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Reminders were everywhere that the High End show, which takes place in a 30,000-square-meter convention center, differs from the hotel-centric North American norm in its preponderance of silent displays—silent, but seldom inconspicuous. A fine example was the room occupied by the 33.3-year-old Danish firm Gryphon Audio Designs, which used the occasion to display their 93.5"-tall, 2002-lb (net weight), twin-tower Kodo loudspeaker system (price on request). The Kodo—which, when I visited, enjoyed tremendous popularity as a selfie prop—is a four-way design, specified as reaching from 16Hz to…
In the primary Living Voice room (there were two) I found the Vox Olympian & Vox Elysian loudspeakers (851,200/pair Euros in Macassar Ebony & Amboyna Burl with figured Eucalyptus wood), partnered with vintage Kondo electronics via both digital and analog sources. For analog, there was the Grand Prix Audio Monaco 2.0 turntable with a Kuzma 4-point tonearm, and a Fuuga MC cartridge (45,419 Euro total) connected via a Living Voice step-up transformer (6812 Euros) to a SJS enhanced model 3 phono-amplifier voiced for Living Voice (15,896 Euros).
The digital source was Living…
Since Herb Reichert and I were booked to fly back to New York on Sunday, Saturday was to be my last day at High End 2018—which is to say, Saturday was my Sunday: a day of moving along smartly, covering as many rooms and booths as possible, and listening only briefly.
Wouldn't you know it that my first stop of the day, at the room sponsored by German loudspeaker manufacturer Zellaton, was one that discouraged drive-by reporting: This system, built around the enormous (350kg each) Zellaton Statement loudspeaker ($375,000/pair), had a clarity and ease unlike anything else at the show. And…
2018 marks the 100th year of business for Danish cartridge manufacturer Ortofon A/S—the actual birthday is October 9th—so it came as no surprise that Ortofon's head of product development, Leif Johannsen (on the right in the photo above, next to Lou Dorio of the company's American subsidiary, Ortofon Inc.) cooked up three special, limited-edition products to celebrate the milestone: the anachronistic and ostensibly DJ-friendly moving-magnet Concorde Century; the ultra-high-end MC Century; and the cartridge that most appealed to me, the SPU Century (estimated price: 5000).
The SPU…
Look at this photo of Cessaro Horn Acoustics' beautiful-in-color 5-way "Zeta" lautsprecher. Can you imagine it sitting in your listening room? I could, and I'd be proud to own it—if only I didn't live in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment and write reviews for a living. The Zetas are new, and cost between 320,00 and 460,000 Euros/pair, which—don't laugh—I think seems like a bargain for all the hardware and good sound a buyer would receive. Can you imagine all those Zeta crates arriving at your house?
In my view, most high-end loudspeakers sound worse than they look. (And usually, they look…
The July Stereophile will include my Follow-Up report on the Joseph Audio Pulsar loudspeakers; the same Pulsars Michael Fremer raved about in his full review. Before I submitted the review, Jana Dagdagan and I made a live binaural recording/video to accompany my written report so you, the reader at home, could experience the exact same recordings in the exact same system in the same room I used to evaluate the Pulsars. Today, therefore, I will only tell you that Jeff Joseph's floor-standing, gloss-white Perspective loudspeakers (15,990 Euros/pair) sounded fuller, deeper, bigger, and richer,…
I am getting near the end of my Munich High End 2018 report and I am already feeling sad for all the rooms with hornspeakers I did not get to experience. What if I missed all the best ones?
I have some cheer though because one of the best ones I definitely did not miss was Stein Music's Top Line Bob XL flagship. The Bob XL is a 90"-high, four-way hornspeaker that costs 128,000 Euros/pair . Each main Top Line speaker tower is accompanied by a separate Bob XL subwoofer tower with eight 18" DSP-controlled active woofers with an amplifier output of 3000W and a cost of 44,000 Euros each. The…
I've been looking at this all wrong.
My recent informal survey of ca $10,000 CD players has been based on two assumptions: that the people reading those reviews would be looking for their last-ever CD player, and that such a purchase would require Serious Money.
In addition to such things as the best available design and parts, the most luxurious enclosure, and the utmost in reliability, Serious Money is presumed to buy durability of value: Any appliance that costs $10,000 today had damn well better be worth more than nothing in five or ten years.
Beyond that—say, 20 or…
I gave the Apollo a mute run-in (footnote 1) for a few days. I'm not convinced that its sound changed all that much from the beginning of the review period to the end, but I'm certain it sounded fuller and more colorful when warmed up for an hour, as opposed to playing CDs immediately after being powered up.
Listening
I began my listening with Liszt's arrangement for piano of Wagner's Tannhäuser overture, performed by Jorge Bolet, from Rediscovered: Liszt Recital (RCA Victor Red Seal 63748-2). The sound wasn't as extended in the bass as I'd expected—eg, a phrase in the left hand at…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box CD player. Compatible formats: CD (WAV "Red Book"), MP3, WMA. CD-R. Analog output level: 2.15V maximum (minimum load impedance, 10k ohms). Digital output level: 0.5V. Power consumption (115V): 13.5W.
Dimensions: 8.7" (220mm) W by 3.5" (90mm) H by 13.5" (342mm) D. Weight:7 lb (3.2kg).
Finish: Black.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 29040.
Price: $1095. Approximate number of dealers: 120.
Manufacturer: Rega Research Limited, 6 Coopers Way, Temple Farm Industrial Estate, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 5TE, England, UK. Tel: (…