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My hotel keeps cases of Going Home Barbie (ie Barbie holding an obviously Asian baby Krissy) by the hospitality desk on each floor as departure gifts for new families with young girls.
I walked into Usher's room, where the $8000 (USD) Dancer II Beryllium held pride of place. I thought the sound was a little small and every so slightly forced, but I loved the rhythmic tautness and drive. "Not the best sound I've heard today," I thought, "but not too shabby."
"Not bad for $400," Paul Chen, Usher's export rep said.
I pointed to the floorstanding Dancer IIs and said, "Those cost $400?"
"We're playing these," he said, pointing to the two-way S-520s sitting on top of another pair of speakers.
Amazing how changing scale changes perception. The sound I found small and forced became far bigger and more open when I discovered the speakers cost one-twentieth of what I initially had thought.
At $400/pair, the Usher S-520s were pretty exciting. "The Absolute Sound reviewed the Dancer IIs," Paul Chen told me. "I'm sure we could get you a pair, too."
"But I want to review these," I whined. (Too late, Bob Reina already reviewed them.)
I'm a lummox of an American and I have to admit I get confused when dealing with multiple currencies. On this trip, I've been juggling USD, HK dollars, and RMB—and that really makes the going rough. So when I asked Peter Chang how much this Audio Art Jasmine Model 3A integrated amplifier (9Wpc) would cost in the US, I was sure he'd gotten confused too, when he said $42,000.
Nope. BTW, it's manufactured in the US and the construction quality (Vishay resistors, Partridge metal-work) is pure audio catnip. And yes, those are 300Bs.
K. E. Lee's $8000/pair Calix Academy Jr. Phoenix loudspeakers are far smaller than the Phoenix Grand Signatures Paul Bolin reviewed, but tiny they ain't. Still, they looked a lot more manageable than those behemoths, which I helped JA wrestle into their shipping crates.
The speaker boasts a 1" silk dome tweeter, a 6" lower midrange driver, and a 10" woofer—the 2" silk dome midrange driver is horn loaded into the large, top-mounted, adjustable horn that gives the speaker its unique profile. The horn has a complex rear-mounted screw mechanism that allows it to be integrated into the…
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…
"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.
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 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.
Here's a better look at the tubes from the Original CD-A6T—they're miniature 6C7B, a military tube.