Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Lineaire [their website shows this as being 2 words] is a French manufacturer of colorful speakers.

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

A number of frontspieces of different colors for the Audio Lineaire speakers

The Viola Forte amplifier. Viola had a much more significant presence here at CES this year.

The Audio Aero La Source CD/SACD player

Audio Aero’s LaSource CD/SACD player

The Viola ‘Solo’ preamplifier

Our good friend Steve G., who usually has good ears, insists that the new Revel Salon speakers are pretty good – but I have yet to hear a system with these speakers that captures my interest. I liked the old Salons fine, and I am one of those who prefers the older look as well [I know I am not alone! This is one of those tube versus solid-state kind of wars among us Revel followers :-)]

Now these amps… I think these new Jones Audio PA M300 amps are some of the best looking solid-state amps ever. I hope to hear them in several different systems at the shows later in the year.

Revel Salon 2 speaker

Revel Salon 2 speaker

Jones Audio PA M300 monoblock amplifier

Jones Audio PA M300 monoblock amplifier. Love the way the ventilation holes are set in a random, yet organic, pattern.

Jones Audio PRE S-1 Stereo Preamplifier.

Jones Audio PRE S-1 Stereo Preamplifier.

This is one of several rooms using the OPPO CD/.DVD player as a source this year.

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.

Don’t remember if they were playing music in here [presumably off a laptop] or not – I took a bunch of photos and thought about how ‘Class D Done Right’ was a good slogan, and at the same time one could interpret it as being slightly tongue-in-cheek.

The main rack for this system. There was also a secondary rack as we’ll see below.

Front view of the main rack.

Rogue’s Medusa hybrid amplifier. We’ll see a few more shots of this below as well.

Rogue Audio’s Hera II preamplifier

Rogue Audio’s Triton phono preamp

EgglestonWork’s Andra II loudspeaker. Love it that Rogue chose such a high quality speaker for their room.

EgglestonWork’s Andra II loudspeaker

This is the smaller rack on the side of the room.

Ayre’s QB-9 USB DAC.

Spiral Groove’s SG1.1

The Rogue Audio Medusa amp was on static display.

The rear panel of the Rogue Audio Medusa amp that was on static display.

Rogue Audio’s Cronos Magnum integrated amp

Front / top view of Rogue Audio’s M-150 monoblock amp

Side view of Rogue Audio’s M-150 monoblock amp

There is a nice simple system that plays music in this room, but face it, many rooms like this are primarily setup for us to ogle at the gear on static display. And there will be a lot of opportunity for ogling before this post is done.

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable and Concept cartridge

T+A Music Receiver

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 speaker

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 monitor speaker

On a table against the wall as we come into the room, a bevy of Clearaudio phono stages…

List of Clearaudio cartridges and… what looks like bearings…

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner – the front view

The Clearaudio Double Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio ‘Concept’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Performance DC’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Ovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation Compact’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable tonearm

The Clearaudio High Precision Level Gauge. Looks like this would work quite well – and this table on static display is not level. For shame… 🙂

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Accu Drive’ BPS turntable power supply

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Took several photos of this new table. The table is $27,500. The stand $8,000. And the linear tracking TT-2 tonearm $10,000

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Cool the way the platter lights up…

The Clearaudio ‘TT-2’ tonearm

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Every show there is always someone who walks up and plants themselves in the photo background. This show… this is that guy.

Onda Systems makes cables. They used this system consisting of the Vandersteen 5a Carbon speakers, Aesthetix Janus preamp and Atlas amp, and 2 Accustic Arts CD Player 1 players. The 2 players were going to be used to do quick demonstrative comparisons [shootouts] between various of their cable = but one of the players was having issues when I was there.

Onda cables are similar to the Acapella Silvercables in that they are solid core silver. You can bend them with your hands fairly easily but they are thick – so it ain’t THAT easy.

What is cool about these cables is that the spades, for example, on the speaker cable are molded as one piece with the cable so there is no seem, no discontinuity between cable and connector.

Sonically, the cables sounded very nicely clean and rich in the midrange. I did not listen long enough to test for leading edges and micro-dynamics, sometimes problems for solid core cables.

The Vandy 5a Carbon loudspeaker

The rear of the Vandersteen 5a Carbom speaker

A close up of the rear of the Vandersteen 5a Carbom speaker and the Onda speaker cable integral spades.

The Accustic Arts CD Player 1

The Accustic Arts CD Player 1 closeup

The Aesthetix Janus full-function preamp (with phono stage)

The Aesthetix Atlas amp

A pile of Onda power cables

Onda Crybaby and Rush interconnects

This room featured some of Musical Surroundings own gear as well as gear they import like Fosgate.

In this room they were running the AMG turntable through a Fosgate photo preamp into Aesthetix electronics and using a Magico Q1 speaker. This was all sitting on a HRS SXR rack. There were several things on static display, as we’ll see below. I did not spend much energy listening here – sometimes I just space out I guess.

This room used two 4-shelf HRS SXR racks instead of a side-by-side (double-wide). Not sure why.

A couple of shots of the Magico Q1 monitor (stand-mounted) speaker

A few more shots of the AMG (Analog Manufaktur Germany. Used to be Benz-AMG) turntable which we saw in the last room as well

Anyone else think the LPs on the AMG turntables in these rooms look kind of dirty?

The Fosgate Signature phono stage

The Aesthetix Pandora USB DAC. Guess they used this when not playing the turntable.

Aesthetix Rhea phono stage. Seems redundant given the Fosgate phono stage. Backup I guess.

The Aesthetix Calypso linestage.

On static display they had an all black AMG turntable. I like this look.

This is what the AMG plinth looks like with nothing on it. Very solid looking metal construction.

I think this is the AMG motor, a belt [the belt must be hidden underneath the platter during use] and what may be an arm pod.

The Fosgate Signature phono stage on static display

The Fosgate Signature Tube Headphone amp on static display

Musical Surroundings Phenomena II and NovaPhenomena Phono preamp on static display

Musical Surroundings Supernova II preamplifier on static display

The Musical Surroundings Fozgometer.

So… I guess this is used to determine if a mono source has an image directly between the two speakers like it is supposed to [instead of using one’s ears]?

OK.

The show reports kind of take on a life of their own, and this one is shaping up thus:

I will post about a weeks worth of photos and commentary here on the blog. I think I will try to keep the multiple-angle shots down to a low roar here on the blog [I tried to provide complete coverage of as many components as possible for the Gallery Database – when you are interested in a specific component, you want to see ALL the angles!].

I will then cross-post that weeks worth of photos and commentary in the Gallery version of the show report with its more impressive full-window-sized photos as well as an index so that a person can actually find specific rooms without having to use Google.

Then I will resume the show reportage here on the blog for another week… and so on and so forth.

Make sense?

Comments? Suggestions?

I am putting up the report for each room in the order that I encountered it at the show. First floor 29, then some of 30, then up to 34 and 35, then, I think, part of THE Show, the rest of 30 – and finally with the last of THE Show [essentially the long hallway on floor 4].

I did miss a few rooms: Avantgarde, Soundlab, Golden Ear, Harmon, and a couple others not as well known. Hopefully they are all that I missed – maybe 6-8 rooms. VTL did not let me in their room – either because they were talking super secret business [with their door still ajar] or whatever. A couple of other rooms had their doors locked [sometimes this happens by accident, sometimes because I got there right at closing, sometimes because they just didn’t make it to the show] – I went back to a few of these and did get photos of Chapman and another whose name does not immediately come to mind.