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My trip to the Audio Video Show 2022 in Warsaw, Poland seems to have devolved into an unanticipated journey of protests. First, we almost delayed our pre-show mini-vacation in Paris—bless you, frequent flyer miles and friends—when, in the middle of a Workers' Strike, protestors were tear-gassed one block from the apartment of our hosts in the Montparnasse District. Then, on Day One of the show, I spent 45 minutes in the cold courting pneumonia as the shuttle bus between the Stadium and the Radisson Blu Sobieski Hotel was delayed due to a non-violent protest in the street near the start of the…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
As Brian Damkroger is based on the West Coast, it made sense logistically for BD to measure the bulky, heavy Avantgarde Duo SD iTRON G3 loudspeaker and send me his test results to analyze. He used the Room EQ Wizard (REW) system (footnote 1), operating at 44.1kHz with a calibrated UMIK-1 microphone and the soundcard in his computer. A Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ processor output the REW signal via a balanced XLR cable to the Avantgarde's input, with the level set with pink noise so that the response measurements were taken at an SPL of 80dB. As it wasn't practical to raise…
Grado Labs has introduced its latest flagship headphones, the Signature HP100 SE. This new model pays tribute to the pioneering HP1 headphones released by founder Joseph Grado in the early 1990s—a product some consider the genesis of the high-end headphone market.
You can read Stereophile's review of the HP1 here.
In honor of what would have been Joseph Grado's 100th birthday, the HP100 SE blends the company's rich heritage with contemporary design. "Although Uncle Joe left us 10 years ago, he will always be a presence at Grado Labs," says John Grado, CEO and nephew of Joseph…
Bluebird Music, a distributor of high-performance audio products, has announced the release of the Weiss DAC501 MK2 and DAC502 MK2 for the U.S. and Canadian markets. Both models are built by Weiss Engineering and represent the latest in the company’s nearly four-decade pursuit of high-fidelity sound reproduction.
The updated MK2 versions replace the previous DAC501 and DAC502, improving upon their predecessors with advanced DAC chips and upgraded circuitry. The result is said to be a notable improvement in transparency and openness.
Weiss’s proprietary discrete…
Toronto, here I come! Land of the CN Tower, Canada's Wonderland, the Blue Jays, Drake's NBA-sized basketball court in his mansion, and, of course, the Toronto Audiofest, where hundreds of audio brands representing the latest, greatest audio gear and accessories are displayed for our amusement.
My reporting at this year's event is going to be logistically different from prior years. Instead of taking place at one venue, this year's edition is being held at two neighboring, parking-lot-sharing venues. These include the usual one, the Westin Toronto Airport, and, joining it, the Holiday Inn…
Masimo, Masimo . . . What’s there to say about Masimo—the company that owns Bowers & Wilkins, Marantz, Denon, Classé, among other notable brands—at this juncture that’s new? This: The California-based company is hosting three rooms at the Toronto Audiofest, one I have yet to visit, the second I visited but can’t talk about because its star product is under a press embargo until next Tuesday, so you’ll have to wait. And the third? I visited and was left impressed by its sound.
At the heart of the system was a two-channel, 250Wpc, fully balanced, MM/MC phono-equipped, dual-mono Marantz…
If the name Audio Eden conjures mental images of an unspoiled, verdant music paradise where your troubles don’t exist, then Ontario retailer Audio Eden’s room lived up to its name.
I’d never heard Nagra and Harbeth paired together before, so who knew they’d make such a perfect pair? Or a perfect trio if you squeeze in the Nordost cabling between them. Not I. But when I heard what this combination could do, I thought, “Where have you been all my life?”
The system consisted of Harbeth’s Monitor 40.3 XD ($27,000/pair) being fed by a bevy of Nagra gear, including a pair of…
All prices in CA$.
I’m tempted to write in my report on the Charisma room that the sound of its demo was full of charisma! It wouldn’t be a lie, but I know it would sound forced and insincere, wordplay meant to be clever but that would ultimately sound lazy and induce a cringe-reflex in the reader.
So, I’ll stick with a more sensible approach. Charisma Audio is both a dealer of products made by other companies from around the world and a manufacturer known for its low-output MC cartridges designed by company owner and chief designer Bernard Li, who was helming the exhibit. The…
What speaker design immediately springs to mind when you think of MartinLogan? If you’re like me, the answer is an electrostatic one. Which is why I was momentarily taken aback when I walked into the MartinLogan room and saw on display the more conventional-looking, three-way, floorstanding XT F100 speaker ($5999/pair) from the company’s Motion Series XT, and this despite the fact I’ve known about the Motion Series XT for a couple of years now.
The thing is, I’d never heard this particular model, which, since 2023, was in its Generation 2 version, along with its stablemates in the series…
I saw a real live dragon at the Audiofest! It was tall and awe-inspiring and finished in Santos Rosewood. And instead of breathing fire, it breathed music! Okay, so it wasn’t an actual dragon, but Coherent Loudspeakers’ Modular 15 Dragon speakers ($58,000/pair, as configured in the photo), which I spotted in one of Corby’s Audio’s two exhibit rooms, was still impressive to behold.
Each speaker was composed of five individual cube-shaped enclosures stacked together in a column, with the enclosure in the middle housing a 3″ beryllium compression driver—I call that one the “eye of the…