TAVES 2013 (Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show) Repor
Part 4 By Rick Becker

Vmax Services chose to take a booth rather than a room at TAVES. Richard Kohlruss has been a familiar face for more than a decade at the Montreal show where he would always cram more interesting products into a room than anyone else. This usually meant it was too crowded to really hear anything anyway…so went the silent display route at TAVES. New this time were a Vela 50 wpc integrated amplifier with a very nice mm phono section, headphone input and MP3 input along with a matching CD player with a Teac drive. Each is in the $900 range and price is low because the chassis are made in Asia while the circuit boards and assembly are done in Tuscany, Italy under the auspices of Audio Analogue, a very well respected brand. Hegel, from Oslo, Norway came out with the H-80, replacing the H-70 integrated amp with a built-in DAC and about 80wpc, five digital inputs and a display from the H-300 model all for the same price as the H-70, $2000. Using a HiFi Man adapter attached to the speaker outputs of the H-80 they had connected a HiFi Man HE6 headphone which is a notably inefficient headphone. (Another trick to add to my memory bank.) Next up was a QAT MS-5 Music Server from China. You can feed it a CD through a slot to rip it to play with either Android or Apple tablets or telephones. It has both balanced and unbalanced outputs as well as USB inputs to use with the internal DAC (that also has a digital output) and 2T hard drive. Price is a serious $5900 in black, silver, green, blue or the anodized red shown. Also new was a Stello HP100 high end preamp & headphone amp along with USB DAC that can be tweaked with various filters, all for $1200 USD. Next up was the new Alpha Dog from Mr. Speaker out of California, a $600 headphone that follows on the heels of his very successful Mad Dog headphones for $300. One thing is for sure; Richard always has a lot of very nice toys on his plate.

 

V-Moda, makers of a variety of headphones caught my interest with their new V-Moda Faders which take the earbud technology and apply it to noise abatement. These earplugs were said to drop the noise 20dB so I begged a review sample and tried them on the drive home. They come with a variety of rubber fitments and a lanyard to keep you from losing them, as well as to make you look very cool. So cool, in fact, that I breezed right through Customs at the border. In addition to being useful when using the chain saw or leaf blower or under a full-face motorcycle helmet (which is notorious for creating noise), it is also useful for traveling to and from audio shows when you don't want the road noise to dull your precious hearing right before auditioning $50,000 speakers. They seemed to be only "OK" at first, until I inserted them deeper into the ear canal. Properly inserted, they drop the noise way down, allowing only road noise in bass region to slightly impose. They are far superior to the squishy foam barrels I had been using and made for an enjoyable drive home.

 

However, if you are trying to get music into your ears you might be more interested in the high end Studio MP3 player from High Sound Audio, about $550 for Class A electronics in this 3^rd Anniversary edition.

 

In the AuDIYo booth I found a vast array of Furutech connectors and cables as well as Furutech ADL brand components. A new line called Zavfino from Taiwan also offered cables and connectors at reasonable prices. As well as carrying DACT and Mundorf parts, they offer kit components for various tube amp projects. Simon Au pulled himself away from his official duties with the TAVES show to make a guest appearance at his booth with his long-time associate, Layton, whom I've known for many years. They were eager to show me the new ADL X1 portable headphone amp with a 24-bit/192kHz USB DAC for around $499 retail. It supports iDevices, Androids and PCs with a lot of flexibility complete with Li-ion rechargeable battery. This is well worth checking out if you are a person who is always on the go.

 

Somewhere in the milieu of the Vanity A room I spotted a very handsome pair of Burson Audio Timekeeper amplifiers with custom built transformers that dance in stereo to the tune of 80 wpc or bridge to monoblocks with either RCA or XLR inputs to put out 240 watts each which seem like a lot of power from a relatively small enclosure.

 

Perfect Sound was offering jewelry-like earphones for $259 if your wife or girlfriend needs a little more bling in her life. They looked a little like the Alpha Dogs with an extreme make-over. Who said audio can't be glamorous?

 

The Ontario Vintage Radio Association was visibly, if not audibly present. It looked like they were expanding into vintage television as well.

 

Bernard Li of Charisma Audio also opted for a booth this year and was very happy to show me the new Well Tempered Amadeus Mk2 turntable ($2850). Most notable about the Mk2 was the suspended golf ball used as a pivot has been horizontally cut in half and a new top affixed so it no longer looks like a golf ball. Other models in the Well Tempered line are priced above and below the Amadeus Mk2. Well Tempered is designed in the USA and manufactured in China making them very affordable for the level of music they reproduce. On the other end of the tonearm was the new Charisma Audio MC-1 low output moving coil cartridge (0.4mv output) that will retail for $995, which should gather some immediate attention at that price. Also on silent display was the entry level Hannl record vacuum that features a rotary brush that scrubs the surface of the LP. It retails for about $3000. And under bright lights were Vicoustic acoustic tiles of various artistic flavors to keep the sound in your room under control and/or away from your neighbors in the next apartment. Lastly, CA Electronics from the Netherlands manufactures some very nice connectors. Seen here were silver plated spades with 5.9 to 7.8mm opening, silver plated phosphor bronze banana pins for either soldering or screw connection, and silver plated locking RCA connectors with alloy shells.

 

You're looking at one very well-traveled recording artist in the form of Todd Garfinkle (M*A Recording) who records music in churches, galleries and classical venues that impart sonic virtues that cannot be captured in a recording studio. He's standing at one end of a 10-foot long table full of his recordings.

 

---> Next Page.