CES 2012 – Vivid Audio, Luxman, Audio Aero


This room featured the Vivid Audio B1 speakers driven by a Luxman integrated and a Brinkmann Bardo turntable. I did not get to hear the new Audio Aero La Fontaine CD / SACD player.

I like the Vivid speakers, the can sound very energetic, integrated and with lots of separation. However with this system, which we’ve heard variations of several times, the sound is muddy and dull, and not to my taste.


The Vivid Audio B1 loudspeaker


The Vivid Audio B1 loudspeaker


The Brinkmann Bardo turntable


The Brinkmann Bardo turntable and tube power supply there on the left


The Brinkmann Bardo turntable and Brinkmann Pi cartridge


The Brinkmann Bardo turntable from the side / below. You can easily see the feet and spindle.


The Luxman SQ-N10 integrated amplifier [there were two different Luxman integrateds in this room, not sure which one they were using – the photo of the other one is too blurry for publication]


The Luxman SQ-N10 integrated amplifier


The Audio Aero ‘La Fontaine’ CD / SACD player. Took several photos of this, but again, most were too blurry. Some kind of brain dead photography work [this was the 2nd to last room in the marathon 29th and 30th floors]


The Audio Aero ‘La Fontaine’ CD / SACD player closeup of the tray


The Audio Aero ‘La Fontaine’ CD / SACD player remote control


Danny Kaey was here photographing the goods. Of late he has been putting stuff up on Sonic Flare but nothing for this show yet

Brinkmann News out of Munich 2010

The new 9.6″ tonearm bears a close resemblance to the 10.5 tonearm. Various component parts that have performed perfectly in our previous tonearms like the arm tube with the special hard ceramic surface, the headshell, the tonearm lift and also the mounting socket are also used in the 9.6 tonearm. Therefore the 9.6 can be mounted in the same tonearm bases pre-drilled for the 10.5 or 12.1. Will ship in August, retail $3,990

The new Pi MC cartridge seen here mounted in the new 9.6 tonearm on a gorgeous Oasis with a makssar (ebony) plinth.

On the Pi Helmut Brinkmann chose a microridge stylus, which has the best resolution in fine recorded detail, while offering proven reliability. The stylus is mounted on a boron cantilever which in turn drives a copper voice coil. The utmost attention was given to the rigidity of the magnetic circuit to prevent eddy currents which would corrupt the low level output signal.

After eight years in development, the Edison phono stage will ship next month, it has three inputs, each of which’s loading & gain can be adjusted by the remote control. The settings can be stored in memory. It uses vacuum tubes both for the first gain stage as well as for the balanced implementation. Retail $12,990

Finally, Brinkmann have finished their cartridge & tonearm alignment Protractor. This is a precision piece of engineering and while not cheap, should prove very useful. I have seen Helmut use this to set up tonearms and its a doddle. Retail $600

[‘a doddle’ must be ‘Brit’ nomenclature for ‘awesome’ :-)]