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Located by itself in the Orange County Hilton’s Dana Point room, half-obscured beyond a display of several luxury cars, Joseph Cali System Design's Gryphon Audio Design System put on a show all its own. That it sounded as good as it did in a hotel space formerly occupied by a hair salon—hair salons are hardly prized for their acoustics—was a near miracle. Everything from recording studio Gobos and ASC Tube Traps to Vicoustic Diffusers and black draping (covering floor-to-ceiling glass windows) was employed to deliver sound that, if at all bettered at T.H.E. Show, will have to be sensational…
Together, distributor Philip O'Hanlon of S. CA-based On a Higher Note (OAHN) and Neil Strickland of British Audio Guys, a dealership in Sherman Oaks that specializes in British brands, set up an extremely pleasing and musical system. While O'Hanlon cued up tracks, Strickland was available to explain to showgoers the ins and outs/whys and wherefores of Graham Audio loudspeakers, which he used extensively as a BBC engineer.
This was one of several rooms to partly rely on the excellence of tape, here played on a SonorouS ATR 10 Mk II tape deck ($32,000). When I entered, the gentlemen were…
Ozan Turan and Dave Weintraub of High End by Oz may pretty consistently rotate components between shows, but one element remains constant: sonic excellence. At T.H.E. Show 2023, it was time for Lansche 7.2 loudspeakers ($110,000/pair in Macassar Ebony finish), Thrax Heros MkII class-A hybrid monoblocks ($47,000/pair) and other Thrax components, United Home Audio's R2R Ultima5 tape deck with outboard power supply ($38,000), and Albedo Silver Metamorphosis Signature monocrystal cabling to shine.
The sound was quite warm and notably lively on the CD layer of a Challenge Classics hybrid SACD…
Synergistic Research had the opportunity to display its magic in the first of five rooms sponsored by Scott Walker Audio. There were at least six new Synergistic Research products in the room: the Network Router UEF ($2995), UEF Ethernet and USB Performance Enhancers ($295), Master Fuses ($595 each), Galileo Active Ground Block MkII ($7995), Master Tuning Modules for use, I believe, with cables ($425/each), and, on static display, Active Ground Block SX ($2995). Add in at least Synergistic Research power conditioning products, headed by the Synergistic Research Galileo PowerCell SX ($27,995…
Scott Walker Audio united with Soulution and Von Schweikert Audio to present the show premiere of the new active Von Schweikert VR-55 MkII SE loudspeaker in fabulous McLaren Volcano Orange finish ($85,000/pair). The latest successor to the original VR-55, which was designed by the late Albert Von Schweikert and released in 2014, this 3-wayspeaker with beryllium- and ceramic-diaphragm drivers contains significant crossover improvements and technology trickled down from Von Schweikert Audio's top Ultra model.
While the VR-55 MkII comes in a passive version ($65,000/pair), the VR-55 MkII…
One could only be impressed with the amount of air delivered by a cramped set-up in which TAD standmounts stood so close to each other and everything else. The sound was notably warm with excellent bass.
It was hard to focus on music in a room with so much talking, so I turned to the equipment. When I asked Joe Parvey of House of Stereo/Wolf Audio Systems how he managed to deliver such good sound, he said that he'd work with Synergistic Research to refine the interior treatment of his prototype Wolf music server to address EMI/RMF. Estimating a 10–15% improvement over the sound of the…
When I bumped into long-time industry member Alan Kafton of Audio Excellence/The Cable Cooker, he urged to check out a new loudspeaker company, Songer Audio of Portland, OR, on the third floor. It seems I missed the company when its founder, former software engineer Ken Songer, premiered his speakers at last year's Pacific Audio Fest outside Seattle.
When I entered the room, Brubeck's classic "Take 5" was playing courtesy of a computer running Audirvana. The sound was wonderful, the percussion totally clear, fast, sharp, and believable. Clarinet sounded warm at the bottom of its range,…
This year, Sunil Merchant's Sunny's Components occupied a single room at T.H.E. Show in which to turn the spotlight on CH Precision's less expensive but hardly bargain basement 1 series. CH Precision's powerhouse line-up, shown below without the optional power supplies that can beef up performance, consisted of the CH Precision M1.1 stereo amplifier ($54,000), L1 stereo preamplifier ($34,500), P1 phono stage ($31,000 and up), C1.2 D/A processor ($36,000 and up) with 16× upsampling, and D1.5 SACD/CD/MQA transport/player ($41,000 and up).
These joined forces with Peak Consult…
Tonian Labs was one of several smaller companies at T.H.E. Show that depend on direct sales and a few dealers to get their products to the public. I'm glad I encountered them again, because their Oriaco G6 loudspeaker ($4500/pair) united with a Denon 70Wpc integrated and Marantz CD player to deliver very clear and colorful sound.
Designed by Tony Minasian, a 30-year speaker designer who also works as a recording engineer, the Oriaco G6 includes a Fostek driver, a top-firing tweeter from La Voce of Italy, and a modified SB Acoustics forward-firing tweeter. One of three speaker…
You can always count on the amazing Steven Norber to come up with something intriguing. In this case, it was the brand new Dhyana two-way quasi line-array loudspeaker ($19,500/pair). With a 30mm tweeter and four 152.4mm woofers, the speaker claims a frequency range of 28Hz–23kHz, a nominal impedance of 8 ohms, and a sensitivity of 88.5dB.
Dhyana's cabinets are composed of 800 layers of Baltic Birch, and bracing is spaced according to Fibonacci intervals. The speaker's sound is adjustable via two three-position switches on its back. One switch addresses high-frequency roll-off—Norber set…