Stereophile's Budget Bulls-Eye
It's always nice to see yourself, or at least the vehicle for your thoughts, in the spotlight. That's certainly what happened in the Peachtree-Zu room, which paired the Peachtree Audio Nova ($1200) integrated amplifier, which was featured on Stereophile’s August cover, with Zu Essence speakers ($3500/pair). Add in the Apple TV and $500 worth of Zu cables, and you have quite a nifty system that delivered excellent sound.
An Imposing Legacy
Okay, boys and girls, does size really matter? Certainly in the case of Legacy Loudspeaker Systems. These $46,000/pair behemoths, which dwarf Legacy President Bill Dudleston, possess tremendous authority below the belt, and project an image big enough to do justice to a full symphonic orchestra. It was hard to get all the details down amidst the din leaking in from other rooms, but I'm pretty sure their lower 15" sealed woofer is driven by its own 1000W module, while everything else, including the open-air top 15" woofer, is driven by external amplification.
April's One-Box Solution
My attention was caught by the USB flash drive sticking out of the side of the Aura Premier CD player/receiver/headphone amplifier ($2595) in one of the April Music/May Audio rooms. And so it should have caught my attention, because it was styled by noted English industrial designer Kenneth Grange, responsible for some of ther classic B&W designs on the 1970s and '80s. The Premier will play MP3, WMA, and Ogg Vorbbis files from its USB-B input and it also has a USB-A port that will accept data sampled at up to 48kHz with 16-bit resolution.
Auspicious Debut
Until I encountered the world premiere of the imposing Wharfedale Airedale Neo loudspeaker ($20,000/pair), I hadn't run into speakers from the 70-year old company in many a year. The wait was worth it. This wonderful-sounding speaker, which weighs over 125 lbs and can handle up to 400W power, boasts point-to-point wiring, frequency response of 25Hz–45kHz, and 88dB senstivity.
Axpona in 2010
Since the demise of of its own Show, Stereophile has been supporting North American audio Shows, which was why you can find us at RMAF in Denver and SSI">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">SSI in Montreal. Next March, we are partnering with the Axpona Show in Florida, which had a booth at RMAF. The booth was manned, er, personed by two beautiful girls but, of course, when I went back with my camera, they had left for the day.
Beautiful Sound
I was glad that Darren and Bonnie Censullo's Avatar Acoustics demmed four new products at RMAF, because they created a synergistic match that produced beautiful sound.
Bellisima and Joseph
As expected, Bel Canto Design's complement of components fully lived up to their reputation for affordable excellence. The top-of-the-line e.One CD2 CD transport/player ($2995), prototype DAC 3.5 (price not yet set), two REF500M Balanced mono amplifiers ($1995/each), REF VBS1 Virtual Battery Supply, which can power up to three front-end products ($1495), USB Link 24/96 USB to /SPDIF link ($495), and new USB Lightlink High Speed Optical ST glass-fiber link (price not supplied) were fed by an Airport Express-equipped computer server. As Bel Canto President Michael McCormick explained, "The DAC 3.5's excellent jitter rejection is at the center of the system." A Running Springs Power Conditioner completed the chain… except for one major component, the speakers.
Bit-Perfect Playback
The sixth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had already closed when I finally had the time to stop by Reference Recordings’ booth to check out their latest mouth-watering HRx high-resolution master WAV file DVD-Rs. There I encountered Demian Martin, who, together with Ray Burnham, has produced the Auraliti (pronounced Aurality) disc player ($800).
Breakthrough Approach to Audio Measurement
Cable manufacturers Nordost and Vertex AQ had good reason to present their joint seminar, "New Approach to Audio Measurement: Why Cables Really Matter," no less than five times during the show. As Art Dudley will report at length in his December "Listening" column, their groundbreaking new approach to measurement, developed by Nordost and Vertex AQ in collaboration with military electronic-engineering consultant Gareth Humphrey Jones, has produced an entirely new method for measuring the audible effects of components on sound. We're talking not only cables, support platforms, and the like, all of which can now be unequivocally shown to affect a system's sound quality, but also CD players, amplifiers, and speakers.
Celebrating JGH with the Real Thing
Bea Lam's Martini party in honor of J. Gordon Holt—that's Bea at the right of the photo— concluded with a solo violin recital to remind partygoers what high-end audio is all about.