Home Entertainment 2001

Show Report

by Rick Becker 

 

Impact Technology presented their Airfoil 5 statement speaker that had an innovative line source technology that ran vertically along the inside edge of wing shaped towers that were over six feet tall. A pair of small dynamic drivers are fitted in the sealed bottom of the speaker and there was an outboard subwoofer (or two). There seemed to be an outboard crossover for the subs. Depending on the size of the tower and the number and size of the subs, their systems range from $22K to $35K. A top-loading Electrocompaniet CD player, Plinius preamp and Plinius SA-100 stereo power amp rounded out the system. I like this system a lot and it had good stereo imaging over a wide seating area. The wing shape of the tall towers is a challenge to veneer. While the effect is visually very stunning, they need to perfect their veneering skills. <http://membrane.com/impact>

There was a lot of buzz about the new Creek MMF7 turntable for $999 that included the arm and $400 cartridge. Also new, and very pretty in silver face, are the CD53 CD player for $1995 and 5350 SE remote control integrated amp for $1495. Prices everywhere are moving upstream, so to speak, but as the Creek rises, they still remain in the real world. It was interesting to finally see Roy Hall in person after reading about him in Sam Tellig's column for so many years.

What audio show would be complete without a room where all the equipment broke with normal expectations? There were several such rooms at New York. In the first, a Final Music-3 integrated amp with gold knobs and a silver faceplate on a rather small, somewhat vertically oriented chassis, graced a low stand between a pair of boxy, awkward looking speakers. The speakers had beefy silver tweeters smack in the center of the face with oval slots above and below it. Behind the slots were the two bass mid-woofers. What further distinguished this rig was that all components and the speakers were on custom roller blocks. There were lots of low black boxes on the floor between the speaker, too. I felt like I should have been given a schematic diagram to sort it all out. Check these out at <www.finallab.com>. My words don't do the system justice.

The second unusual room was by Florence Audio. Their pyramid shaped stand mounted monitor speakers had a great sound. They were powered by their custom made preamp with a plexiglass top, and 20 wpc monoblocks featuring an 845 tube. The CD source was a small Sony DAC and CD drive unit that looked like they were designed for use in computer towers. Nothing here was very pretty, except the sound. The company started out as a group of engineers interested in audio as a hobby in the San Jose area. Their speaker was so successful, people began actually buying them, and they became a company! They have several models ranging from $5K to $7K, with a variety of interesting veneers. Andy Hue Ton, the speaker designer, and Florence Khuu, CEO, displayed gracious enthusiasm. There is no question that venturing to New York is a huge step for them, one that few small companies can afford to make.

47 Labs was hooked up to a Vassen stand mounted speaker with mid-woofers mounted above and below the centrally mounted tweeter. This $7000 speaker from Belgium was familiar to me from the Montreal show. In this rig, it sounded a bit too forward for my tastes. I wondered whether the sibilance I heard in the treble was from the system, or on the recording. I probably should have asked them to play one of my own CDs. The amp was a tube amp from a premium Japanese builder that used 300B tubes. The preamp was also tube. What really piqued my interest in this rig was the 47 Labs wiring, which is thin gauge, solid core pure copper in a thin light blue translucent plastic housing. No solder whatsoever is used. They have special solderless RCA plugs, and the speaker wire is the same small gauge as the interconnects. It looked a lot like a stereo rig undergoing surgery, with all that blue tubing, and their minimalist, naked CD drive and small DAC. This is very much a purist company, and they have given me some food for thought regarding cables. <www.sakurasystems.com>

mbl has been around long enough to establish their own aesthetic values and expectations, but to newcomers, this gloss black equipment with polished gold accents must seem extravagant, if not bizarre. The black mesh covering their omni-directional speakers certainly adds to the aura of this German company. I learned a long time ago not to bother asking about the prices of their equipment. I suspect this is a cult fave of people who spend megabucks to have their Mercedes hot-rodded and dipped in gold. I really should make a better effort to listen carefully the next time I have the opportunity. It is just very difficult for me to get past the visual image it presents.

In the AV123.com room I saw the new Genesis 2000 floorstanding Genesis C model that I believe I saw in Montreal. This $4,000 model will be joined by the $3,000 Genesis B floorstander, $2,000 Genesis A stand mounted 2-way, and the smaller yet, Genesis Mini. Stay tuned for these real world speakers designed by Arnie Nudell and Mark Schifter. Maybe September. <www.av123.com>

Dolby and Outlaw Audio shared a room where Outlaw premiered a $249 ICBM, Integrated Controlled Bass Manager that allows SACD and DVD-A to by used in conventional 5.1 surround systems with .1 subwoofers. The price of the Outlaw receiver has also been dropped from $599 to $499, purportedly to stay ahead of the competition. But when I queried the Dolby representative about the new Dolby Pro-Logic II that I had experienced in Montreal, he admitted that by fall, all the majors would be out with Pro-Logic II receivers. An article in a recent journal supported my favorable experience of the new chip that converts conventional stereo signals into an enjoyable surround sound signal. Stay tuned to this front, too. It might have a larger impact on surround sound than SACD or DVD-A.

