Right next door to La Sphere, in another large room that was
fortunately well isolated, acoustically, was another of the most interesting
rooms at the show. The large full-range Ocellia
Calliope.30 Twin Signature single driver speakers shown here I
could probably lift with one arm. They go for $15k to $20K depending on finish
and were powered with the Ocellia Quaero 300B p-p Signature monoblocks putting
out about 18 watts each in push-pull configuration. Upstream from these was
their Quaero Signature preamplifier, a purist design with source selector and
a volume control for each channel, period. The CD player was a CEC.
A quote on a small poster read simply:
Savour the
delicate and ephemeral moment
Where music becomes silence.
As the close-up photo of the speaker shows, it was unique in
that it had a back door which could be left partially open to control the
sound. You will note the lattice work that reinforces the thin 3mm plywood
walls, each row of rectangles being of slightly different size to reduce
sidewall resonance. A wood tube braces the motor of the driver against a
crossbar at the back of the cabinet. You will also note the carpet seen
through the open bottom of this speaker. It kind of reminds me of the
Klipschorn that is intentionally open to the corner walls of the room.
Since the guys at Ocellia understand the fine art of sound
reproduction and also speak French, they were offered the distribution of the Yamamoto
line from
Japan
including the HA-02 tube headphone amplifier ($1K), a beautifully designed
piece with a wood top with holes for the WE 408A tubes and gold bars arcing
over them. I also say a very nice looking Yamamoto YBA-01B DAC with wood side
panels, dual mono circuitry and a single ended tube powered analog output.
Moving along on the lower floor I came across a pair of red Totem
Wind speakers being driven by a Rega
CD player and amplifier. I've heard these expensive speakers sound much
better with a more upscale rig.
Next I ran into Robert
Gaboury who was showing his new $1300 entry level Gemme
Audio Tonic, a small floorstander being driven by a Yamaha
CD Player and integrated amplifier. The whole ensemble was under $5K.
Unfortunately between the organ music, the conversations in the room and all
the gear packed into this room it was difficult to tell how good the Tonic
might be. More importantly, Robert told me Gemme is coming out with a third
version of the Tanto and the Katana. As these models evolve you will be able
to upgrade from one model to the other by changing the sealed face plate. Both
models will be acoustic suspension. Down the road they will have aluminum back
panels that will include amplification and it will have a wireless connection
that can play music directly from your iPod. Ultimately they will be able to
upgrade the speaker through a connection on the internet. Sounds like Big
Plans to me. Stay tuned.
A German Trigon CD
II ($4K) was teamed with a Trigon Energy integrated amplifier ($10K) with 90
wpc to drive a pair of Audio Physics
Tempo 25 floorstanders ($7500) that sounded extremely focused, very
transparent and very dynamic. Perhaps an analog front end would have made this
a little more palpable for me. Another Audio Physics speaker on silent display
was their larger Cardeas that exhibited a fair amount of bling on the side
panels as well as a concealed woofer.
One of the larger conference rooms was a huge display of
various brands carried by the Canadian distributor AudioScape
Canada. I wasn't ten feet in the door before I recognized Joe Skubinski of JPS Labs
expounding the importance of quality cables to young budding audiophiles. This
is important mission work for our industry. Joe had been absent the Canadian
scene since 2005, even though he lives just across the border in
Buffalo
,
New York
. He returned this year with his lovely wife Diane, but left the kids at home
to fill the incoming orders over the weekend.
At the far end of the AudioScape
Canada room was several models of Usher
speakers driven by various PrimaLuna
gear. They also distribute the sister company, Mystere
and seemed to have virtually every model on silent display. On the analog
front they had numerous turntables from Nottingham
Analogue Studio of
England
(not
Wales
). But even more surprising was a display of a handful of models of Dual
fully automatic turntables from
Germany
, ranging in price from $429 to their gold trimmed CS 455-1 Automatic belt
drive table for $999, each table sold complete with a mounted cartridge. They
sure had a familiar look. The biggest small item I discovered at the show was
the Dual USB Capture Karte ($100) that allows turntables to connect to a USB
port on your computer for archiving your LPs on computer, or loading up your
MP3 players. I have at least one friend who needs to hear about this! Speaking
of analogue, Allan Feldstein,
President of AudioScape
Canada
, hinted that there would be a phono stage from PrimaLuna in the future…but
couldn't say when.
I heard the large Usher BE20
DMD floorstander with diamond coated tweeter ($25,800) driven very nicely by
the PrimaLuna Dialogue 7 monoblocks ($6600/pr) preceded by a
PrimaLuna Dialogue Three preamp being fed from a PrimaLuna Prologue Eight CD
player with tube output stage, but with all the displays around the room and
the conversations going on it wasn't possible to get a definitive listen.
That said, it was still obvious that these are masterfully crafted and very
worthy components. They were also quite capable of filling the large room with
sound, though I suspect they were using the 70 watt ultralinear mode rather
than the 40 watt triode mode. I'm a fan of triode mode, so it would be a
treat to hear this rig in a smaller, more intimate setting.
Pioneer was
playing big band music on a rig that might have been a surround sound set up
for all I could tell. Since I didn't relate well to this music and time was
running short, I moved on to their other room which had a lot of Pioneer
surround receivers on silent display. I asked about the big screen TV that was
in use, hoping that it might be an intro with trickle-down technology from
their now defunct Kuro line, but no, it was just the last of the Mohicans...er,
Kuros.
Naim
is another room that was hard to get a handle on. Many of the hosts were
clustered in conversation, though someone eventually helped me sort things
out.
A small rig (about $4K) was comprised of the Uniti
all-in-one player combined with the n-Sat speakers I've talked about in
previous years. The big story here was their new Unitiqute, and upgraded
all-in-one solution that allows you to use all of today's technology, as
long as it's digital related. CD, however, is not today's technology in
Naim's view and was not mentioned in the brochure.
I guess CD has finally gone the way of the LP, which is
really good news since LP playback didn't start to get really good until the
advent of the CD. Perhaps in the face of media streaming the CD will step up
to its heretofore unrealized potential.
The Monitor Audio
room had a nice sound coming from modest looking floorstanders, but their
newest speakers, including the one on the cover of the current issue of
Stereophile magazine, were not in an active system on Sunday afternoon. What
intrigued me were the R-45 wall-mounted cubes shown here with rear firing
tweeters and available in multiple lifestyle finishes for $200 apiece. Team up
five of them with one of two sizes of matching subwoofers for a really cute
surround system for a modest size room.
Click here for next
page.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
