John Atkinson

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.

Restocking the magazines on the <I>Stereophile</I> booth, I saw a familiar face on the booth next door. Audio industry veteran Jim Smith was selling (and autographing) copies of his book <I>Get Better Sound</I>, which is, as the name suggests, about how to get better sound from your system.

Since the demise of of its own Show, <I>Stereophile</I> has been supporting North American audio Shows, which was why you can find us at RMAF in Denver and <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">SSI in Montreal</A>. 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.

Listening to a Toni Braxton cut on the LSA1 Statement speakers ($2599/pair), driven by an Exemplar-modded Denon 2910 DVD player and LSA's hybrid integrated amplifier (reviewed by <I>Stereophile</I> when it was called the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/606dk/">DK Designs VS.1 Reference Mk.III</A>), I was struck by how much low-frequency information was coming from this nicely finished two-way stand-mount.

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.

When I walked into the room of Chicago-based Acoustic Technology LLC, I thought I was listening to speakers that only had tweeters, because the only visible drive-unity was a single 3" unit. Yet the sound, a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Schererazade, was definitely full-range,and the soundstaging, as you might expect from such a small radiating diameter and a narrow cabinet baffle, was well-delineated.

One of the first rooms I visited at RMAF was the one shared by Luxman and Vivid distributor On a A Higher Note and cable manufacturer Synergistic Research. Auditioning the South African Vivid Giya speakers ($58,000/pair) had been a <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2009/vivid_vivids/">highlight of the 2009 CES</A> and I wanted to repeat the experience before the speakers wended their way to Wes Phillips' place for a forthcoming <I>Stereophile</I> review.