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I am always intrigued by Wavelength's combination of cutting-edge digital technology and tubes. Their room at RMAF featured new developments in both areas. Shown in the photo are the latest HS 24(32)/192 version of the Cosecant asynchronous USB DAC (left, $4000), which features the new Denominator D/A module with 9016 ESS converters, and the new Royal preamp (right, $7500). Wavelength's Gordon Rankin walked me through the design of the minimalist preamp. The input signal is taken to a transformer hat inverts the polarity and feeds high-precision Penny & Giles two-channel attenuator. The…
It looks like the best-selling QB-9 USB D/A converter until you notice the level meters and the level control next to the display. This is Ayre's new QA-9 A/D converter, aimed at audiophiles who want to rip their LPs with the highest possible quality. The analog input is balanced and there are both USB and AES/EBU digital outputs. The ADC chip is fed by an input stage featuring Ayre's zero-feedback, discrete circuitry and it will output 24-bit LPCM at up to a 192kHz sample rate. However, there's no reason why it couldn't also output DSD data. The QA-9 will be in production in the first…
We didn’t listen to the Thoress F2A11 integrated amplifier, but just look at it: It’s awesome.
Entirely hand-built by Reinhard Thoress, the amplifier uses NOS Siemens F2A11 power tetrodes, which High Water Sound's Jeffrey Catalano explained, were popular in the Klangfilm cinema amplifiers of post-war Germany. Three line-level inputs are selectable by a rear-panel rotary switch, while separate volume controls for each channel can be adjusted using carefully matched high-grade rotary potentiometers. Why? I don’t know why, but it’s cool.
According to Catalano, the sound of the…
I live and work only minutes from Jeffrey Catalano’s High Water Sound, but to my shame have never visited the showroom. For no good reason, it’s only at shows like the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest that I get to speak with Jeffrey and enjoy his demo systems. But I’m extremely grateful for that because Jeffrey has outstanding taste in music—he has that great ability of connecting the dots between seemingly disparate musical genres and artists—and his perspective on hi-fi is fresh, interesting, and distinct.
On this occasion, we listened to the big and beautiful Cessaro Horn…
The Hyperion, Soundsmith’s new top-of-the-line moving-iron phono cartridge, utilizes a cactus needle cantilever. (That’s a cantilever made of a cactus needle.) Inspired by (the always dapper) Frank Schroeder and designed by Peter Ledermann, the Hyperion’s cactus needle cantilever provides both stiffness and damping—qualities which, according to Ledermann, had previously been mutually exclusive.
Superior cantilever designs, Ledermann explained, have traditionally been tapered—a technique that’s difficult to accomplish with aluminum and even more difficult with extremely…
In the BorderPatrol room, we listened to that company’s beautiful-looking S20 300B single-ended power amplifier ($13,500) and EXT1 preamplifier ($12,250), driving a pair of Living Voice Avatar OBX-RW loudspeakers ($10,895/pair).
The fully hard-wired S20 uses zero negative feedback, has a fixed bias output stage, uses an external power supply, and delivers 18Wpc. The Living Voice Avatar OBX-RW uses an external crossover, has a rated sensitivity of 94dB, a nominal impedance of 6 ohms, and is available in a number of real-wood and lacquer finishes.
With its good delineation of air…
This was posted on the wall of his RMAF room by one manufacturer who still makes his products in the US. The message seems clear enough, even if it over-simplifies what is actually a complex situation—see my September 2011 "As We See It" on this subject.
I first encountered DEQX when Kalman Rubinson and I reviewed the NHT Xd speaker system a few years back, which featured its digital signal processing to implement its crossover and response optimization. The Australian company was putting on an impressive dem of its HDP-3 standalone processor at RMAF, showing the sound of a pair of Gallo Reference speakers driven by Parasound Halo amplification could be first optimized in both time and frequency domains, then its interaction with the room. DEQX's Larry Owens, shown in the photo, enthused about an unanticipated benefit of the speaker…
New from the Norwegian Hegel company at RMAF was the HD11 D/A processor ($1200), which features a 32-bit TI DAC but also a unique impedance-optimizing circuit on one of its coaxial S/PDIF inputs. Single-ended digital audio connections are specified to be 75 ohm transmission lines, explained Hegel's Anders Eitzeid, but not all all datalinks conform to that specification. (The RCA plug is a major source of the impedance mismatch even when the cable itself has a characteristic impedance of 75 ohms.) The impedance mismatch creates reflections that corrupt the integrity of the RF datastream,…
"Dimensional Purity" is the promoted benefit of Richard Vandersteen's approach to speaker design, and in one of the two rooms I went into at RMAF organized by Fort Collins retailer The Audio Alternative, the Vandersteen Tréos ($5990/pair) were living up to that promise. Driven by an Audio Research Vsi60 integrated amplifier ($4495) with the source the Bryston BDP-1 digital player and BDA-1 DAC, all hooked up with AudioQuest cable, Mark Isham's Blue Sun reproduced with excellent bass extension and clarity and a laidback but detailed midrange.