The new V 80 SE integrated amplifier ($10,500) from Germany's Octave Audio is just such a creation. It delivers 120Wpc (into 4 ohms…
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Right now it appears that both Europe and America are cultivating a new, more refined vision of what a tube audio amplifier should look and sound like. Both sides of the Atlantic are making tube products that (again) sound at least a little like actual vacuum tubes and less like high-strung solid-state racing cars. Both cultures now want genuine tube sound but demand 21st century tube longevity and reliability—and, of course, a discrete headphone amplifier.
One of the chief reasons I fly to woebegotten Las Vegas, USA is: I love all the wild, eccentric audio persons that treat CES as a business-building pilgrimage site. The other is that CES is the best place to find new products to review. This year I found several, and the one that has me the most stoked is the Rogers High Fidelity 65V-1 class-A, single-ended EL34/KT88 integrated amplifier ($3999). Not to mention: I have never seen an amp painted with industrial-black crinkle paint that I didn't love.
I have met Rogers' president and chief designer Roger Gibboni several times, at his New…
Technics displayed their Reference Series product line at CES 2017. While the New York Times recently focused on the introduction of the company's SL-1200G coreless-motor direct-drive turntable ($4,000), my interest focused on Technics' 188-lb, $17,000 SE-R1 digital amplifier, which I heard powering their SB-R1 3.5-way floorstanding speakers. Bill Voss, Technics' Business Development Manager, explained that the SE-R1 is rated at 300Wpc into 4 ohms (the load impedance of the SB-R1 speakers). The amplifier uses a pulse-width modulation circuit, a high-precision sample-rate converter for…
I'm an old friend of DeVore Fidelity's founder and chief engineer, John DeVore. So old that every time I see him, my mind says, silently, "John-Knee Dee-Vore," and I immediately picture one of the Monkeyhaus parties held in his listening room/factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At almost the same moment, I picture our mutual friend and Tone Imports proprietor, Jonathan Halpern, putting a Hank Williams 78 on the Monkeyhaus turntable—but I never want to call Jonathan "John-Knee Help-Porn." No way. Now that he is importing two of my favorite British audio brands—Falcon Acoustics and Sugden Audio—…
Miracle of miracles, as I walked down the hallways of the Venetian's 30th floor, checking every sign, it seemed that I had covered virtually everything in my territory. In point of fact, as I discovered after the show, I actually missed the Bluebird Music Suite, which sat isolated on the 34th floor, with its debut van den Hul cable beyond the reaches of my Vegas-pummeled vision. Happily, Jon Iverson took that room in, which makes me glad that I felt free enough to spend some quality time listening to Yoav Geva's magnum opus, the YG Acoustics Sonja XV loudspeakers with included sub towers ($…
Turns out the Venetian's Grand Lux Cafe has a decent kale and brown rice salad, which three in our group quickly ate in Stereophile's hospitality room on the 29th floor. After lunch we headed up one floor to the Simaudio room where we were greeted by Lionel Goodfield and the Moon Units (sorry couldn't resist). Simaudio's room is at the back corner of one of the wings, and though much smaller than the suites on the top floors, is still twice as big as the regular rooms on their floor.
And the company had put their space to very good use. When we walked in, some loud electro music was…
When Charles van Oosterum founded Kharma International in the Netherlands 35 years ago, he began with the company's Ceramique line, which used ceramic drivers. Kharma's ceramic-driver Enigma was their first big speaker to fill a ballroom. Now, over a third of a century later, with ceramic drivers replaced by Kharma Composite drivers with carbon fiber, the Kharma Enigma Veyron 2 ($437,500/pair), the smaller (!) sibling of the Enigma Veyron 1, has made its US debut at CES. (I should have covered this speaker at its Munich High End debut but, mea culpa, I somehow missed it.)
The company's…
Under the mistaken impression that I had covered all the new cables, accessories, and $20,000/pair-and-up speakers in the Venetian—save for one cable company whose rep was deeply engaged both times I visited the room and one speaker company whose blare into the hallway discouraged me from visiting—I invited our own Jana Dagdagan and her video camera to join me as I indulged in auditioning the two rooms populated by Magico loudspeakers. I'm glad I did, because I not only heard some great sound, but also discovered a passive display of the brand new Magico S3 Mk II ($28,000/pair in M-Cast…
Vintage Technics amplifiers and tuners are surely among the most beautifully styled audio gear ever. In terms of well-drawn, refined-looking industrial design, Technics amplifiers from the 1970s and 80s beat Marantz, Kenwood, and even Sansui.
The space-station bottom lighting on Technic’s watt-meters created a new fashion in amplifier art direction that has never been equaled— and has never gone away. (Think: Audio Research, Pass Labs, SAE, and D’Agostino.)
Technics spent all of 2016 re-emerging into the Euro-American audio market—and they did it with full-on high Japanese…
Look at that photo, with the beautiful wood-plinthed KT88 amp. What do you notice? That's not a dCS digital stack lying on the table bottom-right: It's an iPad. A fancy red cable, whose name I forgot to get, is connecting a portable music source to the line-level input of a $1850 single-ended stereo integrated headphone amplifier called the Mogwai. It's all handmade by Ampsandsound engineer-proprietor Justin Weber. Look again. Do you see those loudspeaker binding posts? Ah ha! The Mogwai is another of those "fusion" products that I love. It sits on your desk, drives some sensitive desktop…