In a show that is distinguished by very good signage, <A HREF="http://www.bluecircle.com/">Blue Circle's</A> room is marked by what designer Gilbert Yeung proclaimed "the ugliest signs in the show." Yeung, an indefatigable self-promote, arrived at FSI, only to discover the show had provided no signs for the room. Yeung ran with the concept, deliberately lettering his own signs in a childish "Chinglish."
Dynaudio's 30th-anniversary Sapphire speakers had impressed the heck out of the magazine's scribes at other Shows, so I made a point of taking a listen in the room the Danish manufacturer was sharing at FSI with home-team electronics manufacturer Simaudio. The system included Simaudio's Moon SuperNova CD player, Moon P-7 preamplifier, and Moon W-7 power amplifier, all wired with Siltech cable. The speakers are not that large, visually, and use a pair of 8" woofers per side, but they appear to have excellent bass performance, to judge by the ease they reproduced some subterranean stirring on a performance of Miles Davis' "So What" from a Flanger CD called <I>Midnight Sounds</I>. Then I noticed that there wasn't a CD playing!
I was as impressed as <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fsi2008/040408muon/">Robert Deutsch had been</A> with KEF's $140k/pair Muons, and enjoyed a couple of tracks from the late Joe Zawinul's <I>Faces & Places</I> CD, Musical Fidelity's new 750k Supercharger monoblocks driving the speakers to satisfyingly high levels. Except there was no CD playing. It turned out I was listening to a 320kbps AAC file on an iPod sitting in the Wadia dock you can see in the photo. This takes an I<SUP>2</SUP>S digital output from a late-generation iPod and KEF were using the S/PDIF datastream to drive the digital input of the Musical Fidelity CD player at the top of the equipment stack. Given how much <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/">ink I have spilled recently</A> on the dangers of lossy-compressed file formats, my face must have been as red as the room’s illumination had been at the time.
Not too long after I got my first audio magazine job in 1976, I reported on the founding of a new speaker company, Harbeth, featuring the designs from ex-BBC engineer Dudley Harwood, who had pioneered the use of polypropylene as a cone material. Dudley is long since retired but I have followed his company's progress with interest since it was acquired by Alan Shaw, and the little <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1293harbeth/">Harbeth HL-P3ES2</A> has long been a favorite of mine. Harbeth's Canadian distributor, Planet Sound, was demonstrating the larger Super HL5 speakers (around $5000/pair), the next step up from the Compact 7ES-3 that has been a favorite of both John Marks and Sam Tellig in <I>Stereophile</I>'s pages. The sound with Audio Research electronics (CD3 Mk.3 player, LS26 preamp, and Ref.110 power amplifier) suffered a bit from a rather boomy room acoustic, but Ella Fitzgerald dueting with Louis Armstrong worked her magic.
It is to be expected at Shows that cost-no-object systems will sound great. But it is also a joy to listen to modest systems that over-achieve. In one of the two rooms sponsored by Bluebird Music, a pair of Neat Motive 2 tower speakers (CDN $2195/paor) made sweet sounds driven by the Exposure 2010S integrated amplifier that had so impressed Art Dudley in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/1105exposure/">November 2005</A> and the English company's matching 2010S CD player. System price with Chord Company Chameleon Silver Plus interconnect and Carnival 2 speaker cable was a very affordable CDN $5274. I listened to my recording of Hyperion Knight playing the three Gershwin <I>Preludes</I> and was impressed by the balance of performance on offer.
Here, in the "Elements" blog, I like to try to point out some of the fun, interesting, entertaining stuff that can be found in other parts of the truly vast and wonderful webworld that is stereophile.com. That's, basically, what yesterday's post was all about—that and my own emotional and psychological issues, which I like to throw in there to keep things exciting for you readers.
The idea of mating a dynamic woofer to a ribbon midrange/tweeter is appealing on paper. Such a "hybrid" loudspeaker would have the many advantages of a dipole ribbon transducer, yet be more practical and affordable than full-range ribbon designs. Among the ribbon's great strengths is its narrow vertical dispersion (reducing the ceiling and floor reflections), contributing to the ribbon driver's well-deserved reputation for transparency, terrific soundstaging, transient zip, and excellent resolution of detail. By adding a dynamic woofer to a ribbon midrange/tweeter, the system cost can be contained compared to a full-range design.
"Cinema—musique—beaux-arts." That's what it says on Mario Boisvert's business card. His Montreal store, Le Ren Art Bleu, sells LPs, CDs, original art, and Blu-ray discs. How is that for diversification? He had some of each at FSI—with just about the lowest priced I've seen for Blu-ray discs.
Never mind all those fancy audio components; this is all you need. Well, maybe not if you're the typical <I>Stereophile</I> reader or FSI attendee. This RCA console stereo (model SFA 1091) is <I>circa</I>-1968, and I note that it's "All Transistor." It was a part of a display of vintage audio equipment at FSI from the Emile Berliner exhibit at the Montreal Musee des Ondes.
After seeing $140,000 speakers, it's always good to encounter products that really are affordable by almost any standard. I expect these $250/pair Scandyna Micropod SE speakers to say "Take Me To Your Leader," and I'd like to have a pair if only because they're just so cute. No idea of the sound, but they have an impeccable pedigree, with links to the legendary B&W Nautilus.