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What's Zhou With You?

Show organizer Matthew Zhou is what we call an audio lifer. He wrote for hi-fi magazines for three years, penned a newspaper column on the high end for three years, has put on this show for 13 years, and has hosted a three-hour Sunday radio show on music, hi-fi, and sound for 16 years.

"The market is shrinking," he said. "It's a bottom-line situation. If a newspaper prints a single real estate column, it can support it with 16 pages of real estate ads. With audio, not so much."

That sounds familiar. So how can he have so much energy at his show—so much that I can barely…

Classic!

"This is Classic, one of the best Chinese audio manufacturers" said Original's Linda Ling. "Everything is so well-engineered."

Pure audio catnip—take this 40Wpc No. 16.0 tubed integrated here: potted transformers, gorgeous metal work, and that luverly retro-chic meter up front. And the price in China? About $1000 USD.

Nice.

Mr. Jimmy Yu

While I was drooling over the Classic No. 16.0, its equally charming designer, Mr. Jimmy Yu introduced himself to me. He seemed pleased that other people appreciated his work—and from the size of the crowd ooowing and ahhhing in the Classic room, I was far from the only one who did.

Original!

Original was getting great sound with its $3000 Leonardo CD-A9II CD player and AF 2008 preamp and AF-2008 monoblock power amps ($4500 for all three), played through Dynaudio Contour S 1.4s. But off to one side was a smaller CD player that caught my attention, the $800 CD-A6T. That's "T" as in tubes—you can see the little suckers up in the upper right hand corner of the PCB.

Ready For Its Close Up

Here's a better look at the tubes from the Original CD-A6T—they're miniature 6C7B, a military tube.

Hot Head

Ming Da's MC66E headphone amp really juiced my lizard. It boasts a 15Hz–50kHz frequency response and put out 42Wpc (92dB), using two 6N6 and one 12AX7 tubes. Not available in the US, it sells for 1760RMB, or about $210 USD.

No Translation

These behemoths from Jungson have no English name, although they do have a US price: $49,000/pair. The bottom cabinet sports a 13" woofer and the top pod has a 4" ribbon tweeter. The midrange and midrange/woofer drivers are ceramic drivers from the German manufacturer Thiel, but nobody knew their sizes.

All three pods move together to adjust focus based on room size and the sound in a small hotel room was surprisingly good, if a little hot for my taste.

Beautifully made, but a little scary in aspect, don't you think?