Speaking of surround sound SACD, I was too busy to get the ticket and wait in line for the Sony demo here. Too bad, as what I heard at Montreal showed great promise, but was limited by the drum music that was played. 

On the surround sound front, I was very impressed with AT&T's beachball-size, seven microphone array that captures and mixes a soundfield down to five channels. That's five mics in the horizontal plane (one for each channel) plus one mic aimed up and one mic aimed down for floor and ceiling reflections. It is designed primarily for recording live events. The modest playback system revealed a very natural and pleasing surround sound experience. Let's hope they can bring this technology to the attention of the recording industry. I, for one, prefer the excitement of a live recording to a product mixed in a studio. Perfection be damned!

In the Coincident Speaker Technology room I had an interesting chat with Israel Blume, who apparently didn't recognize me from the Montreal show, and didn't notice my press pass. This fine line of speakers is gradually moving up the food chain. I heard very nice music from their 14 ohm Total Eclipse model that replaces the Millennium at $8,000. Shown in silent display was their Victory model for $4,599 with 97dB efficiency and 14 ohm impedance. Talk about tube friendly? Check them out for some reasonably priced cables, too. <www.coincidentspeaker.com>

Totem Acoustics also came down from Canada, and Vince was talking the talk, hawkin' his Hawk for $2,395, and shakin' his Staff for $1,500. No wonder, in this show of Megabuck equipment, there was frequently a line at his door. The fit, finish and sound reproduction of his speakers are an obvious value in this industry that seems hell bent for riches. Mr. Brusezze (damn I can never remember how to spell it!) makes his money the old fashioned way. He earns it. <www.totemacoustic.com>

LumenWhite, a new speaker brand (to me) from Austria, had a floorstanding five driver, 3-way that tapered to a thin rear facade that had a slotted port down its backside. It reminded me, somewhat, of the B & W Nautilus, but I didn't get the full story on this "ultra precision transducer". It had a very fine sound, being powered by Vaic 52B monoblock tube amps. The thick amp stand and equipment rack looked to be made of 4" thick slabs of marble, but were actually sophisticated multi-layered shelves. This was also a rare opportunity to see the m-pingo discs on tall wooden stands (beside each speaker) in "action". No chance for a "with" and "without" comparison, unfortunately. <www.acousticddreams.net>

Silverline's 5-way, 95db efficient floorstanding speaker ($6,000) was sounding pretty good driven by Tim diParavincini's statement preamp and vertically arrayed M100A monoblocks. These single ended solid state class A monoblocks put out 100 watts and go for $35K a pair. We are talking serious art with these EAR components. <www.silverlineaudio.com>

Art Audio, was found powering the new Soliloquy 6.5 speaker ($6K) with their GILL Signature single ended triode, 15 wpc., pure "Class A" stereo amp ($3,800). But having previous experience listening to their amps, I knew these were not 15 ordinary watts. The cables in the system were by Acoustic Zen Technologies, designed by Robert Lee, who also founded Harmonic Technology a few years ago, back in the last millennium. The system sounded a little soft to me, and had lots of bloom and a large sense of space. I've heard Art Audio powered systems sound a lot better than this, which may be why I saw Joe Fratus storming down the hallway with a very concerned look on his face. On the other hand, this is probably their least expensive amplifier. <www.artaudio.com> <www.solspeak.com> <www.AcousticZen.com> 

At the end of Saturday afternoon (6 pm), I reconnoitered with my friends Art Shapiro and Mike Bearden in the press room. (Art and Mike will probably have reports posted on rec.audio.high-end). They insisted on dragging me kicking and screaming to hear some of their favorite rooms. (Just kidding, Art)!

Art's favorite speaker is the $30K JM Labs Utopia. He accepts a substitute, but he loves this one. I've heard this speaker over the past few years at the Montreal show, always in a large, difficult room. This most recent show, they finally got it right, to my ear anyway, with the large YBA Passion monoblocks driving them. In New York, in a similarly large, but more regularly shaped room, they sounded pretty much the way I recalled them sounding in March. But in New York they were only using the YBA Passion stereo amp. I returned to this room several times the next day and finally got to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan's Tin Pan Alley cut on the Burmester demo CD given to me by my friend John Barnes on a visit to Audio Unlimited a few years back. Mighty fine! Of course, if I had been allowed to really crank it up, I might have wished for the YBA monoblocks -- it was a large room. This was the kind of system I could listen to all day long and not experience any listening fatigue, given good music, of course.

