I first heard this unusually styled amplifier at the January 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. The production version on display here at the 2019 AXPONA, looks gorgeous in silver, copper, and black finishes. It uses two 12AX7 drivers and four triode-strapped 6AQ5 output tubes with custom, hand-wound, air-gapped output transformers. These transformers are user-configurable to drive three ranges…
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Manley Labs' firebrand CEO EveAnna Manley always seems to enjoy audio shows and AXPONA was no exception, where she was showing off the Absolute Tube headphone amplifier ($4500) in the Ear Gear Expo.
"Good grief! They are using Quads!" I used to use Quad ESL-57s in the mid 1980s before I moved to the US and in some ways, no other speaker has come close to the sonic transparency offered by these idiosyncratic-looking electrostatic speakers. But to see and hear an original pair dating from 1958 in the room shared by Michigan dealer/manufacturer Nokturne Audio and Lejonklou HiFi from Sweden was a highlight of the 2019 AXPONA.
The Quads were being driven by a Lejonklou Tundra 2.5 amplifier ($4950), a Lejonklou Sagatun 1.4 preamplifier ($4950), and the front end was a Linn Sondek LP12,…
"Why is there a box of parts next to each of the Evolution loudspeakers?" I jokingly asked Blue Light Audio's Jonathan Tinn. He explained that those were the external crossovers for the three-way Maestoso loudspeakers ($18,900/pair) with their lids off. The speakers were being driven by the darTZeel NHB-108 Model Two power amplifier ($44,000), which was making its North American debut at AXPONA, and preamp was that Mikey Fremer favorite, the darTZeel NHB-18NS Mk.II ($44,000 with phono stage).
I listened to a CD transfer of Ray Lamontagne singing and playing acoustic guitar played with…
I sat down in the Playback Designs room to listen to a system featuring Playback's MPS-8 SACD player/DAC ($25,000 plus $2400 for the Stream_X option) and Stream-IF streaming interface ($3300), both from the company's Dream series, with an Playback IPS-3 integrated amplifier ($14,000), these all sitting on an English Lateral Systems 4-shelf rack ($4100), driving Verity Parsifal Anniversary loudspeakers ($25,000/pair) and wired with Kubala-Sosna Emotion interconnects and Fascination AC cord and speaker cables. Playing was the DSD256 file of "Let There Be Love," copied from an analog Ampex 468 ¼…
MartinLogan co-founder Gayle Sanders emerged from retirement at the 2018 AXPONA with a new loudspeaker brand, Eikon. But Eikon is not just a loudspeaker but a complete system ($25,000 in standard finish or $30,000 in the carbon-fiber finish shown in my photo), with DAC, preamplifier, and digital signal processor incorporated into the Eikontrol unit, which has both analog inputs and digital (USB and S/PDIF but PCM only) inputs, and each of the speaker's drive-units has its own amplifier.
The speaker has two woofers, one on the front, the other on the back, as well as a 5" midrange unit and…
Florida-based Bending Wave USA were showing the ginormous Divin Noblesse loudspeakers ($220,000/pair) making their US debut—I wrote "ginormous" but these are actually just the second largest speakers in the German company Goebel's line—driven by the Swiss CH Precision phono preamp, preamplifier, and power amplifiers.
I missed the seminars at AXPONA from Motofumi Hirata from TechDAS, who was discussing turntable design, but I did get to listen to "Hotel California" from the live Hell Freezes Over Eagles LP on the TechDAS Airforce One Premium turntable. The Bending Wave room was…
The last room I visited at the 2019 AXPONA was the best-sounding: the big room shared by Kyomi Audio and MBL on the Renaissance Hotel's 15th floor. The system comprised MBL's Noble Line N31 CD player/DAC ($15,400) that I reviewed in February 2018, the N11 preamplifier ($14,600), four N15 monoblock amplifiers ($35,600/pair) and the omnidirectional 101E Mk.2 loudspeakers ($70,500/pair), all hooked up with WireWorld Eclipse Series 8 cables. The N31 is being updated to act as a Roon endpoint, so I hope to be writing a followup.
As luck would have it, Jürgen Reis's laptop crashed as I walked…
By the time I knew they were handing out cots, it was too late: They had already run out. The person at the Help Desk at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport said he'd never seen so many people camping out there. (Thanks to Mike Trei for the above photo.)
The day had begun on a less dire note. When I woke up Sunday morning at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel, I looked out the window and saw some pretty snow flurries.
Not long after, it was a snow squall, and soon after that, it was a snow bomb: a complete whiteout. I thought it was charming: The hotel is mostly glass,…
As much as I enjoy hi-fi, I strongly prefer non-hi-fi accoutrements, especially component racks. I'm currently using—and have been for years—a standard cherry entertainment console (the Durham) made by Maine-based furniture company Chilton. True, it's sagging a bit under the weight of my components, but I've managed to reinforce it with strategically placed home-made screw jacks.
The racks produced by Butcher Block Acoustics, which were on display in the EXPO at AXPONA 2019, are about what you'd expect from a company with that name: They look like butcher blocks made into shelves, with…
Both the name of the company and the look of their products belie what I found to be the company's spirit. "CAD"—short, in this case, for Computer Audio Design, but more commonly denoting computer-aided design, evokes highly technical, inhuman stuff. The main CAD products on active display in this room at AXPONA—the CAD Audio Transport, the 1543 Mk II DAC, and various "Ground Control" boxes—are squared off and minimalist in design, resembling space objects from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The components' green logos evoked, for me, nothing so much as the eyes of aliens come to abduct us.
CAD…