SSI 2011

Totem was demonstrating its new Element series loudspeakers with the Classé CA-M600 600W monoblocks that I enthusiastically reviewed in the March issue of Stereophile. The three Element models—the Fire stand-mount at $5995/pair, the floorstanding Earth at $8995/pair, and Metal at $12,995/pair—all use a new 7" woofer designed and manufactured in-house. But what's with the tie around the guy's head in the wall-sized photo?

Totem always makes a splash at shows; this time the demos featured the Element series that was introduced at the 2011 Las Vegas CES. As a nod to the Image part of the name of the show, they also had a huge screen with four commercial-grade projectors, and a very stylish video presentation. The man with the "Einstein" hair on the left side in the picture is Totem president Vince Bruzzese, one of the recipients of SSI's Lifetime Achievement awards.

Nordost can be usually relied on to provide effective demonstrations at shows, and SSI 2011 was no exception. The product demonstrated this time was the Sort Kone, which represents Nordost's latest thinking on component support. Nordost's Bjorn Bengtsson described the Sort Kone as a "directly coupled and mechanically tuned resonance control device, using a sophisticated new approach to the problem of supporting sensitive electronics." You can read all about the rationale for the design at www.nordost.com, but, whatever the theory, the bottom line is the sound.

Would you like to take "your high-end system to a whole new level of accuracy, from high-fidelity to acoustic fidelity?" That's what the Trinnov ST2-HiFi loudspeaker/room optimizer ($6200) promises. And it looks like a pretty sophisticated device, measuring the impulse response of the loudspeaker in the room, analyzing the room modes, and automatically computing FIR and IIR filters to improve the dominance of direct sound over late reverberation, equalizing the response in both frequency and time domains. The ST-2-HiFi is supplied with a calibrated microphone array; once that's placed in the listening area, all you have to do is press a button and the ST-2-HiFi does the rest. Comparing the sound of a pair of Sonodyne amplified speakers before/after Trinnov ST-2-Hi-Fi correction, I noticed that the imaging became considerable more precise after the ST-2-Hi-Fi processing, and the bass seemed tighter.

At the 2011 CES last January, DeVore Fidelity introduced the O/96 Oscar ($12,000/pair), the first of their Orangutan line, a high-sensitivity (96dB) floorstanding two-way speaker. I thought the speakers sounded pleasant enough, but seemed to lack some of the clarity and specificity of imaging that I've heard from other, lower-sensitivity DeVore speakers. However, the position of the speakers in the room was far from optimal (often the case at shows), so I reserved judgment. Just as well: the speakers at SSI 2011, driven by a Leben tubed integrated amplifier, sounded considerably better, more like the other speakers from DeVore, but with the dynamic freedom that comes with high sensitivity.

I like the idea of a speaker using a single full-range driver, requiring no crossover, so when Michael Tang of Michael Tang Audio emailed me, saying that one of the interesting products he's importing is the Japanese Feastrex driver, I made sure to check it out at SSI. There are two versions of this driver: the NF-5 ($2000), with uses an Alnico magnet, and the NF-5EX, with uses a field-coil magnet ($3000), requiring an external DC power supply. (Michael says he's used a car battery for this purpose.)

Beyond Frontiers Audio (BFA) was founded by two former senior designers of Sonic Frontiers, Zdenko Zivkovic and Glenn Dolick, with Matt Brazeau, formerly with Globe Audio, handling the marketing. BFA's first product is the Tulip ($17,000), an integrated amplifier (180Wpc) with built-in DAC. It looks like a very serious product, with a parts list that reads like "the best of high-end audio" (24-bit/192kHz Cirrus Logic and Burr-Brown DAC, Mundorf supreme silver/gold/oil capacitors, Sanken bipolar output transistors, WBT speaker connectors, Cardas input RCA connectors, 1600W toroidal dual primary power transformer, Swedish aircraft quality aluminum chassis, etc.). Amplifier gain is 100% tube (JJ Tesla ECC83S and E88CC with gold pins, cryogenically treated). There is no feedback of any type in the amplifier stages. "Proudly designed in Canada," the Tulip is presently assembled in Serbia, but the plan is to bring production to Canada.