For the 40th anniversary, B&W is introducing the limited edition Signature Diamond, a $20,000 floorstanding two-way featuring the Diamond tweeter and B&W's kevlar 7" mid/bass driver. The flared port is tucked into that wedge-shaped cut-away on the bottom. Only 500 pairs will be made.
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.
When I checked in late last night, I noticed the cribs lined up along the halls of my corridor, but all I thought was, "What a child friendly country." Nor did I think much about all the Caucasian couples I saw carrying Asian infants amidst all the audiophiles thronging the halls.
Than to blog hi-fi from China—or at least, that's what I thought when Original Audio's Ping Gong and GuangZhou Hi-Fi 2006's Zou Dao invited me to attend the largest audio show in the Celestial Kingdom.
NuForce's S-9 was pretty interesting, too. The cabinet is constructed of birch plywood laminations, which creates both the inner and outer profiles. The tweeter is mounted into a fairly deep horn and flanked by the twin midrange/woofers. There's a built-in switchable Zobel filter and an external crossover, which can be purchased as active or passive. Speaker wire is included in the S-9's $5500/pair (USD) price.
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.
"Essentially, we build everything by hand. Some Chinese companies think almost think this approach is primitive, but it gives us a lot of quality control."
That concludes the audio portion of my tour. I'm packed, and after toodling around Shanghai a little, I peddle off to Beijing for some culture, and then home.
This is Ping Gong, one of my hosts and my fellow traveler. At breakfast this morning, he explained to me how he became an audiophile. "It was the Cultural Revolution," he said. "We weren't allowed to study, so we played music and talked. I had a big Russian turntable—mono! And one speaker, of course.
Somehow the gods of travel, who usually enjoy watching me suffer, had one of their rare bouts of whimsey and decided to ruin future journeys by upgrading me to first class.
Actually, I have no idea what Sheng Ya means, but at the Sheng Ya showroom, I felt right at home. There were audiophiles hanging out, listening, and, of course, yakking when we walked in. The sales guy was really into what he was doing and immediately began playing these interesting looking speakers made by Consonance.
This is one of ETKG's shops. David Zhou has grown so large over the last 13 years that he has rented just about every available space in his area. Some garages have a single CNC station in them.