RMAF 2012

As a card-carrying member of The Insecure, I tend to clam up when I'm around people who are considerably more intelligent or well-informed than I. Consequently, I had embarrassingly little to say in the presence of Bricasti Audio's Brian Zolner, whose understanding of the various digital-filtering choices offered by his company's M1 D/A converter ($8495) was as deep as it was generously and at times even humorously offered. In any event, the Bricasti sounded fine at the front of a system in which a pair of Harbeth HL5 loudspeakers ($5690/pair) was driven by the undeniably beautiful Dan D'Agostino Momentum Stereo amplifier ($25,000).

It was that rarest of rare occasions in audio-show reporting: I entered the demonstration room of a brand that was unfamiliar to me, and was impressed at once by a sort of musical rightness I seldom hear from modern playback gear. Sure, I was familiar with the company that made the CD player, preamp, and monoblock amps in use—Electrocompaniet, whose solid-state amps are among the few I consider worthy of comparison to the best tube designs—but the Austrian loudspeaker manufacturer Brodmann Acoustics was new to me. Their stand-mounted Festival S ($4500/pair), driven by a pair of Electrocompaniet AW180 monoblocks ($5425 each) allowed the solo violin in a Paganini work to have far greater than usual texture, tone, and presence. Based on my experience at RMAF, the pairing of these two brands is something you should go out of your way to hear.

OMG. It’s 4pm on Sunday, the show is over, and I have three rooms left to cover. Dash to door number one. It’s already locked. Next to door number two. It’s locked as well. Is this going to be the worst episode of Let’s Make A Deal ever known to man or audiophile, I wonder, or will I find the pot of gold behind door number three?

Well, kind of. The door opens, there are boxes everywhere, and Larry Alan Kay, former co-founder of Fi—the audiophile magazine that ran all those recipes for audiophiles who like to drink and chomp while they listen—is packing up the BSG Technologies QOL Signal Completion Stage.

Not listed in the Show Guide but providing the power in the Fidelis room was the Bully Sound Corporation’s 60S class-A amplifier ($7900). BSC is a new company founded by Brett D’Agostino, son of one Dan D’Agostino, and with the Harbeth Monitor 30.1 speakers ($5995/pair) so beloved by Sam Tellig, JD Souther’s “New Kid in Town,” played with J River Media Center sending the data to Bricasti’s superb M1 DAC ($8495) via USB, sounded sweet. Until I noticed the Stein Harmonizers sprinkled around the room. (You can see one sitting on top of the speaker.) Would the system sound so good without the Steins? I didn’t dare ask, though Mikey Fremer swears they made his system sound worse!

The big news in Soundsmith land, besides the fact that Peter Ledermann’s fastest top-of-the-line Hyperion cartridge with its cactus spine and diamond tip was making wonderful sound in multiple rooms at RMAF, was the introduction of the Hyperion Mk.II ($7500). Boasting great channel separation, its 10-year warranty includes retipping for the original owner.

According to Bob Farinelli of Bob Carver LLC, the legendary designer has “made some adjustments” to the sound of his 35-driver Bob Carver ALS line-source speakers with active tube based crossover network ($19,700/pair). I’ll say. The sound has improved greatly since I blogged Carver’s speaker and electronics at AXPONA in early June. The system’s subwoofer may have overloaded the small room—this is not the first or the last time you’ll read about bass overload in these blogs—but the line array’s ability to reproduce the timbre of an unnamed jazz trumpeter’s instrument was spot-on.

Rob Robinson of Channel D (Pure Music and Pure Vinyl, left) and Paul Erlandson of Lynx Studio Technologies (right), along with Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio (in absentia), had plenty of reason to smile. In addition to announcing that Channel D’s Pure Music 1.9 ($129, updated without charge for current owners) is due October 30, and Pure Vinyl 3.1 ($279) is coming out a week earlier, on October 23, the system they had assembled was producing wonderful sound despite its far less than stellar set-up. . .