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The Inaugural Southwest Audio Fest
1441 Kimber Kable
This room's sound completely surprised me. Not because I don't have a deeply rooted respect for both Ed Meitner's work with his Calgary, Canada-based EMM Labs, or Ray Kimber's Kimber Kable based in Ogden, Utah. No, it was because I'd never heard the YG Acoustics Vantage loudspeaker sound so convincingly musical and engaging as they did here.
System details:
The system was set up in a relatively confined space, with the speakers placed quite proximate to both the front and side walls, limiting their ability to present a more honest front-to-back spatial depth. But the overall presentation, its tonality, timbral balance, bass extension, and pitch definition were much more realistic and faithful than I've yet heard from the Vantage in any previous audition or setting. This system offered an amazingly immediate and intimate presentation, with remarkably well-fleshed-out and dimensional images. Color me surprised and impressed.
1229 LTA And Daedelus
I have to admit to having been impressed over the past half-decade or so by the products I've heard from Linear Tube Audio. And there seems to be a synergistic result when paired with the Daedalus loudspeakers. What both manufacturers do at their respective price points usually allows them to stand out, and this system was no exception.
System details:
This valve-based $3,600 DAC quickly secured my interest. The new LTA Aero uses an Analog Device's AD1865 R2R decoding chip, a David Berning designed Class A ZOTL (Zero hysteresis Output Transformer-Less) architecture tubed output stage, may use either 6SN7 or 12SN7 tubes, has isolated digital and analog power supplies, with no negative feedback, has differential balanced and single-ended outputs AND, it's made in the USA! The new Aero, in combination with LTA's flagship MicroZOTL preamp Level 2 iteration, with its upgraded preamp output and power supply caps, feeding their most detailed, refined amps, the Ultralinear+ monoblocks was intoxicating, driving the recently redesigned Daedalus Apollo 11 v.3 loudspeakers. This system was an absolute musical oasis and had the grace, power, and refinement to seduce even the most demanding of listeners.
When I walked into the room, I was immediately drawn to the relaxed presentation, mellow and laid back, yet full of musically relevant detail and specificity. The system created a sense of a transparent view into the music itself, combined with this engaging and wonderful sense of body and bloom of the instruments and vocals. The string tone of the Saint-Sa๋ns Cello Concerto No. 1, as imagined by Janos Starker and the LSO under Antal Dorแti, was not only rendered with a convincingly natural tonality but with compellingly realistic texture as well.
1411 - Believe High Fidelity
I hadn't seen Joshua Masongsong, owner of Believe High Fidelity of Hutto, Texas, just northeast of Austin, in quite some time, and after a bit of catching up, I was more than merely intrigued to take the catbird seat in this room, as the sound was so engaging and compelling just standing inside the room's entrance and chatting.
System details: Origin Live Reknown Tonearm 12 in $30,600 Top Wing Suzaku "Red Sparrow" MC Cartridge $16,500 Seiryu "Blue Dragon" MC Cartridge $12,500 Pink Faun Ultra Music Server (Ultra X2 configuration) $30,000 (w/o output cards) Aries Cerat Kassandra II Limited Edition DAC MkII $100,000 Aries Cerat Helene Prestige DAC $19,000 Aries Cerat Impera II Limited Edition Preamplifier $100,000 Aries Cerat GeminaeIanus Edition Mono Amplification $152,000 Aries Cerat Genus Integrated Amplifier $30,000 JWM Acoustics ALYSON PRO Be speakers - $20,000 ALYSON SE Blackburn Edition speakers - $22,000 KEVIN LR PISTONS subwoofers - $21,000 passive each JWM Acoustics Jonathan Rack - $12,000-$22,000 Acoustic Fields ACDA Panels $1,050 each Vermouth Audio Statement Series Analog Interconnects $2,400 per meter Vermouth Audio Reference Series Speaker Cables $3,200 per meter Vermouth Audio Reference Series Analog Interconnects RCA $1,200 per meter Vermouth Audio Reference Series Power Cables $2,500 per meter Vermouth Audio Reference Series USB $500 per meter Vermouth Audio Reference Series 6 outlet Power distribution $3,600 each Vermouth Audio Black Pearl Analog Interconnects $650 per meter Vermouth Audio VLAD Interconnects $500 per meter Vermouth Audio VLAD Power Cables $1,000 per meter PS Audio P20 Power Conditioner $9,999 each
In case you lost track, this exceptional and impressive list of gear tallies up to just over $850,000. But, what a system.... LP transcription was handled by the simply gorgeous Italian-built Torqueo Audio T-34 Titanium Edition Turntable. Joshua explained that it has seen a ground-up redesign of the idler motor assembly and comes with options for a full or external Pilastro series base. With its copper mat, and included record clamp, you may mount up to four arms with the external base option.
