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I’m not fond of using earplugs, so I haven’t really investigated listening to music with in-the-ear-canal type earphones. However, I've read reports from the likes of Wes Phillips and John Atkinson, extolling the virtues of these type of earphones, so when I saw the sign at the Shure booth that they had some new models in this series, I thought I'd give them a listen. The ones I tried were the top-of-the-line SE530 ($449.99), which are described as "triple TruAcoustic microspeakers," with a separate tweeter and two woofers. I listened to "Nessun Dorma" sung by Pavarotti—the source was…
Press conferences can sometimes be tedious affairs, with the presenter going on-and-on about his company's past accomplishments, and how even greater things are coming in the future. But this description did not apply to the press conference for Usher Audio Technology at this year’s CES. This was more like an informal party for friends than the prototypical press conference. People stood around and chatted for a while, and then Atul Kanagat of MusikMatters, Usher’s North American distributor, talked briefly about how Usher’s line of high-value/high-performance loudspeakers is…
As Wes Phillips reported a day or so ago, The folks at PS Audio have been extremely busy of late. There have all new designs for power-line conditioners, some of them descendants of the highly-successful Power Plant active devices, others passive filter designs. An impressive couple of demonstrations by Paul McGowan showed how a competing power-line conditioner was unable to cope with a power surge that was handled with aplomb by the PS Audio product, and, similarly, a competitor’s product (with the name taped over to protect the innocent) did almost nothing to power line noise that…
One of my favorite records—which I selected as a Record To Die For a few years ago—is Sure Thing, songs by Jerome Kern sung by Sylvia McNair, accompanied by Andre Previn on the piano, with David Finck on string bass. When I walked into the Siltech room, they were playing another recording by Sylvia McNair, with accompaniment by Previn and Finck, this one songs by Harold Arlen, a recording that I have somehow missed getting. The recording sounded quite lovely through Siltech's new speakers (still in prototype form), and I commented on it to the gentleman doing the demo. "I engineered…
For a cat with an absolutely empty head, Huckleberry sure can look contemplative when the camera comes out.
"Check this out!" Boulder's Richard Maez palmed the remote that accompanies Boulder's 865 integrated amp and 810 preamplifier. "It really fits in your hand—and unlike most remotes, it fits whether you're using your right or your left hand."
The 150Wpc Boulder 865 integrated amplifier (approximately $10,000) is only four days old, so we tiptoed into the room in order not to wake it up. Richard Maez (seen here at the back of the photo) was elated that the 865 had actually made it to the show, but he was even happier to run down the details.
"It's all analog, operating in class-AB, with balanced inputs. It's essentially our 810 preamplifier and 860 power amp in a single box. The 810 premiered our optically activated stepped volume control, which eliminates the distortion and noise of mechanically sliding wipers—and…
Anthony Gallo has long had a reputation for wresting top dollar performance from small packages, but we've always wondered if he secretly hankered to go big. Anthony Gallo Acoustics' $15,000/pair Reference 5LS certainly answered that question.
The 5LS is 78" tall, but only 7" wide (and 10" deep). The "LS" in the 5LS's model designation stands for "line source," and the forward-facing array consists of seven of Gallo's CDT tweeter and eight 4" carbon-fiber midrange drivers. Gallo claims that alternating the two drivers eliminates the phase and dispersion problems encountered by…
Many of the best-sounding rooms at the show employed Ayre's $16,500/pair 300W MX-R monoblock amplifiers. Yes, they look small enough to be class-D amplifiers, but they're pure analog. How'd they do it? The entire enclosure is the heatsink and Ayre's Charlie Hansen designed a special low-rise transformer, used in pairs, to keep the chassis so compact.
Ayre's Jeff Deese had get down real low to pose with the MX-Rs.
Redpoint's Peter Clark says, "Your heart doesn't beat in ones and zeroes—it's analog." That's why he builds turntables, 'tables machined from solid billets of aircraft aluminum and configures the platter, motor, and tonearm platforms on separate support pods on a common platform.
The $15,000 Model A's platter is topped off with Teflon and is damped with lead shot and oil.
"Why is a turntable called Redpoint blue?"
"I did that for our distributor Frank L. Kraus, who also distributes ModWright and already had a blue ModWright LS36.5. Since Redpoint turntables are…