Equipment
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Origin Live's Sovereign (£3850) is 'semi-suspended' and features triple plinth decoupling and a high torque motor; it's seen here with the Conqueror tonearm
The see-through market no longer belongs just to Ferguson Hill: this is 3Dsonics' Transparence, a full-range electrodynamic dipole loudspeaker with full-range driver specifically designed for use in the 67x105cm open baffle, made of 15mm clear acrylic
Oracle's DAC 1000 D/A Converter Pre-amp features 24 bit/192kHz upsampling, balanced and unbalanced analogue inputs and outputs, six digital inputs and four digital outputs, and digital volume control
Lyra's new - and affordable - Argo m-c cartridge, yours for £795
Vivid Audio's C1 centre channel speaker -- the main speakers are shaped the same but positioned
vertically -- with metal dome mid and treble units and 158mm metal cone woofers
From Italy, Mel Audio's oddly-named Harmagedhon solid-state power amplifier: dual-mono, Class A and good for 100W/ch; cabinet is made from milled aeronautical
aluminum
Raidho's Centric in the Emilie range, with ribbon tweeter in a D'Appolito array between two 100mm woofers
Crane's cute Submariner active subwoofer -- reminiscent of certain Musical Fidelity products of yore, rather than the watch of the same name!
Naim's first subwoofer, the N-SUB with 250mm long-throw driver in a 20-litre sealed enclosure, with 300W of power and 22-step variable filter
T+A showed this impressive AV receiver, the SR 1535R, supporting 7.1 channels of audio with 2x280W for the main L/R channels and 5x150W for the effects channels
Tube Technology has now completed its impressive system stack, the Genetix monoblocks supporting the Matrix pre-amp, Fulcrum DAC64 and Fulcrum TX24 CD Transport. Total cost? £20,000 including cables
One of the best front-ends at the show: the Brinkmann La Grange turntable, the latest Air Tangent arm and an EMT moving-coil -- the latter deserving of the title of 'Revival of the Product of the Year', judging by the number that turned up in Italy at TOP Audio
47 Laboratory's modern classic £21,000 PiTracer CD transport, the subject of recent revisions
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High-Performance Audio Reviews