It was mounted with Southampton, England's Origin Live twelve-inch Reknown Tonearm. Its proprietary blend of hardware, including its carbon and ebony hybrid arm tube and floating low friction dual bearing system, facilitates the dissipation of micro-vibration, minimizing vibrational feedback to the cartridge. Japan's The Top Wing Suzaku "Red Sparrow" Cartridge features their new coreless Straight-Flux Technology MM / MC Hybrid Design, weighs just nine grams, offers a 0.20mv output, and uses an aluminum cantilever and line contact stylus tip. That hands off to the Cyprian Aries Cerate Talos II Limited Edition Phonostage, which features their E280F supertube-based circuit design, implementing their proprietary Inverted Triode Design Technology (ITDT), which claims to afford five times the bandwidth and one hundred times less internal impedance than the typical 6SN7! Ones and zeros were sourced from Holland's Pink Faun Ultra Music Server in its Ultra X2 configuration. Its proprietary in-house designed and built OCXO clocks are said to reduce jitter to inaudible levels, using their Star Light Ultra-Low noise hand-built power supply, and it is all housed in a CNC machined anti-vibrational chassis with inner and outer cores. It uses its own custom OS and Roon capability, and outputs include optimization for AES/EBU, Coax, USB, or I2S, to best fit your system. The astonishing Aries Cerat Kassandra II Limited Edition DAC MkII employs 24 R2R ladder converters per channel, a super clock providing jitter attenuation down to the femtosecond level, and supports up to 384KHz/24bit PCM formats. They also were showing the Helene Prestige DAC, a scaled-down version of the Kassandra, featuring 8 R2R ladder converters per channel, with GZ34 tube rectification.
The Aries Cerat Impera II Limited Edition Preamplifier, which also features their E280F supertube-based circuit design, also uses their proprietary Inverted Triode Design Technology (ITDT). The Aries Cerat Geminae Ianus Edition Monoblocks use what they call TriodeFET technology, a fusion of tubed and solid-state amplification running in parallel. The tube complement uses the E280F supertubes, and AC decoupling uses custom-sourced super capacitors to develop 130W into 8 Ohms, or 260W into 4 Ohms, of pure Class A power. They also had the Aries Cerat Genus Integrated Amplifier, which is a Directly Heated Triod-based circuit design using dual 845 power tubes and the E280F input supertubes, with no global or local feedback, providing 25W of Class A1 RMS power, with up to 40W Peaks in Class A2. Speakers were from Austin, Texas's JWM Acoustics, and included both the ALYSON PRO Be, and ALYSON SE Blackburn Editions, with ultra-low frequency support from the passive KEVIN LR PISTONS. System Support used the JWM Acoustics Jonathan Rack, and Acoustic Fields ACDA Panels were used for the minimal room treatment. All cabling came from Vermouth Audio, including Statement, Reference, and Black Pearl Series Analog Interconnects, Reference Series Speaker Cables, Power, and USB Cables which are cryogenically treated. A PS Audio P20 Power Conditioner managed AC delivery.
While digital was playing when I first sat down, knowing of both my affinity for the LP medium and my passion for Mark Knopfler's work, Joshua served up several select tracks from the Mobile Fidelity 45 RPM release of "Brothers in Arms." I was completely entranced with this exotic system's remarkable ability to express nuanced texture and vivid tone color across the entire audible bandwidth. There was an amazing attribute of stark immediacy in the way it recreated Mark's vocal inflections and almost whispered lyrics. Dynamics were simply stellar, especially in rendering microdynamic shading. This system was unbelievably emotionally expressive and engaging, with a disarming capability to portray such sublime subtleties of expression and individuality of sounds, like percussion strikes. Its musical power seemed effortless, with tremendous extension at both extremes and amazingly concisely pitch-defined bass. This system was clearly among the best, if not arguably the very best system, I heard during my visit to Dallas.
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