Audio Art Cable SC-5 Classic: $240/10ft pair (gold spades; add $10/pr for silver spades), $250/10ft pair (gold bananas)
The SC-5 has silver-coated OFC conductors (14AWG), a foam polyethylene dielectric, a PVC jacket, and an internal packet of vibration-absorbing fibers. It can be terminated with gold-plated brass banana plugs or, for $10 less, DH Labs' gold-plated copper spade lugs. Compared to AudioQuest's Rocket 33, the SC-5 lacked body, weight, and warmth, but produced a detailed, dramatic overall sound, with clean transients and impressive dynamics, said SM.…
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Loudspeaker Cables:
Digital Data Interconnects:
DH Labs Silver Sonic D-110 AES/EBU: $155/1m
(NR, but see EL's review of the Bel Canto DAC3.5VB in Vol.34 No.6 WWW)
Kimber Kable Orchid: $948/1m
Expensive, but the best AES/EBU link JA has used. J-10 loved the Orchid's midrange liquidity and detail, but preferred Illumination's S/PDIF cable overall. SD (almost) doesn't equivocate: "Probably the best out there for now . . . .A stunner!" RH and RD are also fans. New lower price usefully brings this cable in reach of more music lovers. (Vol.19 No.5)
Kubala-Sosna Expression: $900/m, $240/…
Remember in my first post when I said "How cool it would be if I'd turned into Alternate Rob with a half-million dollar system waiting for him at home?" Well, the system I encountered in one of Filtronique's rooms would fit the bill nicely.
It included the architectural wonder that is Nagra's Reference 70th Anniversary Limited Edition turntable ($232,500 with tonearm), of which only 70 will be made and sold worldwide; a Nagra MC-6 cartridge ($24,500); a Nagra HD DAC X ($89,500); a Nagra HD preamp ($90,500); a pair of 250W 2020 Edition Nagra HD monoblocks ($124,500/pair);…
MartinLogan's Motion F200XT in the Planète Haute-Fidélité room wasn't the only speaker in town to employ a Heil Air Motion Transformer tweeter. So did Monitor Audio's 3-Way Platinum 300 3G (for 3rd generation) floorstander ($22,000). Monitor Audio calls the tweeter an MPD (Micro Pleated Diaphragm) III transducer. Also equipped with two 8" woofers (in addition to a 4" midrange), the speaker is said to go down to 17Hz in-room, with a rated sensitivity of 88dB/2.83V/m. A speaker like this probably needs some juice to get it going; hence the amps that were feeding them, a pair of Rotel Michi…
"Are you sure there are no tubes in the chain?" I asked On a Higher Note's Philip O'Hanlon, North American distributor of the BBC-inspired Graham Audio speaker line, in Montreal retailer Art et Son's room. Philip was sitting with me listening to an LP of Belgian singer Mélanie De Biasio. He responded to my question with a grin and a chin-jab toward the amplifier in use, a 50Wpc solid state MoonRiver 404 Reference integrated ($5995; see Jason Victor Serinus’s Stereophile review), a modular design that includes such luxuries as a balance control and a stereo/mono switch and can accommodate…
What did the Hearken and Art et Son rooms have in common? The Graham Audio LS8.1 speakers ($13,300), so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I heard a similarly, though not identically, engaging intimacy in both systems' presentations, the kind that made me just want to relax in my seat and listen through whole albums.
The Grahams were the only piece of equipment common to both rooms. In this room, the Grahams were supported by a Lejonklou 40Wpc Boazu integrated amplifier ($5795); an Entity phono preamplifier ($3895; see Alex Halberstadt's review) and Källa DAC/…
Talk about a dream triad of fabulous gear from Switzerland: darTZeel, Stenheim, Merging Technologies. The first thing I said to myself when I saw this simple, sharp-looking spread in Toronto-based retailer Sonic Artistry's room was, "Damn, this is an attractive group!".
That attractiveness extended to the Swiss group's collective sound. Doing hosting duties at the time of my visit was all-around great guy and Audio Fest regular Walter Schofield, proprietor of Nexus Audio Technologies, which represents Stenheim among other high-end brands. Walter Tidal-streamed an array of dazzling…
When I asked Totem's Vince Bruzzese, at last year's "static" launch of the new Bison series, what the impetus was to create the Bison range, he said it came down to wanting to create something special to mark the company's 35th birthday but also that of the Model 1, which came out in the year of the company's founding, 1987. "I wanted to bring us back to Model 1 territory," Vince said, "where people were wowed and saying, 'oh my gosh, I spent how much in the past and never got this?'"
The Bison series includes the two-way Bison Monitor ($2250), which Vince told me is like the…
Our fearless reporter--left--waxing eloquent in his notebook.
I have bumped into manufacturer Artist Cloner’s owner and designer, Sylvio Comtois, many times at audio shows. He strikes me as being a bit of a mad scientist. Not “crazy” mad but mad in the sense of being obsessed with a particular objective.
In Sylvio’s case, that objective is the realization of the ultimate in sound reproduction through meticulous system synergy. It’s why he designs, builds, and demoes entire ArtistCloner systems, to show what can result when everything in the playback chain, from cables to speakers…
Of course this system had two speakers; it's just that both didn't fit in the frame.
As usual, I found cellist and Audio Note UK music ambassador Vincent Bélanger hosting the Audio Note UK room, but this time, Vincent wasn't alone. He was accompanied by two sales executives hailing from Audio Note central in England: Daniel Qvortrup, son of company founder Peter, and a chap who, at night, goes by the artist name A:D and by day, Adrian Ford-Crush. Adrian composes a style of bass-heavy electronic music that's popular in England called drum and bass. He and Daniel came to Montreal to help…