"Give me one reason to stay here and I'll turn around," said I, turning to the door. Just like that, on comes a version of the Carmen Fantasie, with wonderful, smooth sound, engagingly neutral tonalities, and none of that overripe tube…
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You should have seen the sad sack look on the faces of Your Final System's Kevin O'Brien and Endeavor Audio Engineering's Leif Swanson when I told them I was trying to restrict my coverage to new product introductions. "We were handicapped by a bad cable and bad USB input when you covered us at the California Audio Show last year," Kevin complained.
"Is this the same company whose A/D converter Jared Sacks of Channel Classics raves about?" I asked. When Bill Parish of GTT Audio & Video answered yes, I understood why. Grimm's LS1s three-way speaker system ($39,900/pair), which manages to fit hi-res ADC/DACs, a CC1 clock circuit, six amplifiers, DSP processor, integrated bass modules, cables and more into the two speaker cabinets pictured in the photo, is a virtually complete system that calls only for a source. In this case, the LS1s joined forces with a PC running JRiver Media Center and Kubala-Sosna power cords to produce gorgeous…
Since my focus was on new product introductions other than analog, which are being covered by Mikey Fremer on AnalogPlanet.com, all I'll say about the new Kronos Sparta turntable ($21,500) with Helena tonearm and AirTight PC-1 cartridge ($34,500 total) is that they sure sounded great in the context of the rest of GTT's system.
Listening to a 45rpm pressing of Ansermet's rendition of Falla's Three Cornered Hat, I noted rewardingly neutral sound, impressively full and tight bass, absolute silence between and around notes, a huge soundstage, and the fabulous air one associates with the best…
Let's hear it for a relatively new dealer and father, Jason Walker of Midwest Audio in South Bend, Indiana. You know someone is an industry virgin when he confesses that he first heard of Rebecca Pidgeon, whose 20-year old "Spanish Harlem" was once a multi-room favorite at audio shows, a whole two months ago.
Walker, who began with Coincident Audio electronics 18 months ago, is now carrying a host of important brands that clearly deserve to be better known in the Midwest. Although he could not fully control the hooting in his room, the sound of music sourced from an SD card and played…
I don't want to wax biblical here, but in Stereophile's world of show reports, the last shall be first, and the first, last. Thus we begin our coverage of the final day with the last system I auditioned at AXPONA 2014. Welcome to Goerner Communications' room on the Westin O'Hare's third floor.
In room 302, and perhaps soon in a room in your home, Audio Physic Avantera Plus+ loudspeakers ($28,000/pair) kept company with a Grandinote Shinai integrated amplifier ($16,000) and Trigon Chronolog CD/DVD player and music server ($9495). Cables were Nordost Valhalla 2, and the rack a Creativ Midi…
I have no idea exactly what was in use in the McIntosh room, because both times I paid a visit, the exhibitor was too involved in demonstrating the system's "Room Correction" component to stop to chat. Regardless, the sound was very, very good—just what you'd expect from a McIntosh system that can control challenging hotel acoustics—and the demo far more convincing than my mother's apple pie.
In answer to the question, what does your mother's apple pie have to do with anything besides the coincidence of McIntosh, all can only reply that it's 10 pm, and I wrote my first show blog of the…
This compact system, in which Monitor Audio's Gold GX 200 loudspeakers ($4500/pair) and brand new Silver 10 loudspeakers ($2500/pair) mated with the Cyrus Lyric 09 all-in-one class-D system ($6499, due in June or July), sounded very fine through Nordost Red Dawn cabling. Especially when I moved up a bit from the back wall, I noted how controlled and musical the system sounded at the start of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's Channel Classics recording of Mahler Symphony 2, and how good the bass was.
The Cyrus Lyric 09, which outputs 170Wpc into 8 ohms, contains a 32-bit DAC, CD transport…
"I really wanted people not to say that the electronics are why the speakers sound good, so I brought a very minimalistic set-up," said Milwaukee-based Jeff Permanian of his very first display at an audio show. Granted, his imposing, Internet-direct JTR Noesis 215RT ($7000/pair), a 3-way loudspeaker with a claimed 95dB sensitivity and impressive frequency response of 18Hz–24kHz, may not be a visual work of art. But in the company of an Oppo BDP-95, Adcom integrated, and Cardas cabling, its reproduction of Norah Jones' "Come Away with Me" exhibited sufficient warmth to make me want to hear the…
"Whatever you do, don't miss the speaker company around the corner at the end of the third floor," a dealer who had no connection with the room selflessly told me. "The sound is terrific." Thus I scurried along to the exhibit sponsored by Audio Limits of Colorado Springs and Polymer Audio Research of Florida. There I encountered the new, eye-catching Polymer MKS-X loudspeaker system ($60,000/pair), whose 365 lb loudspeakers boast a pure-diamond, acoustic-suspension tweeter and midrange, plus two 6.5" composite-cone, rear-ported woofers connected in parallel. The pure diamond cones handle all…
I enjoyed my short time with the Vienna Acoustics Imperial Series Liszt loudspeaker system ($15,000/pair). The Liszt incorporates Vienna Acoustics' flat-spider 6" coincident midrange driver and 1.2" vented silk-dome/neo-coated motor, as well as three 7" woofers that cover the 26–200Hz range of a speaker that extends up to 25kHz. Mated with a Primare I32 integrated amplifier ($4750), whose pre-installed full media board option allowed a wired LAN connection to a NAS drive, and AudioQuest cabling, the system depicted a file of a recording of Mahler's Symphony 3 with superior midrange, fine bass…