This room had a pair of YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speakers driven by an Esoteric A-03 amplifier, almost everything sitting on Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platforms and, of course, cables with Synergistic cable.

Synergistic Research has been trying to capture part of the weird-tweak craze with their Acoustic Art tweaks. There were a couple of these on the floor.

The YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speaker

YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speaker

The Esoteric A-03 Stereo Amplifier.on a Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platform

The Esoteric A-03 Stereo Amplifier.

Note the Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platforms on the Grand Prix equipment rack.

This cool-blue-tube thing is the power supply for Synergistic Research’s Active Shielding cables.

Here is a good shot of the cabling on the Esoteric amp and the back of the YG Acoustic speaker.

A close-up of the Synergistic Research Galileo cable box.

Now this is a weird, and potentially very cool, thing. The description is below.

So what it does is convert USB to RCA and BNC. So essentially it enables the use of old style and/or high-quality DACs with our computer or other network-aware sources.

Ah, the old power cord on the wall trick… 🙂

This is the second room where we found the new-to-us Merrill Williams turntable. This rack is quite tall – high enough to make it a challenge to play an LP the way one usually plays an LP, but at least one does not have to bend over to see if the stylus is in the starting groove or not. 🙂

Nice looking rack with all that consistent-looking Sutherland gear, though.

The Merrill Williams’ Real 101 turntable with Ortofon cartridge

The Merrill Williams’ Real 101 turntable with Ortofon cartridge

The Merrill Williams’ Real 101 turntable’s design makes it easy to use a strobe to check the speed of rotation of the platter. This photo does not show the ‘strobed grooves’ because, I think, the strobe goes on and off 33.3 times per second and the camera caught it during one of the ‘off’s. If we had tried to do this several times, I think we could have gotten a good photo here.

The Merrill Williams’ Real 101 turntable with Ortofon cartridge

The Vandersteen Quattro speaker

The Vandersteen Quattro speaker

It was this small system that was playing while I was here. I did not expect to like this room – I often avoid rooms like this, like Polk, Spendor, etc. They don’t need the press and they are at the very affordable side of home audio – just not the type of systems we usually focus on here at Audio Federation. 🙂

But this little $300 CD player [with headphone jack] and similarly low-priced integrated on the Wharfedale speakers sounded better than many, many $100K+ systems at the show which were driven by a laptop. By better I mean is sounded more like music; more melodious, better harmonics, better PRaT, better continuousness, less edginess. Better.

I didn’t really talk to that many people [beyond simple pleasantries] at the show – maybe 3 or 4 – but 2 of them expressed fervent belief that the very low-end, the gear right above Best Buy quality, really needs to be targeted really well in order to bring the ipod generation into high-end audio. [Well, one of them was this Napa Acoustic guy, but it is still a valid point :-)].

I find this Napa Acoustic gear attractive. It sounds good. It is very inexpensive [complete systems for $1100 if I remember correctly. This is still the first hour of the show or so, and I am never good at remembering statistics].

Napa Acoustic CD player and integrated amp

Napa Acoustic integrated amp

Napa Acoustic CD player

Small Wharfedale speakers

Small Wharfedale monitor speakers

Moving to the larger system, the floor standing Wharfedale speakers

The Merrill Williams R.E.A.L. 101 turntable. We’ll see more of this in the next room.

Merrill Williams REAL 101 turntable

Napa Acoustic amplifier

Napa Acoustic amplifier

Napa Acoustic amplifier’s rear panel

Napa Acoustic CD player

Napa Acoustic CD player from the front

Napa Acoustic Hybrid Tube Integrated Amplifier

Napa Acoustic Hybrid Tube Integrated Amplifier

Napa Acoustic Hybrid Tube Integrated Amplifier

This is a 100% Napa Acoustic system. The speakers are not going to be as good as Wharfedale speakers, but they are a lot less expensive, too. An ipod cable and dock comes with the Napa Acoustic Hybrid Tube Integrated Amplifier.