Also in this room was the YBA Passion Integre integrated amp on plugged-in, but silent display. So now Yves has taken his original Integre both downstream into the Refinement series, and upstream into the Passion series. The host of this room is also to be commended for displaying less expensive JM Lab speakers to the side. While they may toast expensive champagne every time they sell a Utopia, the affordable end of their fine speaker line provides their daily table wine.

The antithesis of the Utopia was to be found just around the corner in the Linn room. They called the Komri a studio monitor and priced it at $40K. Let's just say it was brutally accurate, driven by Klimax amps. I came back a couple of times, hoping that maybe it was just the particular CDs being played. I found it a very demanding system to listen to. <www.linninc.com>

Next, Mike and Art took me up to the Nearfield Acoustics/VAC room, which proved to be the perfect antidote for the Linn system. The new slightly smaller Pipedreams columns were playing with the subwoofers from the larger, original model, (which was parked just behind the new model). A new smaller subwoofer to cost $2000 each is not yet ready for release. Eventually, the new model at $9,600 plus a pair of subs at $4,000 will comprise the new system. Even in this room that seemed way too small for such large speakers, the music was superlative. The soundstage was cantilevered right through the wall and hung nine stories above the Avenue of the Americas. Louis Armstrong was everywhere at the show, and here we heard him through a Vanden Hul Black Beauty cartridge on a VPI TNT hot rodded turntable. Also, an Accuphase 75 CD player (again) fed a VAC preamp, which controlled a pair of VAC 70/70 stereo amps--one for the subs, the other for the Pipes. Sunday I returned for a second listen, only to discover the larger model in use. While still very good, I preferred the newer, less expensive model I had heard the night before. <www.nearfieldacoustics.com> It was also a pleasure to meet and talk with Kevin Hayes chief honcho at VAC in the hallway. <www.vac-amps.com> <www.vpiindustries.com>

Sunday morning, after coffee, I jumped back up to catch a couple of rooms that were too jammed to get into on Saturday. One was the Joseph Audio room where Jeff Joseph loves to sweet-talk his visitors into loving his speakers. He doesn't really need to do this, as they speak pretty well for themselves. Jeff walked us through the chain from $18K La Luce turntable with its Cardas Myrtle arm wire to the Herron Audio phono stage to the Classe 350-watt monoblocks (was there a line stage in there, too?) to his new reference speaker, the RM33SI in a pretty light cherry finish. This speaker, priced from $7,500, depending on finish, is a three-way with side firing woofer, a fairly common practice today. Out back, it sports the new twist-type Cardas binding posts. What I didn't pick up on until I reviewed my video, was the brass allen head nuts on the sides of the speaker. Does he ship these RTA (ready to assemble) or is this some sort of tuning device to tweak the tension on the walls of the speaker? (I'm just kidding about the RTA, Jeff)! Actually, the wood side panels of this speaker are interchangeable and available in different wood finishes. Whatever, the result is a very commendable speaker. <www.josephaudio.com> <www.cardas.com>

Next I returned to the Red Rose Audio room that was too packed to get in on Saturday. There was quite a buzz about this room, so I didn't want to miss it. They were playing their small rig with a stand-mounted R-3 monitor with its ribbon tweeter rising above the box that contained the woofer. The room was bare and the drapes were raised, giving us a rare opportunity to look outside. When I queried the presenter about this indifference to even elementary room treatment, he responded with the corporate philosophy of selling a simple, well thought-out system that an ordinary (non-audiophile) person could plug into their room and experience high quality sound. I reflected back to their literature... something about buying Mark Levinson, the man. I became suspicious. When the talk stopped and the music started, I was not as impressed as the hype suggested I should be. The treble seemed a bit smeared, and there was precious little bass present. Perhaps they should have closed the drapes? Or, maybe when the room was packed with people (there was only a handful present at the time I was there) there were fewer reflections bouncing around the room. Not even the SACD won me over, here.

Perhaps the Red Rose people should have gotten together with the perpetual Technologies people? The Perpetual Tech. room correction produced a noticeable improvement in the treble region. As I stated earlier in my comments on the TacT RCS 2.0, I'm reluctant to add electronics to the signal path if it can be avoided. And I'm not convinced that ruler flat frequency response is the holy grail of musical enjoyment. But these room correction systems are finally making a significant difference. and the products are much improved over attempts I heard (or didn't hear) five years ago.

