Wavelength
Audio Room
The source for the system was the Crimson DAC which uses the
71A DHT ($). The Crimson fed the new Wavelength Royal preamplifier that
utilizes the 71A DHT ($7500). Downstream was a pair of Cardinal 300b
monoblocks (starting at $8500)that put out 12.5 wpc. In turn the 300b
monoblocks
drove the Vaughan Audio loudspeakers Cabernet ($8495). The Vaughan's made my antenna go up. As I briefly
listened, I was pretty impressed with what I was hearing. The Cabernet's are
sitting at 93db sensitivity and cover from about 30hz on up to the ultrasonic
region with a ribbon tweeter. The design is a pair of 10-inch side firing
woofers on one side of the cabinet, on the other side is a pair of 10-inch
passive radiators. The majority of the musical information is then
handled by a 6.5-inch Accuton ceramic driver then the highs are taken care of by
an LCY ribbon tweeter. After talking to Jim Jordan about these speakers work
like this; the woofers cover up to 80 Hz and from there the 5-inch driver covers
from 80 Hz to 5 kHz and from there the ribbon takes over and goes to
ultrasonic 50 kHz. The crossovers only have three parts which makes them an easy
enough load that an SET amp plays quite well with them.
Salk
Sound and AVA
Moving onto the Salk Sound and Audio by Van Alstine room, we
find quite a number of Jim Salk's product line offerings. Besides Jim's
flagship offering the HT-4 ($28,000), Salk was showcasing the Songtowers
($1795) and the Veracity HT-2 ($3495) in fire engine red. Making its
debut at the show was the HT-1TL($2995) which is a transmission line design
which uses the LCY ribbon tweeter. All of the Salk speakers were being driven by Frank Van
Alstine's gear. The monoblocks are his latest creation the AVA UltraValve 70
amplifiers which produce about 60 wpc when bridged in mono. The front end gear
was supplied by AVA. The pre was the Transcendence Eight Vacuum Tube
Preamplifier ($1299), Salk and AVA were using either a Harmon Kardon CD player
or the Squeeze Box as a transport which in turn fed an AVA DAC.
MBL
The MBL room is always a nice listen. Sure, they are quite
expensive and aren't the most wife friendly speakers you'll ever bring
home but on the other hand MBL's do things that other speakers could only
dream of. Of course, all of the gear here is MBL. Starting with the
speakers and working backwards we have the MBL 111F hybrid speakers ($34,700).
These were being driven by the MBL 9008 amplifier ($25,190 each). The front end
consisted of the MBL 1621A Transport ($24,000) and the MBL 1611F DAC
($24,750). The preamp was the MBL 6010 D ($23,800).
Dodd
Audio
Now this was an interesting room. Gary Dodd has created a
line of tubed gear that runs solely on batteries. When I think of batteries
and tubes together in the same sentence, I think of the great sound I had in
my 1956 Chevy which had the AM stock radio with FM converter bolted under the
dashboard. Well, let me put it this way, this twernt my '56. Oh no,
it was way better. On the front end of this system was a Mac Mini driving a
modified LiTe DAC. From there the small signals went to the Dodd Audio Battery
Power Tube Buffered Preamp ($1595) which provided impedance matching (and no
gain) for the Dodd Battery Powered Tube Amplifier ($1599) which utilizes one
of my favorite tubes the 6BQ5. The speakers are the GR Research Super V ($995
each in kit form) open baffle speakers. These utilize a highly modified 12-inch
coax from P-Audio that now converts the compression driver from being a direct
radiating compression driver to being a dipole by removal of the back chamber.
Below the 12-inch are a pair of Danny's servo-subs used to fill in the lower
octaves. These speakers are sitting right at 97dB/W/m sensitive.
Electrocompaniet
This year at RMAF Electrocompaniet showcased their newest
creation the Nordic Tone Model 1 loudspeaker. Although I didn't get enough
time to form any firm opinions, the room sounded quite nice. On the source
side there was the EMC-1UP 24/192 CD Player. In addition they brought their
EMP-1 multi-channel, multi-format player. These both fed the Electrocompaniet
EC4.8 Reference dual mono preamp AW400 monoblock power amps.
Isomike
Now here is a room just chocked full of cool gear. The first
things my eyes were drawn to were the JBL Everest horn loaded loudspeakers. In
the back of the room they were using a pair of the smaller K2s to add ambience
in this cavernous space. Amplification was provided at various times by
either Levinson or the Pass Labs XL350.5s. The main rack was loaded with EMM
Labs source and preamp gear. On the upper left of the
equipment rack (not shown) was the GML model 9500 mastering parametric equalizer was being used to
tame the speakers.
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High-Performance Audio Reviews
