Sam Feng of Infrant Technologies hefts (barely) the Infrant Repertoire Digital Media Server, a 3TB NAS array designed specifically for high-end music systems. The Infrant contains four Seagate DB35 DynaPlay-enabled hard drives, which means you not only get huge storage capacity, but redundancy as well. Plus, it has a solid aluminum chassis with heat sinks, so no fan noise.
Bagheera, uncharacteristically agrees with the tabby. "You guys are pathetic."
Huckleberry pities us hairless apes, not least for our cluelessness concerning the value of half-eaten "presents."
Jeff Wong passes along this 2003 article on the fine (and in this age of compression, almost lost) art of disc mastering.
Marantz is showing the new $1699.99 TT-1581 turntable. Look familiar? It ought to—it's a proprietary Marantz model constructed by Clearaudio, with a Marantz specced platter and cartridge.
MartinLogan subwoofers? Yup—although the Kansas company is known as an electrostatic specialist, they've been making subs for a long while. The new $2995 Descent1 seems pretty spiffy, though: Top-mounted control interface (hidden under the logo plate), three rigid-chassis, aluminum-cone drivers, triple-servo monitoring, a sealed cabinet enclosure, and three 250W Vojtko amplifiers.
<I>Stereophile</I> is scheduled for an exclusive one-on-one demo tomorrow with the new Revel loudspeakers, but we couldn't resist tantalizing you with a glimpse of the $22,000/pair Ultima 2 flagship, the Salon2.
Jim Thiel stands between the <I>final</I> prototype of the CD3.7 and the new SCS4, a point source stand mounted two-way with a cast aluminum baffle. Projected price is "under $1000, which seems like a bargain
Polk Audio introduced the $1200/ea. RTS100, "the first in-ceiling speaker to meet THX Ultra2 performance standards." The RTS100 has a 14" diameter enclosure containing dual 5¼" midrange drivers and a 1" Ring Radiator tweeter mounted between them. Polk’s exclusive Sound Shape baffle floats the sound waves toward the listening position for "imaging that seems to hover in front of the listener rather than being localized in the ceiling."
Lionel Goodfield gave us a taste of things to come: The $3500 P5.3 balanced, full-feature preamplifer. It's slated to replace the P3 and P5, and introduces technology pioneered by the P7 Evolution.