What must an audiophile do?
My strategy is to carefully mix diverse teams of moderately priced but superbly constructed wires from a range of popular cable manufacturers. This allows me to avoid swamping my system with any…
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When I began using a standalone DAC with a CD player as a transport, I compared Radio Shack's 75 ohm coaxial cable to some Audio Note AN-Vx interconnect and decided I preferred the AN-Vx. When I started reviewing DACs for Stereophile, I spent some effort comparing audiophile-branded 75 ohm coax and discovered I much preferred the Kimber Kable D60 Data Flex Studio.
It's Friday morning as I write this—the first day of the Florida Audio Expo, which is being held at the Embassy Suites Airport Westshore, near Tampa. As often happens, breakfast ran long, as colleagues and others stopped by for conversation. By the time I got up to attack the show—a little after 10am—someone told me the show was sold out, as in no more room for visitors. Say what? I've never heard of a sold-out audio show.
I spoke to Bart Andeer, one of the show's co-founders, who first pointed out that "sold out" isn't precisely the best word choice for a show with free admission. And…
On February 6, our sister site AnalogPlanet.com reported the news of a three-alarm fire at the Banning, CA headquarters of Apollo Masters, a renowned manufacturer of ready-to-cut lacquers for use in the LP-mastering industry. The blaze reportedly burned for approximately three hours before being brought under control, during which time an adjacent highway was shut down.
Apollo Masters got its start in 1989, when its founders took advantage of Capitol Records' exit from the LP-mastering business: Apollo purchased Capitol's manufacturing equipment and existing stock of raw materials and…
A weekend in Florida in February, plus high-end audio gear galore? Yes, and yes. After five years (that's half a decade, but who's counting?) with rival publication The Absolute Sound, I'm now a free agent, so when Stereophile asked me to fly south to cover the Florida Audio Expo at the Embassy Suites in Tampa, it didn't take me long to accept.
It's a less-than-sunny, cool Friday in the Sunshine state (the nation's third largest, I'm told) but the enthusiasm is running hot. As Southern fashion would dictate, the show's vibe feels casual, convivial.
Now, to kick off the audio…
The Audio Company of Marietta, Georgia, has two rooms at the Florida Audio Expo, both featuring Acora Acoustics loudspeakers. The larger room, with SRC-1 floorstanding loudspeakers ($28,000/pair), also features the VAC Statement 450iQ Monoblock power amplifier (which Michael Fremer is reviewing for the May issue). These efficient (90.5/W/m), 2-way, 8-ohm speakers, with their black-granite cabinets, weigh 246lb each.The total cost of this system, including only the equipment priced on the room sheet and not the Audioquest cabling, closely approaches $300,000. Add the price of the cables and it…
MSB Technology S500 Stereo Amplifier, Reference DAC, and Reference Transport with Magico M2 Speakers
A visit to the MSB Technology room yielded a formidable debut, the company's new S500 stereo amplifier, which delivers 500W of power with apparent ease and efficiency, demonstrated with the mighty Magico M2 loudspeaker ($63,600/pair with required MPod bases), which was featured in the February 2020 Stereophile.
The hybrid class-AB amp uses zero negative feedback—which, according to MSB, might not have been achieved before at 500W. It boasts a million microfarads (or one farad) of capacitance in the power supply and a 136dB dynamic range for an extraordinarily low noise floor.
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I'm surprised how many principals and designers are at this show, as opposed to local dealers and distributors—although perhaps I shouldn't be, considering that it's February and this is Florida.
In the Cardas/Joseph/Doshi room, I found both Jeff Joseph and Nick Doshi. I also found very good sound, produced by Jeff Joseph's Perspective 2 Graphene loudspeakers ($15,000/pair), which John Atkinson reviewed in the July 2018 issue of Stereophile. I won't comment on the speakers except to say that they sounded great; I'll just refer readers to JA's review.
Here, I'll focus on Doshi…
It's not every day that you encounter a high-end loudspeaker that the end user actually assembles. Pure Audio Project has taken this unorthodox approach in introducing its brand-new Quintet10 Horn2 speaker at the Florida show.
It's a two-way design with five open baffles, four housing 10" drivers and the fifth housing a natural wood horn paired with a 1.4" compression driver. The frame is made of aluminum for the global market, but steel is deployed for the US. The horn handles quite a wide range of frequencies-a remarkable 550Hz to 20kHz. The other lower-frequency drivers/woofers are…
This was a surprise.
When I walked in to this room and saw these skinny towers, I didn't expect much. When I saw that they were wireless, I expected even less. But the Piega 701s made some very fine sounds, with good bass, tweeters that didn't draw attention to themselves, and a stereo image that didn't collapse when I moved off-center. The Piega Connect wireless interface accepts digital or analog inputs and sends music to the speakers over its own proprietary network on one of three wireless bands. Tall and skinny, with DSP correction for wall and corner placement, they'll be…
Known primarily for its sharp-looking tube amplification ranges, Raven Audio of Texas has been busy cranking out a plethora of new products, including some entirely new categories for the company: the debut of two loudspeakers (with the same high efficiency, spec'd at 94dB) and a line of cables. Raven presented two active demos: a reference system and a more affordable setup featuring the maker's latest offerings.
The new Corvus tower speaker system ($12,995/pair) comprises two separate and stacked cabinets: an active bass enclosure containing 1000W of amplification and 32-bit DSP for…