Top Audio & Video 2002 Milan, Italy

Saturday

 

  Of note is that rooms were clearly marked if they were two-channel or multi-channel. This assisted those looking for stereo to not enter rooms that were mainly surround sound based.

 

Basis Audio model 2000/1 turntable with Graham tonearm and Lydian cartridge. Analog was being thoroughly enjoyed within many rooms here in Milan.

 

Linn's new Sizmik 12.45 subwoofer (seen right) has a 12" driver whereas the Sizmik 10.25 has a 10" driver (€1,750, click here to see our review). There were some solid hints of new analog goodies, yet can not say more... for now. Stay tuned!

 

Harking back to America's/1950 era, Teac's SL-D80 (€149, as pictured above) and SL-D90 (€199) have a wonderful retro look while proving more modern electronics over the tube radios of the 50's era. While i will admit to enjoying those old tube radios, and their sound is splendid, these new units have no tubes and as expected have CD player built in. The 80 employs an analog tuner whereas the 90 has digital tuner and includes a wireless remote control.

 

Impressive in many ways, Teac's new P-70 CD player/transport (€7,999) has a very high density solid chassis, 44.1/48/88.2/176.4 DAC with 16/24-bit capability. Outputs include TOSlink, SPDIF, and balanced analog via XLR.

 

Zingali's Home Monitor series, the 212 (€9,000 each), 215 (€10,500 each), 115 (€7,500 each) all use strikingly crafted wooden horns for midrange and uppermost frequencies. We here at Enjoy the Music.com™ will be reviewing one of their horn loudspeakers shorty within our Review Magazine.

 

From the Ferrari Formula 1 superstar Michael Schumacher comes car audio components. These include two and three way loudspeakers and a 12" subwoofer. Also available is 2/3/4 channel amplifier (configurable for 2 to 4 channels with switchable subwoofer crossover). Please see our exclusive Ferrari factory tour report by clicking here.

 

Audio Research made their presence known with their new SP-16 pre-amplifier (€3,600), VS-55 vacuum tube amplifier with four 6550 output tubes (€3,600), CD-3 24-bit/192kHz CD player (€7,655) and, their new VS-110 tubed stereo amplifier (€5,850, photographed here) that produces 110 watts per channel with four 6550 per channel.

 

While looking much like he Shanling CD player (as reviewed here), it is actually the Aron DA-1000 (basically it is the same Chinese made unit just re-badged with another manufacture's name). In fact some once legendary people, now on the verge of being has-beens, are re-branding Chinese products and selling them through their boutique (and whose rosy name and products have been well covered within various discussion boards on the Internet).

 

In a conference room was an excellent demonstration of live harpsichord. It was played live and recorded, then the recording was played back on a music reproduction system in various formats for the audience to make their own judgments as to which technology may best be as close to reproducing the source material as possible.

 

Click here to see our previous year's show report.