FSI 2008

Mutine's Pascal Ravach was demonstrating the small, but striking, Duevel Planets omnidirectional speakers (CDN$1495/pair), The Planets consist of a floorstanding vented cabinet with an upward-firing 5" woofer and 1" horn-loaded tweeter. The drivers fire against reflective spheres, which disperse the sound.

It was the dimpled appearance of the aluminum-coned drivers used by Elac's FS 249 loudspeaker that caught my attention. I had been impressed by this German company's engineering expertise when I had auditioned its speakers at other Shows, and the sound of the reflex-loaded FS 249s, driven by Hovland amplification, with Audience cables and power conditioning, was open, clean, and transparent. The FS 249 uses a ribbon tweeter, but was being demonstrated at FSI with an auxiliary supertweeter (the mushroom-shaped device atop each speaker). Sadly, my auditioning was interrupted by someone wanting to hear some power rock at sufficiently high a level that I felt it best to make a graceful exit from the room. Guess I must be getting old :-)

Emanuel Lafleur had a pair of his $8000/pair (estimated final price) stand-mounted two-way X1 monitors set up in the press room. Great for reaching the press, not so great for good sound, since the press room was dominated by a huge roundtable right where the sweet spot would have been. Nevertheless, the X2s sounded impressive enough that both John Marks and I were captivated.

Check back starting April 3 for live reports from the show.

GamuT makes electronics as well as speakers, and they introduced a new model at the show. The Si100 is a $120Wpc integrated, similar in design—and, they claim, sound—to their $11,000 Di150, but priced at $6200. (I was going to say "only," but, of course, $6200 is still a good bit of change for most people.)

One of Gershman Acoustics's dem rooms was next door to my hotel room. I was well aware, therefore, the night before the Show opened, of the pains the Canadian speaker company was taking to get the best sound from their affordable Sonogram loudspeakers (CDN$3695/pair). The result, using a system based on Audio Research CD3 Mk.2 player, LS26 preamplifier, and Reference 110 power amplifier, and Gershman's own cables was impressive.

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 Harbeth">http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1293harbeth/">Harbeth HL-P3ES2 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 Stereophile'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.