Larry Greenhill

Sort By: Post Date | Title | Publish Date

Larry Greenhill | Jan 25, 2009 | 1 comments

It's always fun to visit the Burmester Audio suite at the annual Consumer Electronic Show. Founder Dieter Burmester and CEO Udo Besser are upbeat, fun-loving personalities who enjoy demonstrating their latest home audio gear—that is, when they're not working on the latest updates to their sound system for the $2.1 million Bugatti Veyron 16.4 supercar. This past year they introduced their new B25 loudspeaker, an 88-lb floorstander. This "baby" Burmester's suggested retail price of $12,000/pair is only one-sixth that of Burmester's flagship speaker, the B100, only one-fourth its weight, and half its height. The design goals for the B25 were a less expensive, lighter speaker that was easier to set up, while retaining Burmester products' high-quality sound and good looks. Playing my own CDs through the B25s at the 2008 CES, I found them notably smooth and detailed; they also imaged well, and were particularly good at reproducing male voices.

Snell Illusion loudspeaker

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews Audacious Audio

Larry Greenhill | Dec 19, 2008 | 0 comments

"How do you make an object common as a box iconic?" asked Bob Graffy, Snell's vice president/brand manager. He and Joseph D'Appolito, Snell's chief design engineer, were sitting in my listening room, discussing cabinet designs. Graffy noted that KEF had sought the same in their distinctive, silvery, cylindrical Muon loudspeaker ($150,000/pair). For the flagship model in their Illusion series, Snell commissioned Gerd Schmieta, former designer for Ideo, to integrate D'Appolito's wish list for an ideal enclosure: a narrow, rounded upper baffle for the midrange and tweeter, wider at the base for the woofers, holding a constant cross-sectional area while maximizing cabinet volume, and compliance with a 15° tip test.

SV Sound PB13-Ultra powered subwoofer

Subwoofer Reviews

Larry Greenhill | Aug 20, 2008 | 0 comments

With the popularity of home-theater systems, subwoofers have proliferated. Because multichannel AV receivers are designed to provide a properly filtered, line-level subwoofer, or low-frequency effects (LFE) signal, many subs no longer come with built-in high- and low-pass filters for insertion into two-channel audio systems. However, the PB13-Ultra subwoofer from SV Sound does include these, which is what piqued my interest in it. After Ed Mullen, SV Sound's director of sales, assured me that the PB13-Ultra was capable of reproducing solid 20Hz organ-pedal notes in my listening room, I asked for one to review.

Revel Ultima Salon2 loudspeaker

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Larry Greenhill | Jun 17, 2008 | 6 comments

Back in March 1998, Revel's Ultima Salon1 floorstanding loudspeaker generated quite a stir at Stereophile (Vol.22 No.3). Our reviewers were impressed by its seven designed-from-scratch drive-units, its ultramodern enclosure with curved rosewood side panels, exposed front tweeter and midrange, rear-facing reflex port and tweeter, and a flying grille over the mid-woofer and woofers. In the December issue (Vol.22 No.12), the Ultima Salon1 ($16,000/pair) was named Stereophile's "Joint Speaker of 1999" for its "big bass, timbral accuracy, low distortion, dynamics, lack of compression, and best fit'n'finish."

Revel's Kevin Voecks

Interviews

Larry Greenhill | Jul 02, 2008 | First Published: Jun 02, 2008 | 0 comments

Determined to find out more about Revel's Ultima Salon2, I tracked down designer Kevin Voecks late on the second day of the 2008 Consumer Electronic Show. I persuaded him to step outside the demonstration suite of Harman International Industries, Revel's owner, high atop the Las Vegas Hilton. We spent an hour chatting about Voecks's design goals for Revel's new flagship. I asked Kevin what had led his team at Revel to develop a new Ultima Salon loudspeaker after 10 years?

Escalante Design Fremont loudspeaker

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Larry Greenhill | Feb 13, 2008 | 0 comments

Room lock occurs when a set of loudspeakers reproduces the deep-bass notes of a pipe organ powerfully enough that the sounds can be felt as pressure waves. On Day 2 of the 2007 Home Entertainment Show, in one of the Sound By Singer rooms, our own John Marks played his recording of organist James Busby performing Herbert Howells' Master Tallis's Testament through a pair of Fremont loudspeakers from Escalante Design. The sustained bass note at the end of the passage took my breath away—the stand-mounted Fremonts sounded as open and dynamic as anything else I heard at HE2007. I wondered if they'd sound as good in my home listening room.

Bryston 28B-SST monoblock power amplifier

Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Larry Greenhill | Jan 31, 2008 | 0 comments

It was a hot, humid, New York City evening in early August, and I was thankful to be sitting in the air-conditioned dark of Avery Fisher Hall, up in the Second Tier, for a Mostly Mozart concert. Listening to cello soloist Alisa Weilerstein in Osvaldo Golijov's hypnotic Azul, I was suddenly jolted by an explosive mix of primitive cello sonorities, accordion, and staccato riffs on ethnic percussion instruments. My thoughts turned to the importance in music of both power and delicacy, and of how Bryston Ltd.'s 28B-SST, a 1000W monoblock power amplifier, was designed to address both.

Perfect 8's The Force

CES 2008

Larry Greenhill | Jan 13, 2008 | 1 comments

What does $275,000 buy you these days besides a used Porsche Carrera GT with 20,000 miles on it? Yes, there is now a loudspeaker system with that asking price, which gets you 900 lbs of hardware, including two midrange—tweeter towers, two subwoofers, and two subwoofer amplifiers. Frequency response is rated from 8Hz to 50kHz, and the minimal load impedance is 3 ohms. Furthermore, the Force is made of glass.

IsoMike Dems $340k System

CES 2008

Larry Greenhill | Jan 13, 2008 | 3 comments

Ever listen to a system costing $340,288? Ray Kimber's IsoMike venture put on such an exhibit at CES to preview their DSD recordings with "no limiting, no compression, no mixing, and no equalization." They had their SACD Hybrid Stereo/4-channel discs next door for sale.

Larry, We Shrunk the Burmester!

CES 2008

Larry Greenhill | Jan 12, 2008 | 0 comments

It's always fun to drop in to the Burmester Suite. When Dieter Burmester, the firm's founder (left), and Udo Besser, the CEO (right), are not working on the latest sound system updates to the 1.2 million Euro Bugatti Veryon 16.4 supercar, they build massive loudspeakers and amplifiers for home consumers and audiophiles.

Search form

Larry Greenhill

Pages