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If there was a theme for HE2007, it seemed to be alcohol. People waiting in line for the Cinepro demo were offered vodka and orange juice. I heard that KEF had a model / bartender making martinis for visitors to their room. New distributor Sjofn Hi Fi offered their guests Gevalia coffee, Swedish cakes and finger sandwiches in the morning; by 4:30 they were giving away beer and Absolut. I didn't see everything at the show, nor did I photograph everything I listened to, but here a few photos of things that interested or amused or annoyed me.
Retailers like Music Direct, Elusive Disc, and Acoustic Sounds were in Ballroom E. If you were looking for vinyl in Manhattan this weekend this was the place to be. I bought the Love Beatles remix LP and Mobile Fidelity's SACD of Little Richard's first album. I can't imagine many audiophiles listening to "Tutti Fruiti" but I'm glad MoFi is cool enough to do a perfectionist mastering of this deathless trash.
This is the Scaena speaker that impressed another inmate. I couldn't get a sense of what the speakers were capable of since the manufacturer played only twee female vocalists that wouldn't strain a mini - monitor.One of the Scaena's two woofers that had little to do because of the dainty demo music. I didn't catch the name of the power amp with the obnoxious ring of LEDs but it's from Germany.
The Zu Speakers room with the $2800/pair Druid on the left. That thing behind it that looks like an old radio is a subwoofer that wasn't hooked up. I'd never heard the Druids before and was quite impressed. They were powered by a Melody integrated amp making 18 watts from a pair of push - pull 2A3s in each channel. The Zu guys were blasting Led Zeppelin when I walked into their room.
This is Cayin's H-80A hybrid integrated amp. It does 80 watts / channel in class A and double that in class AB, weighs 77 pounds, and costs all of $3000. I liked the retro 70s - Phase Linear styling. Note also the high tech stand under it.
The Cayin / VAS / Aurum Cantus room.
This is Soundsmith's strain guage cartridge. It's not obvious in this picture but the cartridge has headlights - six little elements in the front of the body light up in blue when the cartridge is powered up. The cartridge and entry level power supply are $6K. The top o' the line power supply / preamp has displays that show groove deflection and vertical tracking force as a record is played!
These are the Lominchay "Mandarin Supreme" speakers. They start at $80,000 and go up from there depending on finish and whether you want the optional digital crossover. That's a 12" woofer.
This is Cabasse's "Le Sphere" speaker and its integrated stand. A pair of these will cost you $150,000! Inside the big ball is a 22" woofer and 3 other concentric drivers. The speakers must be quad - amped via a digital crossover so Cabasse demonstrated them with 4 pairs of Bel Canto switching amps for a total of 8 kilowatts of amplification. As I recall the Cabasse rep said the speakers went down to about 20Hz in the medium sized demo room but will typically go down to 12Hz in a customer's home. One of their music selections was a close - miked drum solo which probably didn't make their neighbors happy. The speakers could literally shake the floor and walls in the room and sound unstrained doing it. There was a certain hedonistic pleasure in hearing a lot of air moving.
TAD's Reference 1 speakers, powered by 4 MSB mono amps.
