In a light drizzle Tom and I skipped across the street to
the train station for another McBreakfast on Sunday morning. I spotted these
wonderful posters for Avian water that suggested the inner audiophile in all
of us, male or female. And yes, there were a few female aficionados in the
crowd. (Note, I am not a fan of bottled water for the usual ethical and green
reasons, but the posters were wonderful.)
Back at the ranch, I dropped down to the lower level once
again and looked up Ken Sim of Onda, a Canadian manufacturer of silver cables in Calgary, AB,
to return some cables I had picked up for review at the Toronto show last
fall. Before I had cleared time to review them, they had changed their design,
incorporating not only silver pins in their connectors, but in some cases
actually using the silver wire as the pin itself in the connectors, making the
signal path absolutely continuous without interruption of a soldered
connection. At Toronto I had listened to a wide spectrum of their
interconnects which ranged from very good to fabulous. I had used their entry
level model briefly at home and they were equally impressive, as you would
expect for $1000. I thought these cables were expensive relative to what I can
afford, but later at the show I was introduced to ultra-high-end cables that
made the Onda seem like a bargain. Ken was tied up in conversation with one of
the aforementioned audiophile women, an attractive curly hair brunette with
classic Ray-Ban Aviators, so I took a listen to the rig that was playing. An Acoustic
Arts Player ES CD player and DAC with USB and coaxial inputs was
the front end and an Acoustic Arts Amp II powered the new Joseph
Audio Perspective, a 36" tall floor stander that looked expensive
and sounded particularly good given the large size of the room. The room was
hosted by Tri-Cell Enterprises, a
Canadian distributor of very well-known top shelf brands. I fully intended to
return for a closer listen, but after returning the cables, I picked up where
I had left off in the lower level Grand Salons and unfortunately, never made
it back.
In the Focal/Devialet
room I poked around before listening to their big rig. The display of the
large woofer mounted in a Plexiglas stand made me think back to the prototype
Tri-Art speaker I had seen earlier. Possibly Focal doesn't realize what they
have here in the way of an open baffle subwoofer? The small XS Book
Music System consists of a pair of bookshelf speakers. The button on the top
of the one on the left is an "on/off" button, but also rotates to control
the volume of these contemporary powered speakers. I really wish I could have
had a listen to these. At $399 they pose some interesting possibilities for
computer, TV and small music systems. Moving on to more serious audiophile
speakers I noted the gorgeous new light walnut finish available in the Chorus
700V series which starts at $499, shown here with a champagne grille.
There is an inherent contradiction in the Devialet
D-Premier all-in-one system. It is a gorgeous piece, finished to the highest
standards, but if the idea of making a compact system is to make it less
cumbersome and obtrusive, why would you go to the effort of making it so
gorgeous and place it dead smack in the middle of the wall between the
speakers. Certainly a window with a view, or an intriguing work of art between
the speakers would be more appropriate. Maybe even a fireplace where the warm
glow of flame and embers would reach into the primal region of your soul would
be more appropriate when listening to the right kind of music. Now, obviously
the display was meant to showcase the product, and judging by the sound coming
from the Focal 1038 BE Electra
floor standers ($13,500) it succeeded very well. In fact, I was surprised how
close the Electra came to much larger and far more expensive Focal speakers
I've heard in the past. I heard the system with some opera, Chinese drums
and some jazz/pop. For those who are more interested in the music than the
equipment, the Devialet is a "one and done" solution. It was excellent,
and one of the Best Rooms at the
show. Next year perhaps they will trump this presentation with the use of some
out-of-sight high end in-wall speakers such as Wisdom Audio and have the
D-Premiere out of sight, presenting glorious music in an empty room.
A short visit to the darkened Polk
Audio room exposed me to a rock video performance with surround
sound. This was one of the very few home theater presentations this year and
it rekindled my fantasy of getting a video projector for the family room. The
buzz I've heard in the trade is that video projectors are coming on strong
in the lower to middle price points.
A new company to these shores is CH
Precision, a very high end company from Switzerland. The "CH",
however, are the first letter of the last names of the two founders,
coincidentally the bumper sticker symbol for Switzerland. Their D1 CD/SACD
disc drive fed their separate DAC. Below these in the rack shown here, the
preamp and power amp were from Constellation
Audio, driving the Magico
Q3 floor standing speaker. Everything was connected with very high end Argento
cable. The sound here was extremely precise and hence rather dry. I much
preferred the original Magico monitors driven by VAC amps that I heard years
ago in NYC. That said the new S5 hold great promise for tube lovers like me.
Of to the side was a single S5 floorstander ($28,600/pr), a
three-way design with 90dB efficiency and 8 Ohm impedance that will be much
more tube friendly than its predecessor. It will also come with a magnetically
attached grille. I spoke with Ricardo Reyes
from Musical Artisans in Skokie,
IL, just north of Chicago who is a retailer for Magico and a distributor for
CH Precision electronics, Argento cables and Organic
Audio cables, a sister cable company that is more price conscious,
using copper rather than ultra-high purity silver. The FMR (Full Master
Reference) flagship cable uses a fibrous material that is both an insulator
around the cable and compressed inside the connector. It actually looks like
the end grain of a piece of wood inside the XLR connector. The cable and
connector pins, and even the connector housing are the same high purity
silver. No solder is used — rather a set screw to secure the cable inside
the housing. Metal bars, intermittently spaced, separate the three conductors
over the length of the cable. A meter pair of interconnects costs $10,500 with
XLR connectors. Their Serenity Signature model sells for $2400 in XLR, or
$2300 in RCA.
