Kevin Wolf and VANA Ltd. represent a group of distinctive high-quality/high-value audio products that are mostly right up my aesthetic alley. I raved about their modestly priced ($1299) Blue Horizon Profono MM/MC phono stage in a recent "Gramophone Dreams" column in Stereophile. I have used their Dr. Feickert Analogue Protractor to align every one of the dozen or so cartridges I have written about. Every day, I treat the Dr.'s protractor like it was a rare artifact from the holy land. If there was a fire in…
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VANA’s Kevin Wolf (right) with AudioStream.com's Michael Lavorgna in the hot seat
Oh my, what a difference a few feet can make. I am talking, in this case, about the 6'7.8"-tall, 573.2-lb Focal Grande Utopia EM loudspeakers ($195,000/pair), each of which houses a 16" woofer, an 11" midbass driver, two 6.5" midrange drivers, and a 1" pure-beryllium, inverted-dome tweeter. This loudspeaker throws one of the largest and most realistically proportioned soundstages I have ever heard. When playing my SACD of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra performing Mahler's Symphony 9 (Channel Classics), the Grand Utopia EMs were actually capable of suggesting the huge scale,…
In scouting the lay of the land for the last day of RMAF, my fellow expedition members told me I must hear the demo Nordost was presenting. Late on Sunday afternoon I finally caught up with the Nordost team in the Humboldt Peak room at the Denver Marriott. As at the Munich Show last May, Nordost chose RMAF to showcase their new Supreme Reference Range Odin 2 cabling.
Nordost really had their act together, offering a very interesting and convincing A/B demo in their room, and then referring listeners to their downstairs booth where irresistible show pricing was offered on the spot. Heck—…
During these shows, I tend to move through the halls like an invisible force is pushing me. For each room I take a picture of the sign, walk in and do a fast calculation about where to get the best photo of the setup. Then I introduce myself to the proprietor and ask for a sheet with prices and the names of the gear being demonstrated. Then I listen, collect more data, and ask a few questions. After about the second or third question I say, "Thank you. Bye . . . gotta go! I have 50 more rooms to cover." Rolling, rolling, and rolling . . . keep them doggies rolling. But always I try to make…
It wasn't expected to be a mad dash. But at 3:40pm, when I suddenly feared that I had accidentally overlooked Zesto's amplifier premiere, and then forgotten to return to Maier Shadi and Peter Madnick's oft-packed, initially skipped Audio Salon/Audio Alchemy room on the day when I could actually snare a good seat, I panicked. Literally.
With only 20 minutes until show's end, out of the wonderful sounding Pass/Usher room I bolted, thankful that Herb had said that he'd cover it, and up the stairs to Zesto I ran. When Carolyn Counnas assured the breathless Serinus that one of my colleagues…
As the Stereophile Contributing Editor who has attended more Rocky Mountain Audio Fests than anyone except John Atkinson and Michael Fremer—that's me in the center—I've been entrusted with writing the show wrap. (John, it should be noted, deeply regrets that the magazine's production schedule made his attendance impossible.) But this time around, rather than simply relying on my own impressions, I posed questions to and gathered impressions from both my fellow bloggers, Sasha Matson (left above) and Herb Reichert (right above), and no fewer than 25 exhibitors.
Asked to name his favorite…
After I thought I had finished posting our coverage of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, I realized I still had a number of photos taken by Herb Reichert for which we had no accompanying text. So here are some brief notes from Herb to accompany those pictures.—John Atkinson
There was a strong buzz in the Marriott halls about the sound of Ryan's four-way (made in California) Tempus III loudspeakers ($15,995/pair, above). They played Sara Bareilles singing "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" while I scribbled "grainless, super-microdynamics, high detail, and piano sound A+++++."
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Burning Amp is back. Perhaps the world's largest DIY festival—only the European Triode Festival begins to rival it in size—the mostly annual festival returns to the San Francisco Bay Area on Saturday, October 17, after a year's break to regroup and scout out a new venue. Now ensconced in a far more comfy 16+ room office venue in the South Bay—Interana Headquarters at 305 Walnut Street in Redwood City—Burning Amp promises at least 15 DIY systems plus an exciting group of presentations.
"One of the most important parts of the show is that you can talk audio with old friends and finally meet…
Exciting news greeted the posse of press who headed to the Marriott Denver Tech Center's Atrium Saturday October 3 for a press conference entitled "MQA and Mytek Present: From Studio to Home." Both Bob Stuart of MQA, Ltd. (above right) and Michal Jurewicz of Mytek Digital (above center) were present, as well as Pål Bråtelund, Strategic Partnership Manager for Tidal (above left), and, for MQA partner AudioQuest, AQ VP Steve Silberman.
Thanks to a lovely-sounding assemblage of components—Vandersteen's Model Seven loudspeakers, Boulder 1060 stereo amplifier, and AudioQuest cabling—we were…
Long-time Stereophile readers May be dismayed by what appears to be our unfettered satisfaction with some of the recent crop of new components. Aren't we, after all, dedicated to the pursuit of perfection? Do we really feel that some products are all that close to it? The answer to both questions is "Yes."
Certain components we have tested recently—the Sony PCM-1, the Berning TF-10 preamplifier, the Infinity HCA amplifier, the Shure V15-IV phono cartridge and its companion SME 3009 Series III tonearm—are good enough that further performance improvement to them can result only in sonic…