Press Day, Schmess Day. Some people were ready, some were not, and a few who said they were ready most definitely needed more time to work out the kinks.
"Why don't they make press day at the end of the show?" one exhibitor asked with a look of frustration. It's when everything is finally sounding its best."
"Yes," thought I. "But it's also when everyone is most worn out and wanting to go home."
Happily, by the time of the official show opening, everyone was more or less ready to get going. Nor was the Sixth annual The Home Entertainment Show Newport launched with the…
Silverline Audio's tiny SR7 loudspeaker punches above its weight. Rated down to 68Hz at -3dB, it's clearly bass light. But its 2.5" paper cone woofer and soft-dome tweeter work overtime to deliver. It's not without issues and sounded a bit pushy and cutting at times in the low to mid treble. The lack of deep bass to balance the top end certainly contributed to this.
I'm sure you can blow one up if you try. Using it to play Das Boot at reference level with no subwoofer will likely do the trick. But used with intelligence, it can solve more than a few problems—not the least of which is…
While some components in the Triangle Art system were less expensive than the Usher Audio Mini Dancer Two-D speakers being used ($5500/pair), most—including the Triangle Art Apollo phono cartridge ($8000)—cost more. Two turntables were on display from the company: the Reference SE at $27,995 and the Concerto at $4995. The 12" Osiris tonearm is $5800. The gold-finish tube electronics were all from Triangle Art as well; the least expensive of these was their phono stage, at $12,995.
In terms of pricing, the room featuring loudspeakers and other products by Salk Sound—a company less…
Stereophile Editor John Atkinson and I drove down from deepest Hollywood to arrive at T.H.E. Show Newport late on Thursday night, in time for the public opening the following morning. Traffic was okay— the best you can hope for these days in LA! Conferencing commenced over breakfast the next morning at the Hotel Irvine, where T.H.E. Show is now located. I can assure any lingering skeptics: the Star Trek-worthy prime directive remains to try to cover every exhibitor at these shows—no matter who they are or how many people Stereophile.com has on-hand for each day. In his efforts to accomplish…
(Brooklyn, NY). I wake up. It's one of those perfect Sunday mornings—66°, pleasantly cool, with sparse rays of sun peaking through. I have the whole day to devote to eating and writing my Stereophile column—my two favorite pastimes.
The morning begins with me putting a record on: Elton John—Greatest Hits, the soundtrack of my life. I then proceed to hand grind some Counter Culture coffee beans from Kapchorwa, Uganda, and proceed to brew them in my Chemex. Since I am an extremely gluttonous eating machine, and Sunday is boozy brunch day, I attempt to preemptively offset the rest of the day…
Vying with Audio Element's Wilson/VTL/dCS/Grand Prix/Transparent system for my Best Sound of Day One, the Wilson/Einstein/TechDAS/Graham/Nordost system that Positive-Feedback.com and SonicFlare.com reviewer Danny Kaey uses as his reference had the ability to play at high volume without inducing fatigue. Equally important, it sounded fabulous. The midrange was drop-dead gorgeous on Lori Lieberman's LP track, "Take a Little Piece of Me." After the speakers totally disappeared, both on that track and on London Grammar's "Strong," all that remained was truly glorious, open, clear, extremely…
During the second part of my first day at T.H.E. Show, I paid a visit to the Hotel Irvine's Woodbridge Room—a poetic name that gelled with the quality of the gear on display. The companies featured were here from Japan—Concert Fidelity Inc. based in Nagano, and Maxonic/SRC Inc. in Tokyo. On offer was the Concert Fidelity CF-i300B Integrated Amplifier ($10,000) and the Maxonic TW7000B Field Excitation Speaker System, with cabling from the Maxonic Miyabi line (pricing not provided). As the name implies, the Concert Fidelity integrated utilizes 300B tubes, and puts out 9Wpc. Maxonic also offers…
Before singing the praises of High Water Sound, which was unquestionably the most fun room I visited in Irvine—as well as one of the best sounding—I feel the need to expound on my approach to covering shows. These blogs are not reviews; they are simply the verbal equivalent of an aural snapshot in time. To pretend that a 10-minute listen is the equivalent of a mini-review is both absurd and irresponsible.
The reality is that we are covering exhibits that, of necessity, were set up quickly in unfamiliar, challenging, and sometimes downright inhospitable surroundings. That so many of the…
A Game of Thrones vibe hit me when I visited the room hosted by Texas-based distributor Believe High Fidelity, also designated as "The Believe Hifi Network." But Cyprus, not Dorn, is home to electronics manufacturer Aries Cerat—the rare audio company that includes on their website a motto in Latin: Nil stasis nisi optimum, translated as Nothing but the best is good enough. And they put that dictum into action with the Aries Cerat Kassandra Reference DAC MK II ($35,000), the Aries Cerat Incito Prestige preamplifier ($12,000), and the Aries Cerat Diana Forte stereo amplifier ($27,500). This…
Was it really possible that so many excellent sounding rooms, both large and small, could be located on a single floor? To someone who does not bullshit about what he hears or wishes he could have heard, and who has covered more rooms at more shows than your great-grandfather has wrinkles on his face, such seemed to be the impossible-but-true case as floor 2 yielded another first-time revelation: Natural Sound Europe from Slovenia.
Natural Sound Europe's sonic presentation was very clear and detailed, and the bass great on an excerpt from Stravinsky's Firebird. A request for opera yielded…
