It's Thursday afternoon at the Hilton Long Beach in Long Beach, California, and signs of T.H.E. Show, which opens on Friday, June 7, at noon, are everywhere in evidence.
Prior to the official opening, I wandered into a couple of rooms, including the one sponsored by Audiogen Distributors, above. There I found intriguing speakers from the Greek company Tune, electronics from Japan's WAVAC—and a few items that will surely have disappeared by the time the room opens for business. In another room, sponsored by Alaia Audio, speaker designer Richard Vandersteen listened intently as Brad…
As one of the only companies to send out a press release prior to the opening of T.H.E. Show, ATC—along with its host, Lone Mountain Audio—earned pride of place in my "I can't possibly do them all" list of show coverage priorities. In a cozy but surprisingly good sounding standard hotel room, I joined Rafe Arnott from our sister publications AudioStream and InnerFidelity to hear ATC SCM50SE Active Towers ($65,999/pair) fed by the same company's CDA2 MkII CD player/preamp/DAC ($4249) through Cardas Crosslink cabling. There was only one tweak in this room besides some room treatment—Stillpoints…
Small does not mean negligible. Especially when a system includes the first West Coast showing of ATC's new CD2 CD player ($2349) and SIA2-100 integrated amp/DAC ($3749). With the integrated performing the DAC honors—thank you, Rafe Arnott, for asking that question—and ATC entry-series SCM7 speakers ($1649/pair, reviewed in Stereophile here) transmitting the sound, this little system delivered bossa nova great Rosa Passos and bassist Ron Carter's "Insensatez" with great beauty, a fine midrange, and, most surprising of all, bass solid down to Carter's lowest note. One of the three exhibitors…
Scott Walker Audio staked out its own mini-empire at the Hilton Long Beach, occupying six of the hotel's largest suites on the third floor. The first one I encountered revealed the inimitable Ted Denney of Synergistic Research staging a pretty ballsy demo. Ted set up two identical systems in adjacent rooms, both with a McIntosh C2600 tube preamp ($7500) and MC462 Amplifier ($9000), Elac Adante AF61 floorstanding speakers ($4995/pair), Bluesound Node 2i streamer ($500), and Solid Tech Rack ($2600). The difference was that one system took advantage of a Synergistic Research PowerCell 8 UEF SE…
In the second Scott Walker Audio room I visited—since I visited five of them, I know it's going to start sounding like "Five power cables, four balanced interconnects, three phono cartridges, two mighty monoblocks, and a speaker shaped like a pear tree," but it really did sound like Christmas in most of these rooms—the Constellation Argo integrated amp ($29,000), Magico A3 Speakers ($12,300/pair), and MSB Discrete DAC ($12,500) vied for pride of place with an Aurender ACS10 server ($6000) and Synergistic Research PowerCell 12 UEF SE Power Conditioner ($6,495), Atmosphere cabling ($18,500),…
Tonal beauty, clarity, and transparency were just some of the hallmarks of a system that, to my ears, was musical to a "T." (Should that be "M"?) I loved the warm yet neutral sound of a recording by Ana Caram—I detected no extra "tube-like" sweetness, for example—and the system's ability to present music with a quality I can best describe as "grace": not scientific, I know, but when the spirit moves you, the least you can do is acknowledge it.
On a 15ips tape of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter performing the well-worn Carmen Fantasy, I heard the most beautiful midrange of the five systems I'…
Oh boy, was soundstaging excitingly three-dimensional in the Scott Walker room that headlined Gryphon electronics. Listening to 15ips tapes played on a Sonorus reel-to-reel deck ($19,500) by Philip O'Hanlon, of Gryphon distributor On a Higher Note, the extraordinary depth on Sarah Vaughan's "When Your Lover Has Gone" certainly seized my attention.
Switching to LP, and trying not to raise my eyebrows too high on Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra's dated "All I Need is the Girl," I thought brass and mids were conveyed to near-perfection. The midrange also excelled on a CD of Shirley Horn…
When I entered my penultimate Scott Walker Audio room, Kevin Wolff of Bowers & Wilkins was playing outtakes from a 1989 recording by Branford Marsalis. The sound of Marsalis's sax was so distinctive and, to my ears, beautiful that I began to smile. (Trumpet was another instrument whose sound this system conveyed with perfection.) As Kevin segued into a 16/44.1 file of Thomas Dolby's "I Scare Myself," I scribbled in my notebook, "This is a system that reminds you of what the high end is all about."
Despite some booming, the McIntosh midrange came through in spades. When Kevin next…
See that weird looking thing? It’s the outboard crossover to end all outboard crossovers, and it belongs to the relatively slim Evolution Acoustics Exact Series Maestoso 3-way loudspeaker system ($18,900). Heading an impressive and hardly bargain system from Blue Light Audio of Portland, Oregon, and The Audio Association of Anaheim Hills, the Maestoso made one of its first show appearances since I covered its debut at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest—was it three years ago?
I don’t recall what recording was playing when I entered the room, but piano tonalities were just wonderful.…
You’re going to need to indulge me a bit, because, due to some communication difficulties, I’m not totally confident of some prices and components in this room. If I understood correctly, the handmade-in-Japan, 1-bit Sparkler Audio S503 CD Player/Transport costs $1650, and the build-it-yourself EleKit TU-8600R integrated amplifier, also from Japan, goes for $1785. The loudspeaker system appears to be custom, from AER, including that company's BD2 driver (3000 each, according to the AER website) in an acrylic stand that looks like AER's Custom (5500/pair) but with the addition of the larger…
