Stepping into the DeVore
Fidelity room was like stepping back in time to the mid-1960’s
— at least visually. The sound was thoroughly modern and among the Best
Rooms at the show, but the little DeVore Gibbon 3XL monitors
($3700) and the Leben RS-30EQ
phono stage ($2600) and CS-300XS integrated amplifier ($3500) with their gold
tone finish certainly had a classic look to them. The small plants and the
vinyl padded headboards completed the look. Moreover, the entire rig,
including the modern SME
turntable with EMT cartridge and
wooden equipment rack from Box Furniture had
such a unified, unassuming look that it made me want to say "I’ll take the
whole room — to go!" It was a pleasure to meet John DeVore again this
year. Flipping back to my coverage of his room with The Nines loudspeaker last
year I note the consistency of excellence in his presentations. If I haven’t
raved quite as much about his rig this year, it is probably because he was
playing a different LP.
An Aura Neo CD player ($1895) and Aura Groove integrated
amplifier ($1995) with both computer and iPod compatibility formed a very nice
looking lifestyle system with a pair of very clean looking Amphion monitors.
Built in
Korea
, the Aura is a joint venture of April Music and Aura Design of Japan. You
will be home for less than $6K for this system.
An Audio Analogue
Crescendo Integrated combined with a Crescendo CD player ($1095, each) was
supplemented with a Hanss phono stage, but I heard the rig with the digital
source through another Amphion
(?) speaker. This sounded like a very good entry level approach. An
inexpensive and conventional looking Hanss
turntable was listed at $695 without arm or cartridge, but the serious table
on display with the platter removed to show the construction was their T-20
with their signature aluminum sandwich plinth for $2995. Also on silent
display (thank you) was their RC-20 record cleaning machine for $695 that
looks like it could give my vintage VPI black box a run for the money,
although the platter looked to be several inches smaller in diameter than a
typical LP.
This was my first listen to Legacy
Audio’s Whisper, a tall, efficient floor stander with open baffle
and rear-firing woofer to cancel the back wave on the bass. It was powered by
an Ayon Triton integrated tube
amplifier that was sourced with an Ayon CD-5 CD player. A Synergistic
Research Tesla Power Cell power conditioner was also in the rig, as
was a Xilica digital room
processor, used as an external crossover to deal with the large woofers in the
small room. In my opinion, I think they would have been better off playing one
of their smaller models that was on hand. I doubled back to this room the next
day in hopes they might, but the Whisper was still in the rig.
I took a quick dive into a room with a controlled
presentation at the invitation of a host who spotted my press pass. I should
have asked more questions first. I found myself locked into a presentation of Linn
equipment given entirely in French. From what I could tell they played back
music recorded at different bit rates, seemingly trying to educate the
listeners. The saving grace of the experience was the final cut played back on
an LP-12. Analog lives!
I’m a quarter of the way through the photographs I took,
so take that to mean there is a lot more
to come!
Click here for part 2.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
