Saturday
Brazilian manufacturer Lautz Audio offers a wide range of loudspeakers. Seen here is their Daibalus Studio ($750 USD per pair) that has two 5-inch midrange/bass drivers with a 1-inch silk surround/aluminum dome tweeter. With a 92dB sensitive at 8 Ohms, the frequency response is from 40Hz to 27kHz (-3dB) using a front port to assist with lower frequencies. Their Diabalus Assimetrica ($850 per pair) is the same basic configuration yet with rear porting. The Assimetrica has some internal upgrades including van den Hul cable, Solen capacitors, and hand wound coils. The coils use 3mm wire and were impressively well made.
The Verity Audio room naturally had their Lohengrin loudspeakers ($55,000 USD). For digital duties was the dCS Verdi SACD transport/player, Elgar DAC, and Purcel upsampler. Nagra's MPA pre-amplifier, PL-L pre-amplifier and VPA monoblock tube amplifiers could also be enjoyed by show attendees. XLO Signature 2 Unlimited Edition and also their Limited Edition cabling round out this impressive, if costly, system.
Darn... still packed tight at the Pacific Music room. Second reminder to self, stop back later.
Gramohone had a very nice room with a rack of Rega gear including their Jupiter CD player, Cursa pre-amplifier, Maia amplifier, Planet VD player, and Mira integrated amplifier.
Gramophone also had on display the Audio Analogue Maestro 150 watt stereo integrated amplifier, Paganni CD player, Bow Technologies ZZ8 CD
player and their Wazoo XL 75 watt integrated stereo amplifier. Lastly, the Bryston 4B SST stereo amplifier was at the bottom of the rack, yet it produces a staggering 300 watts into each channel.
In another Gramophone room they had various demonstrations using the Bow Wizard, various Van den Hul, Rega P3 turntable, and lastly various PS Audio products.
Lutron offers everything from simple home automation to their GRAFIK Eye system that provides many variables in component, illumination, and other duties.
Epson is still holding on to LCD technologies (versus more modern DLP) with their PowerLite 8300i video projector. This unit has a very wide array of video input capabilities and provides audio/video source switching as well.
As we are in Brazil, Sony had a wall of flat panel video screens with highlights from Carnival recorded in HDTV. Ah yes, Carnival in
Brazil...
Not a brand seen often at high-end shows is Sherwood, now under the Sherwood Newcastle brand name. Seen here is their R-863T receiver ($2,200 USD) featuring their Wide Range Amplifier Stage (WRAS). This stage provides a very wide frequency response and wide dynamics. The receiver decodes an array of signals including dts, Dolby Digital, and Pro-Logic II. There are seven channels of amplification and upwards of 24-bit/192kHz digital to analog conversion.
Continuing the receiver theme, at the show was a Yamaha's RXV 3300 with all the audio and video goodies… and a rear panel that may need its own zip code! Count
'em... six TosLink jacks, 66 female RCA jacks, 24 loudspeaker terminals... Enter the usual surround sound and signature sound effects Yamaha is known for and have one heck of a receiver!
Wanted to revisit the Velodyne room as they were showing their Digital Drive System that allows for critical adjustments of their top-line subwoofers for proper room/system integration. These subwoofers include their smaller DD-10 and DD-12 (10 inch and 12 inch drivers) plus their DD-18 that sports a very impressive 18 inch dynamic driver).
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Sunday's coverage.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
