"Far better flexibility is the key," said the company's Brian Von Bork (above), as he held up both the Iridium interconnect and the company's…
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For the start of its 30th anniversary year, Cardas introduced new cables at both ends of its line. At the more affordable end, and replacing their Twinlink speaker and Microtwin interconnect, lies the new Cardas Iridium speaker cable ($320/1.5m pair), Iridium interconnect ($250/1m pair), and Iridium phono cable ($220/1m). Among the improvements are a new star-quad geometry, upgraded terminations, and a far-more-flexible-than-before rubber housing.
Although you may associate Elac solely with Andrew Jones's expanding collection of bargain-priced loudspeakers, the 90-year old German company actually has a wide range of products at various price points. "We're famous for a lot of bass from small cabinets," said Rolf Janke (above), head of research and development, as he discussed Elac's new 90th anniversary Concentro loudspeaker ($70,000/pair).
Available in a few weeks, the speaker has four 10" short-coil, long-gap bass drivers that can output 120dB, and special bass-reflex tuning. The cabinet is a crystal-membrane aluminum sandwich…
Siltech's Triple Crown power cable (approx. $13,683.40/1.5m at the current exchange rate) is a pure, mono-crystal silver design that uses stabilized air-core insulation and Furutech connectors. The company claims "completely silent" backgrounds, and says that the cable's "elimination of harshness, complete lack of induced distortion, and subsequent bass stability create a new ultra-realistic feel to the music."
Since you'll see the same smiling faces in two successive cable-company blogs, let's start by saying that cables from Crystal Cable and Siltech are made in the same factory, but have very different sounds. It gets even more confusing when I say that Crystal Cable is run by Gabi Rijnveld, while Siltech is run by her husband, designer Edwin Rijnveld (not shown).
Here, Gabi and product/industrial designer Lennart Thissen hold Crystal Cable's Ultimate Dream power cable ($12,622.70/1.5m). Constructed of 6-strand coaxial monocrystal, with a 7th strand in the middle for stability, the power…
An evolution of the original Genesis 5, which was designed by Arnie Nudell and released in 1994, the Genesis Maestro ($30,000/pair), designed by Gary Koh (above), is a highly efficient loudspeaker that can be driven by just a few watts. This is due in part to its built-in servo-controlled bass amplifier, which powers its four long-throw 8" aluminum-cone woofers. With adjustable bass gain and low-pass control, as well as improved crossover technology, the speaker is said to work equally well in rooms small and large.
Claimed to contain "the best tweeter in the world"—the Genesis Ring-…
Today, it seems that no audio company delivers more natural, authentic sound and higher value than Pennsylvania-based Rogue Audio. Their $1495 Sphinx phono-line integrated amplifier was the first product I investigated for Stereophile, and it continues to wow me with its ability to play with more all-around finesse than competing units costing many times as much. It is truly the working man's amplifier.
In that spirit, Rogue now introduces their first headphone amp/preamplifier, the RH-5 ($2495), which not only looks sleek and timeless in that oval-windowed Rogue way, it features three…
Up and down the CES hallways, in line for coffee, and at every dinner, people kept asking, "Did you go to the MoFi room? Did you hear the new TAD Micro Evolution One loudspeaker?" At one dinner, I was sitting with John Atkinson, Tom Norton, and Robert Deutsch, and we all asked, simultaneously, "Did you hear the new TAD Loudspeaker?" I listened several times to that MoFi system (source and amplification components pictured above), and each time I was more impressed. TAD's new $12,495 stand-mounted speaker is arguably one of the most articulate loudspeakers I can remember hearing. But I don't…
Grand Prix Audio has two new equipment racks. The first is the four-post Monaco Nouvelle (on the left in the photo above, approx. $27,000-$30,000 for a four-shelf rack, depending upon options). Above that is the top-of-the-line four-post Silverstone 4 (on the right, $37,500 for a four-shelf rack that includes the company's superior Apex ball-bearing feet, and that offers "infinitely adjustable shelves for location and spacing" and even greater damping capacity).
The company has retooled and restructured all of its excellent carbon frames to achieve much larger damper capacity and greater…
Distributor Axiss Audio was showing the new Piega Coax 711 loudspeaker ($25,000/pair). Everything in the speaker—including its coaxial ribbon tweeter/midrange, bass drivers, and all-aluminum enclosure—is designed and manufactured by the Swiss company. Touted as producing "the finest coaxial ribbon sound"—it certainly sounded lovely and extremely musical in a relatively small space, thanks in no small part to Air Tight amplification—the speaker is actually designed for music lovers with "larger living rooms and a need for even stronger and deeper bass reproduction."
This three-way…
As Stereophile's minister without portfolio, my goal was to find something interesting that didn't quite fit into traditional categories. The prize was an introduction, at a Harman demo room in the Hard Rock Casino/Hotel, to Lexicon's SL-1 loudspeaker prototype (price TBD) and the SoundSteer technology that distinguishes it. It was emphasized that SoundSteer is "highly scalable," and visitors were treated as a focus group to generate ideas for specific products and applications.
The SL-1 prototype is shaped like an hourglass or a dress form. Each waist is belted with 12 dome tweeters…