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Jeff Joseph was demoing his RM7si compact monitors ($2300/pr) with Bel Canto's 150Wpc 3001 integrated amp ($2200) to spectacular effect. Why was that surprising? Because his source was an iBook laptop feeding a usb output into the 300i.
"The sound is great," Josephs enthused. "But the best part is that now you have permission to buy a new, high-performance system for your office."
Obviously, Jeff's chancellor of the exchequer has a different set of authorizations than mine.
"Your mileage may vary," he allowed, "the the limitation is no longer that you can't get the…
We got to talking to Bel Canto's John Stronczer and he pulled us into an empty conference room to talk. "I did something interesting," Stronczer said.
"I wondered if you always need to reclock digital signals when you distribute them, so I ran upsampled data into two S/PDIF outputs into two separate converter/amplifiers and measured the group delay over several days and got no drift. It sounded noticeably better for reasons I don't completely understand, but here's the part that startled me, if I used one channel only from one amp's output and then the other channel on the other…
I could hardly keep my hands off of Chord Electronics' CD Transport and DAC. I'm not kidding. In the new Jet Black finish seen here in Larry Greenhill's photo, the pair is absolutely exquisite, and begs to be touched. Chord's founder and chief designer, John Franks, explained the cosmetic design was inspired by the hard black stone found between the cliffs of Whitby and Staithes. Like many things of beauty and wonder, its origins are fabled and obscured; Whitby Jet is believed to be either a form of carbon or the remains of hardened sap dating back to the dinosaurs. I'm putting…
"So," I began innocently, "how do you determine the shape of your loudspeakers?"
Loiminchay designer, Patrick Chu, gave me a look. "Seriously?" he asked.
I nodded. Seriously.
"I love women!" he exclaimed.
I gave him a look. He laughed and laughed and laughed. The Loiminchay Mandarin Supreme (starting at $80,000/pair) uses a 19" horn with a 1" driver, and employs 10" and 12" bass woofers.
Please forgive my so very foul language, but when I walked into the Loiminchay room, I just had to shout: "What the FUDGE?" Seriously.
That's the truth.
The Loiminchay speakers look like nothing else I've ever seen. "I know nothing about this brand," I said to Montague Luxuries' Mark Montague.
"Well, that's because we're absolutely new," he responded.
The designer, Patrick Chu, is better known for his fine pens. "How did he go from pens to loudspeakers?"
"Well, he's also an audiophile and a collector, and everything he's interested…
Surprisingly, the Proclaim Audio DMT-100 loudspeaker is not nearly as imposing or, shall I say, all-up-in-my-grille, as I imagined it would be. It's actually kind of graceful. In fact, it has a sort of happy-go-lucky presence.
Hi-ho, wanna twist my tweeters? Okey doke. Feel like messin' with my midrange? No prob.
Designer Daniel Herrington seemed genuinely pleased with his loudspeaker solution. "This speaker is different, but it's not different simply for the sake of being different."
While Loiminchay's Patrick Chu creates trouble, locking…
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…
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…
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…