Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2004

Friday

Vivaldi Audio's new Academy loudspeaker kit ($2,200 with single EX3 driver) and can be offered in finished cabinet and a pair of drivers for ($2,200). The EX3 driver is Lowther's latest generation acoustic module and phase plug, both designed to work in concert for top-quality music reproduction. These specific units have silver voice coil versus aluminum standard coil. Frequency response is from 40Hz to 22kHz with a sensitivity of about 100dB.

At the Colorado Audiophile Sound & Design store's room was the Kharma Ceramic Mini Grand in piano black finish ($41,000) was being driven by the Manley Labs Neo-Classic monoblock 300B ($7,600). All cabling was Soundstrings while analog duties was handled by the Oracle Delphi 5 with Triplanar tonearm and Black Beauty Van den Hul cartridge. The cables were especially impressive looking! Many other goodies filled the room including the Adona equipment racks, Dali MS4 loudspeakers, Heron Audio VTS-P2 tubed pre-amplifier, Berendsen's impressive CDP-1 CD player... and much more!

In an offshoot room of the Colorado Audiophile Sound & Design was a pair of Von Schweikert's VR4 Jr. ($3,999) with a pair 1-inch dome tweeter (one front, one rear), 6-inch midrange and a pair of 6-inch woofers in ported cabinet. They are tri-wireable and have an adjustment for rear tweeter output.

The Almarro 50125A integrated stereo amplifier ($2,950) by Almarro employs an octet of 6550 for output, a pair or 12AT7 and 5687 tubes. It produces 125 watts per channel or can be mono strapped to produce 250 watts.

Almarro has a new loudspeaker, the M0A ($1,200) with an interesting 4-inch paper cone tweeter and 6-inch honeycomb woofer with neodymium magnet mounted to a very solid aluminum basket. Frequency response is from 40Hz to 20kHz. The cabinet is internally two separate, rear ported enclosures and there is are two pairs of binding posts for bi-wiring.

It was a given that DR. Bruce Edgar would be here with a pair of his horn loudspeakers while analog duties is the underground fave Teres. Correction, the Teres was an underground fave, now becoming the 'must-have' for many vinyl lovers.

Hagerman Technology specializes in what they refer to as 1/2 kits for tube electronics. Seen here is their Cornet phono stage ($995) with a 12AX7 for gain and 12AU7 for driver, and 5Y3 rectifier. Below that is the Clarinet line stage ($995) with three inputs, balance and volume controls. All units are triode, "Class A" with zero feedback.

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