TAD's Anthony Jones demonstrated his speakers with a first - generation reel to reel copy of a Patricia Barber master tapes. Ms. Barber's recordings are omnipresent at hi fi shows.Unfortunately I neglected to get a picture of the single most impressive thing I heard at the show, the Guru QM-10 speaker in the above - mentioned Sjofn Hi Fi room. The Guru is a seemingly unremarkable little box maybe a half cubic foot in volume with a 4" "woofer" and a dome tweeter and port slot across the lower front. The Guru was placed close to the back wall in the small demo room. The rest of the system was a CD player and amp from hitherto unknown Swedish firms; the whole system was priced at $3000 (the speakers are $1850). To be honest I wasn't expecting much from the room, I went in mostly because I saw people coming out with glasses of soda and pastries and I was thirsty. When I sat down the Gurus were playing a jazz CD which sounded surprisingly good. "Aha, another sub / satellite system," I thought. I looked around for the woofer and not spotting one I asked where it was. The guy doing the demo said "if you can find a subwoofer in here you can have it - everything is coming from those speakers" and pointed at the Gurus. Another visitor asked to hear something with some more bass, so our host looked through his collection, said "this should do it," and loaded a CD-R and turned up the volume a little. He'd put on a track by Rammstein, a German industrial metal band with a roaring lead singer who sounds like a diesel truck engine. Oh my god! I was completely stunned by the big punchy sound coming out of the diminutive Gurus and especially by their bass. No speaker with a driver smaller than the one in my bedside clock radio should be able to go as low as the QM-10s did (Sjofn claims the speaker is flat to 35Hz and only 10dB down at 25Hz!). The QM-10s also imaged pretty well too. I've been going to audio shows for over 3 decades and I don't ever remember being so impressed. According to Sjofn the Guru QM-10 has been around for a number of years in Sweden and is something of a cult fave in Swedish audio circles. I wasn't alone in my astonishment at the speaker. When I went back later in the day the room was jammed (and not just for the free booze) and guys were filling out forms to get on Sjofn's mailing list as fast as one of the reps could hand them out.
Miscellany: Music Hall as usual had a terrific - sounding - for - the - money Epos / Creek system. I owned a pair of the original DCM Time Window speakers (almost 30 years ago!) and was happy to see that the company is not only still in existence but continues to make good value speakers. Their $1000 / pair TFE200 speaker sounded quite good. Clearaudio announced a new turntable with a platter levitated by a "ceramic magnetic bearing" but I didn't get to see it. For analog fans the most interesting news at the show might be the new entry - level turntable and arm from Continuum. OK, it's entry level if $50K is small change to you. Expect a Fremer review in a few months.
Follow Ups:
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Recovering Audiophile
Born again music lover.
Hello Rob: Just to tell you how much I enjoyed with those pictures and comments on them. It was indeed a good Show and a lot of fun with many interesting products and plenty of great guys to talk about audio. I hope you'll share more pictures with us in a second post. Thanks again, best, Antonio Machado.
Unfortunately those were all the pictures I took. I spent most of my time listening to the systems on display. What was your favorite system?I wish I'd taken a photo of the mob scene at the registration area on Saturday morning. What bonehead decided to put it in a narrow hallway across from both the elevators and stairs? Boy was that dumb.
My wife and I attended our first show in NY, and saw great set ups.But what turned our world up side down was the sound coming from the Sjofn hi fi speakers....It was so big, clear, easy on the ears, from such a small stand mounted boxes... They were being driven by a $800.00 xindak 80 wpc integrated amp, the cables were 100 a pair... even though a grill is not offered my wife wants a pair of these speakers... and I just bought a pair of single driver speakers 2 months ago.DOH!
While these little wonders were capable of deep, powerful bass, they clearly need boundary-reinforcement to do so. The downside of this need for placement near a wall is a lack of sound stage developement. I had them play a non-audiophile disk with a so-so soundstage, and the stereo image collapsed into the two speakers. That said, it was an impressive display of what entry-level done right can do with music, especially when Chinese manufacturing savings enter the picture.
The Guru loudspeakers are 100% developed and manufactured in Sweden. No Chinese components used at all. Drivers are made by Tymphany in Denmark on Guru specs.
Boxes made by a small carpenter's shop and paint jobs done by a custom HD/hotrod painter (7 or 8 layers of paint).
There is a QM10 version for use on mixer consoles. The console version is meant to be placed free field and does not take advantage of boundary reinforcement. Bass response is still very impressive and it reproduces bass very well down to 36 Hz (not the sub 30Hz you heard at the show, but still very good).
I was a beta tester for 18 months of the console version of the speaker and I enjoyed working with these very much. They are extremely accurate and you hear everything in them, and they are very easy on the ears. None of these very tiresome sharpended highs that you'll find with Genelecs and that causes listening fatigue. A perfect tool for a recording engineer. I have never experienced any lack of stereo image like you suggest, and believe me, I would have noticed! I worked proffessionally with these 6-10 hours every day for 18 months! Best Regards, Nils ViktorPS You're welcome to e-mail me with questions on my experience of the QM10's for proffessional use.