Martin Logan had a home theater rig going with their new Odyssey speaker. I stepped in long enough to verify that it sounded pretty good. Since a friend of mine has these speakers back in Rochester, I'll get my serious impression in the serenity of a dedicated home theater listening room with a beer of choice.

Classic Audio Reproductions featured their T-1 Project horn speakers driven by Atma-Sphere OTL monoblocks giving 60 watts each in push-pull configuration. With 97.5 db efficiency, these speakers were using only the first two watts of this $4650 pair of amps. Stevie Ray sounded very fine here when I was in the narrow sweet spot. If the $14K price of admission to this speaker is a little steep, for $10K you can have the same drivers in a smaller cabinet. <www.classicaudiorepro.com>

Cable comparisons are always fun, so I stopped in to the Nordost room where Primare electronics were powering a pair of SystemAudio speakers--another couple of good companies I knew from Montreal. I was able to clearly hear the differences between the $1600 Quatrofil interconnects and the $3300 Valhallas. I sat there wishing that in addition to a few CDs, I had brought along a pair of my own interconnects. Now THAT would have REALLY been fun!

Near the end of the day I stumbled into what was a relatively cavernous room with a $30K pair of Mirage OM-1 towers and associated subs powered by top shelf Classe electronics. A large room with large speakers. We popped in Stevie Ray Vaughan again. The music ROCKED! The omni-polar Mirage towers reflected off the rear wall giving a holographic tube-like presentation unrestrained by the size of the room.. I closed my eyes and Stevie Ray's ghost could have been in the room for all I knew. Of course, the two subs, each with four 10" drivers, each driver with its own 375 watt amp, helped considerably, too. After Tin Pan Alley, we switched over to a classical cut on the Burmeister CD for Mike Bearden to sample. That, too, sounded mighty fine--right at home in the concert hall. Maybe what a lot of systems need is simply a bigger room?

Or perhaps no room at all?

Huh?

I wandered over to the small vendor section where I found an incredibly large display of headphones, many of them plugged into various kinds of headphone amps--even a diParavincini V20 amplifier in one instance. This late in the day many of the cords were hopelessly tangled, so I didn't sample more than a few. The Orpheus on display here sounded much worse than one I had heard in a smaller room, probably due to the ambient noise. Of particular note was a prototype Grado, which they refused to name until they had a copyright/patent in place. At a projected price of $150, it featured very comfortable large foam ear surrounds, about the size of half a softball. From what I could tell with all the ambient noise, it sounded pretty good. It was no competition for the much more expensive Stax headphones that are in a league of their own. I pressed on reluctantly, wishing I had more time to explore the various models more closely.

And for those of you into home theater, there was a dealer selling refurbished popcorn, candy, and soda machines. Truly, niche marketing!


At a silent display for Smart Devices, a forlorn blond woman took delight in my interest in her amplifiers. No dumb blond jokes
here, thank you. She explained that the company had several reviews pending and they expected the company to really take off in the next six months. As a former Counterpoint amp owner, I was particularly interested in their model that sported a tube/mosfet combination. The June issue of Stereophile carries a full page ad, or check out their website: <www.smartdev.com>

Another hard working young man I admired was John Chapman of Bent Audio. His product is a remote controlled device for adjusting volume that plugs into an amp via single ended or balanced connectors. The control unit has a series of plastic bars that progressively light up as volume increases. Basically, I think it is a passive volume control that also allows switching between two sources for those looking for a minimalist system. I've asked for a review sample when the first production run comes true. It could be "way cool"! <www.bentaudio.com>

Sadly, one vendor in this area fell victim to theft. The guy selling the Earmax (?) little tube headphone amps got ripped when he was wrapping up another unit. That's almost as low as kicking homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk. Hopefully the sinner will repent and figure out that he can return the unit to Stereophile who can return it to the vendor.

And now, a final plug for a plug. Or is that an outlet? WattGate had a table with some cutaways of standard contractor grade, industrial (spec) grade, and their own $160 WattGate Music Grade outlet. It is difficult to say, just by looking at them, but you could probably run over the WattGate with a truck and it would still sound great. As to whether music sounds better with them in the wall, or whether spec grade or hospital grade is sufficient -- well, I haven't seen any reviews. Perhaps they'd like to send me one to try. <www.wattgate.com>

I checked the winning lottery ticket on Sunday and there was good news and there was bad news. The bad news was that I didn't win. The good new was the Jackpot went up to $12 million.

My usual apologies to anyone I may have missed or erroneously mistreated. G-d willing, I'll see you next year in Montreal and New York. Hope you enjoy your music until then.

 

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Home Entertainment 2001 Show reports.

 

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