Groove-tober has become a cherished tradition for AV Therapy, blending community, music, and the latest in audio-visual technology. This year’s festival will feature a variety of attractions, including great food, refreshments, costumes, exciting prizes, and live music, continuing the legacy that Mark Terletzky helped…
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AV Therapy is set to host its annual Groove-tober celebration on October 18th from 6 to 9 PM at its Nashua location, 216 Daniel Webster Hwy. The event honors the memory of Mark “Groove Champion” Terletzky, the company’s co-founder, who had a profound love for Groove-tober.
Active speakers make sense. The amplifiers, crossovers, and drivers are designed as a unit, so the design isn't compromised by the need to interface with components with unknown electrical or acoustical characteristics (except for the room, and that can't be helped). Concurrent design and testing of the various pieces can result in an integrated, through-designed system. Plus, the elegant simplicity that active speakers bring to a system just appeals to me.
Like many audiophiles, I've found myself intrigued by the variety of approaches that are taken to achieve the same goals: point…
Step two is to set the relative levels of the midrange and highs using two sturdy three-way switches, choosing among 0, +1.5dB, and –1.5dB for treble and midrange. The crossover from the midrange horns to the treble horns is at 3.5kHz, a frequency that conveniently caps the fundamental frequencies of common musical instruments. (On a standard piano, the four highest notes, including the black keys, are in the range of the tweeter; the rest are in the midrange.) I went back and forth but ultimately left the tweeter flat and set the midrange level to +1.5dB.
Next, I adjusted the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, semi-active or fully active, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive units: Fully active, Spherical Horn, 180° aperture angle Tweeter, 8" (200mm) diameter bell, 1" (25.4mm) annular driver with 500W current-amplification iTRON amplifier; Fully active, Spherical Horn, 180° aperture angle Midrange, 26.5" (670mm) diameter bell, 7" diameter, celluse cone, soft mesh driver and 2 × 100W, current-amplification iTRON amplifier; Fully active, fully digital, 12" (300mm) diameter, long-fiber paper/carbon fiber composite, vented subwoofer with 500W class-D…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Spiral Groove SG-2.1 turntable and Centroid tonearm, VPI HR-X turntable and JMW Memorial tonearm; Grado Epoch, The Reference, and Signature Reference; MicroBenz SL, Audio-Technica AT-MONO3/LP phono cartridges.
Digital sources: Audio Research CD6E CD Player,
Mytek Brooklyn DAC+.
Preamplification: Line: BAT VK-90 and Sutherland Line Blocks. Phono: Sutherland Phono Blocks Refined and Phono Loco.
Amplification: BAT VK-90t and VTL Ichiban Signature.
Loudspeakers: T+A Solitaire S 530, Magnepan 30.7x, Wilson Audio Sasha DAW, ELAC…
T.H.E. Show in Costa Mesa wasn't large, but there were a few debuts including several in the six rooms presented by Common Wave HiFi. In room 327, the Accuphase C‑57 phono stage ($13,975) was part of a demo setup that also included an Accuphase E‑3000 integrated amplifier ($8950), which was shown on static display at AXPONA but was in use here for the first time in the US. When I was in the room, the class-A Accuphase E‑700 stereo integrated amplifier was in use, driving a pair of DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers ($8950/pair, more for custom finishes).
Records were spun…
Often in these pages (and in Industry Update), we have reported ways various brands have experimented with the traditional hi-fi–retail formula. An example: the single-company dealership, adopted most recently by the Vervent Audio Group, parent company to Focal and Naim.
The latest to set up a single-brand dealership is Gryphon Audio Designs, which is preparing to open a "mono-brand" showroom in Los Angeles. Gryphon's implementation, though, is a radical departure from previous experiments in one respect: It's in the Pacific Design Center (PDC), a large (1.6 million square feet) multiuse…
Though clearly built more for performance than for looks, the Thales TTT-Compact ($13,200), designed and built in Switzerland by Micha Huber (footnote 1), ranks among a handful of today's most elegant new turntables. Like the Spiral Groove SG 1.1 or the AMG Viella 12, the TTC-C, true to its name, is compact and self-contained, with its belt and built-in motor hidden under the platter.
That Huber was once a watchmaker is evident in every aspect of the densely packed TTT-Compact, which measures approximately 18" wide by 3.5" high by 12" deep. From the packaging and instructions to its muted…
Setting up the Simplicity tonearm is far from simple. First you install your cartridge in a slotted headshell that will eventually lock into the arm's pivoting carrier (think of the old Dual system) using low-profile screws (supplied). The screws should be tight enough to prevent easy movement and loose enough to permit further adjustment.
You then slide the headshell into a large jig (supplied) called a Sight Unit, making sure there's enough clearance between the headshell and the carrier's transparent acrylic top plate, to avoid breaking the cartridge's cantilever. Unlike the arm's…
At T.H.E Show SoCal, tubed equipment didn't seem as prevalent as I've seen at some other shows, but it still had a presence—a very strong presence—in Zesto Audio's demo room 227. The California-based amplification and electronics manufacturer is led by George Counnas, who has also worked as an audio engineer in addition to designing equipment tubed hi-fi equipment, and his wife, Carolyn, who is responsible for Zesto's signature industrial design.
At T.H.E. Show, Zesto presented a new digital-to-analog converter with analog-tubed output section, the Athena DAC ($15,000) with ESP…