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Wednesday March 29, 6:00–9:00pm, Manhattan retailer Innovative Audio (150 East 58th Street, NYC) is holding "The Master Quality Authenticated Experience," the next in a series of "Meet the Innovators Events." Ryan Donaher and Zaheer Alli from Meridian Audio, Peter McGrath from Wilson Audio, and Mike Jbara from MQA will present original concert recordings with and without MQA, as well as other MQA comparisons.
My pretend-award for this year's "speakers most like Mega Bloks" category goes to Israeli company PureAudioProject, whose Trio15 modular open-baffle speaker concept proved a hit at the Montreal show. A pair of Trio15 speakers is sold in kit form, in the loose sense of that term, since there's not much kit to assemble. What there is is a metal frame, two outboard circuit-board crossovers (below), and three rectangular panels, each pre-fitted with a driver, that "snap" together vertically to create the speaker's front baffle. Customers can choose between a variety of different drivers and…
Saturday at the Montreal Audio Fest dawned snowy: a clear sign that God wanted us to stay inside all day and listen to music. So I made an early start and began my rounds at the Bluebird Music suite, where proprietor Jay Rein and I had the luxury of a mostly empty, pre-throng room in which to listen and catch up.
Before being shushed and chased out of the room—by the same co-exhibitor who ignored me when I first walked in!—we listened to the new Spendor D9 floorstanding loudspeakers ($US9995/pair), driven by a Chord SPM 1200 power amplifier ($US12,300), fed by Chord's Dave DAC ($US10,588…
I have an impression of Yamaha as a company that can not only make anything they want, but can do so exceeding well. My first contact with the brand came when my sister got a pair of Yamaha skis; a couple of years later, ca 1970, I bought a Yamaha acoustic guitar—a professional quality instrument at a dirt-cheap price. (Loudon Wainwright III played one on his 1970 debut album; nearly 30 years later, Elliot Smith played a Yamaha at the Oscars ceremony.) Later in the '70s, Yamaha audio gear—their stereo receivers in particular—came to prominence in the US (although the company actually got…
With all the momentous passings in music this past year—Prince, Bowie, Merle Haggard, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen—it has become harder to remember all those who have gone before. In my estimation one death the jazz universe has never quite gotten over is the passing of pianist/arranger/orchestrator Gil Evans.
On a fine new Analogue Productions 200gm stereo LP reissue of Gil Evans and Ten, (Prestige 7120) ($35), his first recording as a leader, the man's many strengths combined to create a tour de force. This is first time these recordings have been released in stereo on LP. For starters,…
If there's one thing that brings me more joy than seeing a lot of happy people at the Montreal Audio Festival, it's getting a seat in an exhibitor's room. Unfortunately, I often can't have it both ways. Those same happy people, if there are enough of them, will make it so there's no chair left for me to sit in.
One way to improve one's sitting chances is to go on Sunday, generally the day with the least amount of show goers. I call it the Sunday rule.
Except that some rooms stubbornly refuse to abide by the Sunday rule. They're always packed. It doesn't matter that they're located…
Before I get to all the pretty words, let me just say: I'd probably rave about a Montreal show if it amounted to nothing more than a big room with a few portable record players and a stack of 45s, with maybe a few beers thrown in. In the past 17 years—since my daughter was in a stroller—I've missed only a few of these shows, and throughout that time I've learned something important: The Montreal Audio Fest, formerly Salon Son et Image, isn't so much about hardware. If it were, there'd be no sense attending, because the High End show in Munich does hardware better than this or any other show,…
This past weekend, John Atkinson, Herb Reichert, and I drove down to Philadelphia to visit audio retailer Doug White of The Voice That Is. In this video, Doug and JA discuss the challenges of a rapidly changing internet based market, the differences between buying online versus buying from your local dealer, and much more.
We also filmed a conversation with Doug, JA, and Herb discussing Tidal loudspeakers, which we will post later this week.
For more on the subject of audio retailing, see Barry Willis's 1996 article "Invaded by the Grays," a retailer's response to a 1985…
Forty years ago, when I first had money enough to buy serious [ahem] consumer audio, there were a few good turntables available, from Thorens, Garrard, Ariston, some others. Today is the golden age of turntables: ask Mikey, if not antiquarian Artie. And loudspeakers! In 1970, models were few, and most were mediocre. Today, you can have a great loudspeaker for a song.
It wouldn't be a speaker from DeVore Fidelity, though. They're priced above budget level, but they offer quality that would have been inconceivable four decades ago: style, fit, finish, sound.
A former retail hi-fi…
Set Up 2 has the speakers no more than a third of the way into the room from the front wall, and the listening chair . . . well, wherever. Furniture placement and room size may dictate what works best. I guess most DeVore Fidelity owners listen alone; the diagrams show a single chair, not a couch or love seat.
The Gibbon 3XLs worked exceptionally well in my room, in both the nearfield and at greater distance—a tribute to that 19mm tweeter. That doesn't mean you shouldn't audition, and maybe buy, a pair of Gibbon 3XLs.
John DeVore set up the speakers in my listening room using…