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Legacy
Audio One of the things I've found big speakers do well
perhaps better than any other speaker is handle big music. And no, I'm not
talking the 6' tall guitars that many panel speakers will handily evoke for
you, but I am talking orchestra.
Large-scale, complex, dynamic music you know, all that stuff that old
people listen to. I say that only semi-facetiously I happen to love
classical music, but almost never
actually listen to any. Like ever. I may need to explore that a bit at some
point. Anyway, here at the Capital Audiofest, I got treated to some classical
music here in the Legacy room, including something that I think was Mahler
it made me scan the room, looking for Jason Victor Serinus but I quickly
stopped all irrelevancies and focused while
the Whisper XD stood up and practically paraded it's total musical dominance
over the piece. That's an odd way of saying, holy crap, this speaker owned
it. Yikes! I introduced myself to Bill and, in response to my throw-away question ("got anything new coming out?"), found out that, well, yes there is something new coming from Legacy Audio a brand new AMT tweeter that Bill and crew will be setting to both the Focus and the Whisper come this Fall. Should be ready by RMAF! Let's just say Bill's pretty excited about this change. I could tell, because that Cheshire grin he sported was still hanging there in space long after he had entirely vanished.
Davone
Audio, Woo Audio, MA-Recordings The Mojos were shown here with a Woo Audio
$3150 WA5, a single-ended, dual-chassis 300B-based 8wpc amp, which is also a
very impressive headphone amplifier, too. The music was all sourced from Todd
Garfinkle's eclectic and outstandingly well-recorded M-A Recordings
collection. In the adjoining room, Woo Audio had five more headphone
stations set up. This is stunningly clever, by the way, and an easy-peasey/lemon-squeezy
(I have five year old twins, my apologies) way to completely eradicate the
issues with audio show hotel room acoustics. Duh. Headphones? No room
interactions at all. Double duh. Which is, no doubt, one of the reasons why
the music in this room sounded so fantastic. First, a note about the music. Each of the Woo Audio
stations had a Woo Audio DAC and transport and a serve yourself laptop
music server. There was AC/DC and YoYo Ma. M-A Recordings' Sera Una Noche,
Dire Straits, and Eric Clapton. Coltrane, Hancock, and Blakey. Diana Krall,
Alison Krauss, and Frank Sinatra. Guns-n-Roses. Hilary Hahn. Pink Floyd, Stevie
Ray Vaughn and Patricia Barber. Yeah, I was pretty much set. This is how you
do it, folks. Power to the people!
DeVore
Fidelity Anyway. John was here in support of his local dealer, Jeff Fox of
Command Performance A/V who's new retail store out in Falls Church is opening in September. John and
Jeff had three different DeVore Fidelity
speakers on display, including the new Gibbon 88s, the compact Gibbon 3XL, and
their newest sibling, the impressive Orangutan O/96. On all three trips
through this room, it was this wide-baffle, 96dB, 10ohm, 25Hz-31kHz, newcomer
that were attracting the avian reviewers and us not-so-feathered ones
and gluing us all to our seats. Driven by a "meager" 8wpc from the
disproportionately beefy $5000 Line Magnetic LM-210IA 300B single-ended
triode amplifier, the O/96 was rich and lively and, perhaps strangely for
a 300B, it was also extended in both directions. It's not like I was looking
for faults in this room, which is lucky, because I would have been
disappointed. And as for those big Orangutan speakers, well, they are now on
my own personal short-list. Yeah. Really, really nicely done.
Joseph
Audio So, while I've gone gaga over the Pulsar and now
actually own a pair that I use as a reference I have to say that the
Perspective is a clear and definite step up. They reach deeper, sure, but they
are also even more transparent through the mid-bass than the stand-mounted
Pulsar. Here at Capital Audiofest, the Perspectives were driven by an all Bel
Canto line up, including the Ref500 monos and the top-shelf DAC3.5, wired to a very
interesting USB converter that we'll all be learning more about in a week or
so, with the handsomely turned-out XLO cables
making all the connections. A new $10,000 Audience
AR12TSS brought 12 outlets of power filtering with the new Teflon capacitors
to the system. The sound? Outrageously good. Chris Jones' "No Sanctuary
Here", off of his Roadhouses and
Automobiles album that is a torturous tune with some freaky big-speaker deep harmonics that are
extremely difficult to reproduce with all the menace and mayhem that's
appropriate. In this room, with these speakers and these amps, this tune will
cause your head to snap around as you frantically look for the volume knob on
the subwoofer you can't find. Strain? What strain? Heehee. Ahem. Slipping through the adjoining door, I found the Pulsars, wired up with more XLO cables to some more Bel Canto gear. In this case, a C7R integrated, a CD3t transport and a candy-apple red VPI Traveler. It's hard to come down from the Perspective, but at $7,000, the Pulsar will bring most of that Perspective magic into a package that you could set up anywhere. Like a hotel room, for example. These speakers have a ninja-like ability to disappear. It's a two-way thing, I guess, but what's not typical of a stand-mount is the sheer output of deep bass coming from such a small driver. I don't really get it, but luckily, all I have to do is enjoy it. Having had a bit of experience with these speakers (ahem), I didn't dive for the sweet spot, but I did pull out the Chris Jones CD again, and again played the same "No Sanctuary Here" track -- only to watch another gentleman start scanning the room. A friend of his looked behind the dresser that had been set up as an impromptu equipment rack. It took me a second before I realized they were looking for the subwoofer. Whoops! I played innocent, just nodding and saying "I know, right? Wow" over and over as they muttered to themselves. "Yeah, I don't know how Jeff Joseph does it, but ain't it cool?"
That's
A Wrap! Seriously, name another hobby where an enthusiast can go and
meet the artists he admires, question their motives, challenge their
assumptions, gain insight to their personal biases and predilections, get a
side order of real education around the whys and wherefores, and at the same
time, actually be in a position to experience and evaluate the creations
themselves? An audio show is a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me. Which you
didn't, but I'm telling you anyway. That's how I roll. Thanks to Gary Gill and Crew at the Capital Audiofest
for putting up a great show!
Scot Hull
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