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Emotiva’s Danielle Laufman had impressions made of her ear canals at the Westone booth. Both Danielle and her mom, Cathy, would be getting custom ear plugs, while Danielle’s father, Emotiva’s founder Dan Laufman, would be using his ear molds for custom in-ear monitors.
Bob’s Devices’ Bob Sattin was especially excited about his new CineMag 1131 (Blue) step-up transformer ($895). These transformers are especially developed for use with low-output moving-coil cartridges and represent the very best that CineMag has to offer. Hand-made and very limited.
As we can tell from Michael Lavorgna’s awesome reporting over at AudioStream, computer audio was very hot indeed at RMAF, but there were still lots of old-fashioned vinyl enthusiasts to be found digging through the old-fashioned crates for old-fashioned music.
Kimber Kable’s Nate Mansfield greets everyone with a warm and friendly smile. He was presenting Kimber’s entire line of speaker cables and interconnects, from the truly affordable Tonik (see Art Dudley’s review in our November issue) and the classic PBJ to the cost-no-object Kimber Select Series. I’ve never heard Kimber Kable in my own system—a crime, I know. I’ll have to fix that sometime in 2012.
The Signal Collection exhibited a small and elegant system made up of the unique Davone Audio Ray loudspeakers ($7500/pair), jewel-like Absoluta Partenope integrated amplifier ($15,995), super skinny (just the way I like them) Black Cat Morpheus loudspeaker cables ($350/3m pair), and Stereolab Tombo interconnects and power cable (prices to be determined). MA Recordings Todd Garfinkle was selecting the tunes from his collection of wonderful SACDs and playing them through a Korg MR2000s digital recorder/playback unit ($2499).
The Absoluta Partenope integrated seemed to be hovering…
Wilson Audio Specialties Sasha loudspeakers, D’Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum monoblock power amplifiers, Transparent Audio cables, and Peter McGrath handling the tunes via an iPad and Meridian Sooloos MC200 media center. I heard a very similar system in a shoebox of a room at the California Audio Show earlier this year. What a difference a room makes!
In California, the system sounded very good, but was clearly restricted—I was impressed that the system sounded as good as it did in such a small room. But, here, with room to breathe, the system was better able to…
I walked in during “Band on the Run,” and the sound was full of life, energy, and impact. I took a seat and scanned the deceptively small and apparently simple system: 3-way ATC SCM50SL passive loudspeakers ($11,650/pair), each way powered by its own pair of Crimson Electronics 640E Series III monoblocks ($5995/pair), a Crimson Electronics 710 preamplifier ($6995, including phono section), and Resolution Audio’s Cantata Music Center ($6000; reviewed by Jon Iverson in our November issue). All components rested neatly on simple, affordable Ikea Lack stands.
If at first I thought the…
Even as my dear friend Michael Lavorgna lays down the law in the Wild Wild West that is Computer Audio and continues to rid himself of Compact Discs, I find myself more and more attracted to the little silver discs and their associated players. So I was happy to learn about Parasound’s new CD 1, which adds a computer to the conventional CD player.
Parasound’s Richard Schram explained: “We’re convinced there are enough people out there who love audio and who still don’t trust computers. We think they’ll welcome an extraordinary way of playing their CDs.”
The Parasound CD 1 ($5000…
Sound Representation’s affable Jon Zimmer introduced me to the Rogers High Fidelity EHF-100 integrated amplifier ($6000), which was driving a pair of Totem Element Fire loudspeakers.
The 100Wpc EHF-100 is a push-pull, class-A design. It uses two EF86, two 12AX7, and four KT88 tubes, and offers four analog inputs. The overall build-quality seems outstanding with gold-plated Furutech binding posts, stainless steel hardware, hand-wired circuits, and a lovely hand-applied lacquer finish.
The EHF-100 is gorgeous and hand-made, one amp at a time, in New York.
Totem was showing their new Element Series of loudspeakers. Both the stand-mounted Fire ($6000/pair) and floorstanding Earth ($9000/pair) use Totem’s 7-inch Torrent hand-assembled driver and employ no crossover parts in the woofer section.
The speakers’ 4-coat polyester finish is exquisite, smooth and gleaming to the point of appearing wet. The cabinet itself is cleverly sloped and angled so that the speakers seem much smaller than they actually are; from the listening position, all one can see is the front baffle. This construction, Totem’s Vince Bruzzese explained, works to get rid…