High-End 2001

Friday

 

  Amphion was showing their new Creon (4,800/pr DM, on left in Birch finish). This three-way unit uses a 1" titanium tweeter, a 5.25" midrange and high-quality 8" polypropylene woofer. A lowish 85dB/W/m sensitivity is offset with an 8 ohm load. Rated frequency response is 32Hz to 20kHz.

 

The Avant Garde room offered a unique sound with a jazzy cha-cha styled remake of Kraftwerks song "Showroom Dummies".

 

Acoustic Plan was showing their Sarod pre-amplifier (6,850 DM, left) and Santor amplifier (7,550 DM, right). Their new Sitar integrated amplifier (6,570 DM) has an outboard power supply with tubed pre-amplification and solid-state amplification.

 

Cayin offers many different tube units. Probably coming from the same Chinese factory that makes AES and Huston... Seen here is Cayin's MT-12 integrated tube stereo amplifier (top) and below is their larger 734 integrated amplifier.

 

This is part of Acoustic Energy's loudspeaker line that was being offered in the AE room.

 

Of course how could any show report be complete without covering the now legendary Quad. Seen here is the inside workings of their Quad II amplifier. Seen below is a 1950's pre-amplifier. As i said... legendary.

 

 

Cyrus's new Icon loudspeaker (8,600/pr DM) feature the "the world's first high-end application of the new NXT technology". For mids and highs it is all NXT while for bass an 8" doped paper cone. Cyrus build their own NXT drive unit while virtually everyone else outsourcers others.

 

JVC's new XV-SA70 (1,299 DM, top unit) plays CD, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS... Consider this a fully universal player for consumers. This is the one player that virtually does it all. Of course those into high-end noticed i wrote consumer. For us high-end folks, JVC offers their XVD-9000 (¥10,000, seen below) will be available soon in Europe, but no plans for the US. CDs are upsampled using JVC' K2 technology while DVD-Audio discs will be reproduced with up to 24-bit/192kHz full digital audio resolution.

 

 

Manger, with their unique tweeter/midrange driver had their Zerobox 103/3 loudspeaker (18,000/pr DM). It also has a side firing mid/tweeter. Their new Swing (12,000/pr DM, seen below) is their special driver in a specially designed cabinet.

 

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