Strange as it may seem, this huge air-walled exhibit room's sponsor, AudioQuest with Abt Electronics of Chicago, was the mostly invisible partner that enabled Rotel's Michi P5 preamplifier with phonostage ($4299.99—follow-up coming in our August issue) and Michi S5 stereo power amplifiers ($7499/each—reviewing coming in our July issue) to sing through Klipsch Jubilee loudspeakers ($35,000/pair including outboard electronic crossover). That's a lot of parentheses in a single sentence, so let's parse…
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On rock, this system turned heads and caused more than a few mouths and eyes to open wide.
Some would call it a tease; others would call it sheer torture. That's how I, who fell in love with the sound of Stereophile's 2021 Amplification Component of the Year, Gryphon's Essence monoblock power amplifier, felt seeing a static display in place of hearing the new, humongous Gryphon Apex power amplifier ($99,000/chassis).
"It's the most impressive amplifier made," said Gryphon's Rune Skov about a silent, 450lb component that outputs 210Wpc in pure class-A into 8 ohms, doubles its power down to a startling 0.5 ohm, and boasts 1F (farad) power supply capacity. Then he tortured me…
Ken Stevens and the folks from Convergent Audio Technology had already taken down most of the heavy black draping that tamed reflective sidewalls when I happened upon CAT's JL5 LE stereo amplifier ($24,995) and JL7 SE ($49,990) monoblock amplifiers connected to their SL1 Legend Extreme preamplifier ($59,995). (The Statement Extreme, $209,990, was not playing.) Connected to Magico S5 Mk.II loudspeakers by beta version CAT Black Path cabling, the system delivered lively, maximally illumined silvery sound.
In my brief listen to "Keith Don't Go"—I resisted the temptation to run out the door—…
When I heard Usher's "Yeah!" being blasted out from the, uh, Serenity Room, I wondered whether to go in or hang back from the crunk. Not hating on the song, but it was awfully early in the day for this. (It turns out there was someone shooting a video in there.) But the real surprise was that the bumping, club-worthy music wasn't coming from outsized tower speakers, but from a pair of stand-mounted two-ways with some innovative porting.
The demo was presented by Next Level HiFi, one of several Chicagoland area dealers at AXPONA; one of their three rooms was assigned to me. The…
American Sound presented a second demo in the suite's smaller room: Avantgarde Acoustics' Uno XDs, a smaller model soon to be upgraded to G3 status, driven by Japan's Phasemation amplification.
Another noteworthy debut: a Japanese Analog Relax EX1000 phono cartridge (below) with a body made of 2000-year-old Yakusugi Cedar. Here, it served as transducer on a VPI Avenger turntable. Another fine showing.
Toronto-based American Sound of Canada, with Angie Lisi at the helm, had a striking showing at AXPONA: Huge horns. If you saw and heard them, you'd remember them. It was a popular room, so I made an early first stop on Sunday when it wasn't crowded.
The German-made Avantgarde Acoustics Trio G3 horn loudspeaker system with separate Space Horn subs debuted. This latest generation of horns adds active amplification, though the speakers can still be run passively if desired. Each separate horn housing now has its own on-board current-mode amplification, which is neatly tucked away behind the…
Fidelity Imports' second room showed on passive display the latest speaker from Perlisten, the three-way S5t tower—a smaller sibling to the Perlisten S7t in the active setup (and that Kal Rubinson reviewed in December 2021, bottom photo). A (forthcoming) new Aurender A15 music server/streamer with DAC (top photo) decoding full MQA served as the source.
The S7t speakers were powered by a 150-watt (into 8 ohms) Unison Research Unico 150 integrated amplifier ($6499 silver or $6999 in black, above) with optional phono stage. Its dual-mono three-stage hybrid design uses ECC83 triodes…
Fidelity Imports: Michell Engineering, Cyrus Audio, Q Acoustics, English Acoustics, QED, Titan Audio
Tucked away in a corner of the 6th floor were two Fidelity Imports rooms showing a few new gems. Fidelity Imports focused one (room 604) on its imports from the UK.
Young English tubed amplifier designer Jordan Jackson has recently started a new company, the aptly named English Acoustics. A couple of his UK-made tube amplifiers were shown: A blue Stereo 21C, 14Wpc, Ultralinear stereo amp ($7499, above) was on static display. A preproduction Stereo 41C, 25Wpc, Ultralinear ($9999) dual-mono stereo amp in a custom red Alfa Romeo finish was in an active system. (Though these English tube…
Having reviewed the top-of-the-line Innuos two-piece Statement music server, I was eager to hear an A/B demo of the version I reviewed with an Innuos Statement that contains its forthcoming Next-Gen power supply upgrade. Thanks to two extremely helpful and enthusiastic Innuos staff people, Director of Sales Steven Gomes and North American Director of Sales, Kevin Jackson, it was easy to hear the improvements.
Innuos commandeered two adjacent hotel rooms. In the first, show goers could use headphones, Benchmark DAC3 Bs, and innuOS software to compare the sounds of different Innuos…
There was one room at AXPONA where I was too in awe to take notes. In shock is more like it. The brothers who own JS Audio have acquired and restored the very first pair of WAMM loudspeakers that the late Dave Wilson began to manufacture in 1981. It seems that after living with the model for a few months, Dave's other half in the truest sense, his beloved wife and life partner Sheryl Lee, pictured below at AXPONA, preferred a different cabinet color for their living room and encouraged him to move this pair along. (If I've got that wrong, please forgive me.)
Why was I so…