HowdyBesides being against the rules here to use different monikers, you undercut your credibility by doing so...
-Ted
I have betatested (as I thought I made clear) and I like the speakers. Should I not express this? Also a monitor needs to be flat, I talked to the designer about how the compensation for the intrinsic errors on the stereo system affects the fq response - hence my answer to that question. I am not aware of what a moniker is. Is it the user name? Not experienced with forums so I might have used an alias instead of my real name on one of the posts (I only made two posts in my whole life in any forum) Regards, Nils Viktor
HowdyNothing wrong with passing along info.
I was just pointing out the rules that you didn't follow and how it makes your posts look.
In each posting box it says "Moniker (Username)" which could to be a hint about what moniker means.
And right above each posting box and also at the top of the page there is a link to "Content Rules" and "Forum Rules"
Anyway, now you know.
-Ted
Agree about the regular disc spacial issue. I was among the first in the room on Friday, initially to see the turntable, but I stayed along time with the speakers. Once they started giving alcohol, it was impossible to get back in.But, I found the midrange on acoustic instruments to be very musical, a quality not in evidence everywhere in the show.
Gregg
I asked the Guru speakers' designer about placement (in the demo room they were very close to the rear wall and about a foot from the side walls). He didn't deny that the speakers are helped by boundary reinforcement. He said they're intended to be near the rear wall and at least one foot and preferably two or three feet from the side walls. The small hotel room prohibited getting the speakers any further out from the sides, and he said that affected the soundstaging somewhat.
Another nice set of pics. The power amp with the "obnoxious ring of LEDs" is the Behold BPA768 ($42,000).
most curious as to how their Be concentric drivers are doing.
there was a magical sense of realism in the TAD room, that was better than any other room I went into....fwiw
jerry g
for $160,000 total approx
I was underwhelmed by the TAD room. The sound of the system was rather sterile and unexpressive. To be fair to TAD I wasn't able to sit on the couch in the sweet spot and had to stand behind it so my ears were a couple of feet above the level of the tweeters. For whatever reason I never found myself drawn into the music. In comparison, Jeff Joseph's demo of a floor - standing speaker (RM-33Si maybe?) for example made unfamiliar music consistently compelling even though I was sitting several feet to the outside of the right speaker. The Zu guys played a cover of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song reimagined as an acoustic country song - a genre of music in which I usually have little interest - and it made me want to run over to the Virgin store in Times Square to buy the CD. TAD didn't help themselves by playing stereotypically wimpy audiophile music at a relatively low volume. You could almost drown out the demo by whispering. I'd think that one of the primary reasons for buying a large expensive full range speaker is to reproduce music at a bigger scale than small monkey coffins can ever do, yet TAD seemed reluctant to take the Ref 1 out of first gear and open 'er up. C'mon TAD, you had 400 watts behind each speaker, why not rock the house a little?
....when we played Pink Floyd and Supertramp at rock concert levels? You must not have stayed very long in the room. Most of the demos were at fairly high volume. You could have asked, and Andrew would have played your request.
I was highly impressed, moreso than with the TAD speakers at past shows. One thing to keep in mind, though, was the source material used in the rather controlled demos. One was a CD from Boz Scaggs that is being mastered using TAD speakers, an advantage not shared with most of your other recordings. The other source was a highly modded Technics reel deck with a tube output stage. The material was some new reel tape that is recorded at 15 i.p.s., and sold (at very high prices, no doubt) on 2 10" reels per album. Again, most consumers, even if they can afford the TADs and the amps from MSB (also quite impressive), will be able to assemble a large number of this kind of quality source material. So, the TAD did impress, but it should have, considering how carefully every part of the rig, including the source, was selected.
It's a digital unit and has gotten very good reviews, but it's REALLY expensive--somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k, if I remember correctly.
It is essentially a power DAC. Very interesting design, though those LEDs . . . UGH!
The amplifier is not digital but the controler(not preamp) is. The system maintains digital to the amp where 8 DACs/ channel convert digital to analog at the last minute. The amp is conventional analog.
a
The two mono amps, which had big blue lit circles on the front, cost $42,000 each. I thought the sound overall was excellent
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