In
the largest of the Coup
de Foudre rooms I was warmly greeted by Peter
McGrath, Director of Sales for Wilson
Audio, who gave me the run-down on the rig and treated me to some
of his recent master recordings. The uniform excellence of this room from year
to year is beguiling, especially considering that the featured speaker has
been the Wilson Sasha W/P, two years ago, the Alexandria 2 last year and now
the Sophia 3, not to mention the different amplifiers. In fact, the Sophia 3
($18,550) sounded as good as my distant recollection of the Sasha. Perhaps the
addition of the new Berkeley
Alpha DAC2 ($5095) tilted the playing field in the favor of the less expensive
Sophia 3. The VTL monoblocks this year were more moderately priced MB-185
III ($15,000) in place of the 600 watt VTL Siegfried model that drove the very
efficient Alexandria 2 a year ago. It was only afterward in conversation with Luke Manley, head of VTL that I learned the MB-185 III is
switchable from tetrode to triode mode where it puts out a very healthy 110
watts vs. 230 in tetrode. I wish I could have heard the difference, as I’m a
big triode fan — it just evokes more emotional response in me. Unlike the
Series II, these use the EL34 tube which they used in the de Luxe 225 model
earlier in their history. But it was not the overly warm EL34 sound I've heard
before with soft bass and rolled off treble. This rig had tight bass and gobs
of dynamics as I witnessed with ballsy, yet delicate cello music. There is a
lot of new technology in the Series III version including adjustable damping
and Series II versions are upgradable at the factory. I need to stress again
that the size of the Sophia 3 did not overpower the smaller room in which I
had heard it upstairs, yet with sufficient power it easily filled the much
larger room here. This is a wonderful speaker than can play in a lot of venues
with more modest gear as well as state of the art designs. Other gear in the
rig included a Luxman D38 CD player as transport ($4000), Transparent Reference Speaker cables and Interconnects
($26,000 worth), and a couple of humungous Elrod
Power Systems AC cables. Again this year, this was easily one of
the very Best Rooms at the show.
Stepping down a league or two in the Dynaudio
room I encountered a much more affordable speaker as well as the welcoming Michael
Manousselis, Director of Sales & Marketing for North America,
whom I've known for a good many years now. The little stand mounted monitor
Xeo 3 ($2300) includes a built-in DAC, and a separate transmitter into which
you can connect virtually all your digital source toys from computers to
Smartphones. Up to four can be connected at once using the USB, TosLink, RCA
and Minijack inputs. From this point, you use a remote control to select the
input and direct it to one of three possible rooms. Additional pairs of
speakers are $350 less because you do not need additional transmitters. The
floorstanding Xeo 5 is $4500 if you desire more bass response. The XEO 3 is
based on the Excite 12 monitor I loved so much a year or two ago, and the XEO
is based on the Excite 32 speaker, both ported designs. While you do not need
signal cables, you will need a power cord to each speaker. The AC power input
is the figure 8 C7 style and the supplied cords should be sufficient.
Aftermarket cords and IEC to C7 adapters are available if you wish to
experiment, but you wouldn't want a beefy power cord on the stand mounted
monitor that might pull it off. While the system will take care of stereo
sound from DVD and Blu-ray players as well as from TVs with analog or digital
outputs, it does not appear to be capable of surround sound applications. But
then, good stereo bests mediocre surround sound any day in my book and the
Dynaudio Xeo delivers. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a still photo of
these beauties, probably because they were dressed in piano black rather than
the optional piano white, thus providing evidence against my hypothesis that
White is the new Black.
Before I could get out the door, Michael introduced me to
James Shannon of T + A Elektroakustik, a German full-line manufacturer. I was
familiar with some of their electronics, but they also make a very handsome
line source loudspeaker. They have teamed up with Dynaudio for distribution in
North America which should give them an even larger presence. James was proud
to show me their new DAC 8 which was just introduced in Germany and will
arrive in North America in another month. It has a full complement of inputs
including USB and is a balanced design with multiple Burr Brown 32 bit
chipsets allowing processing of all inputs at up to 24-bit/192kHz. There are
both balanced and single ended outputs. It also includes a high quality
headphone amplifier with volume control. There are four proprietary filters as
well as DSP time and phase correction and two switchable analog outputs for
high and low bandwidth to better mate it with the capabilities of your system.
Target price is less than $3000 in the United States. This could be very
interesting.
Still to come, a few more interesting rooms, plus one of
the most extraordinary presentations I've ever heard. Stop back later in the
week for the final wrap-up.
Click here for part 5.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
