This year, Soundsmith's vaunted warmth, color, and fullness seemed even better. As I soon discovered, the phono preamp in Soundsmith's widely praised Strain Gauge Phone System SG-200 ($5499) now has the same audio circuitry as the company's higher-priced systems. Even better, the price has dropped $2000.
In addition, there's a new, top-of-the-line Soundsmith phono cartridge,…
In fact, what for all intents and purposes looks like adjustable lighting is a novel speaker that actually does contain ambiance LED lights in its upper arms that are adjustable for color intensity or use in light therapy. But the fixture also contains a 3" Raal ribbon tweeter that feeds a waveguard secreted between its two halves, four 3" midranges that fire up and down, and in the black cylinder on the floor, two 6.5" woofers. At the demo, a pair of these omnidirectional speakers, positioned across the room…
The company's newest product, which will debut in final form at CES 2010, is the Nordic Tone Model 1 Reference loudspeaker ($29,500/pair). This handsome, low lying baby thrilled attendees with its…
The 3" unit, which has a titanium cone, was being used in the Acoustic Technology Classic-Series loudspeaker ($2450/pair) to cover the entire audio band. Yes, the speaker was…
Pictured is clarinetist Russell Harlow, who prefaced John Atkinson's final installment of his seminar on dynamic range compression, with a lovely short performance of Bach. Sitting up close, no one could miss that the clarinet's sound has no sharp digital edge, and that the exaggerated breathiness we often hear around recorded winds is much less…
At the…
LSA's products are all available in three levels of performance: Standard, Signature, and Statement. In the case of the LAS1 speaker, the Standard version costs $999/pair and uses a 1" soft-dome tweeter; the Signature at $1499/…