buy the whole system, including four channels of single-ended tube amplificatiion,for…
The HT845 single-ended monoblock amplifiers ($2500/ea) were so new, Hyperion had no literature on them. They looked and sounded good, though.