Alexis Park Suite 1753 & 1762 Equipment: SOURCE: dCS SACD WAVAC PR-T1 transformer-coupled linestage $30,000 WAVAC HE-833v1.3 150 Wpc SET amplifier $69,000/pair WAVAC MD-805 55 Wpc SET monoblocks $19,000/pair WAVAC MD-811 15 Wpc SET monoblocks $5,000/pair Vitus Audio Signature SM-100 monoblocks 100 Wpc Class A $45,000/pair Vitus Audio RP-100 phono (top) $19,000 RL-100 linestage (bottom) […]

Eyris Dual-Concentric & Digitial Eyris Demo Wadia monoblock DACs and Controller Thiel 2.4 Audio Note Ongaku Audio Note TT3

LOCATION A: Alexis Park Room 2008 – Two-room Suite Equipment List: Primary Preamplifier Audion Premier 1.0 Anniversary Edition preamplifier $3,195 Room #1 Audion Golden Dream Level 6 300B PSE 25 watt monoblocks $14,995 2nd Rethm single-driver floorstander $6,500/pair LOCATION B: St. Tropez Hotel Room 1103 – Two-room Suite Primary analog front end: Amazon Model Two […]

Alexis Park AP2453 (Bldg 24, Room 53) Major Expansion for MFSL in 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada – With several new and innovative product lines debuting at CES, 2004 is already full steam ahead for Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab of Sebastopol, CA. Drawing upon critical insight derived from several decades of practical application and achievement within […]

LVCC South Hall, booth #16486 Introducing: New Home Cinema Series Multichannel Preamp/Processor And 5-Channel Amplifier Designer Looks – Optimized Circuitry Robust Build “ High-End Sound, Reasonable Cost” A Man With History Richard Marsh, the man behind Marsh Sound Design, has spent years investigating the complex highways and byways of audio circuit design. His extensive background […]

Bellagio Suite 34055 New Products Preview: Jan 8 – 10, 4pm to 6pm The unique 3-K Driver Array is a precision machined die-cast component housing an optimized and acoustically matched grouping of the mid-range, high-frequency and super high-frequency drive units. It is designed and manufactured to ensure an exceptionally wide horizontal and vertical dispersion, precise […]

Alexis Park Room 1756 Informal Press Event Fri Jan 9th 4 to 6pm With Drinks And Hors D’oeuvres First Show Outing of the Mighty 200Wpc VZN-220 Rite of Passage OTL Monoblock Amplifiers All-Tube LA-150 Line Stage Preamplifier All-Tube OPS-2 phono stage -With- Elrod Power Systems Power Cables, Interconnects & Speaker Cables Joseph Audio Pearl Speaker […]

Alexis Park Room 190B Press and Friends Invited To An Informal Event Thursday Jan. 8th 5:30 to 7:30 Drinks and Food Will Be Served Celebrating: *2 New Innovative Products *Our 3 Year Winning Streak *Publication Of An Independent Peer-Reviewed AES Research Paper By Dr. David Rich & Brandon Cochenour Regarding Infinate Slope Crossovers (Infinate Slope […]

Bellagio Suite (From left to right) Constantine Soo, Michel Reverchon of Goldmund and John Fairchild (Importer) Memesis Series SRP2.3, SRDVD NEW EIDOS 720 DLP VIDEO PROJECTOR (MSRP TBA) With the Eidos 720 projector, Goldmund shows how its “Mechanical Grounding” construction principle can improve the Video picture quality in both stability and sharpness. Using the latest […]

Alexis Park Suite 1651 Combak Corporation’s Managing Director, Mr. Kazuo Kiuchi Equipment List CDP-777 CD Transport/Player $17,000 *Extended K2 Processing *176.4kHz 24bit 4 times oversampling yielding 705.6kHz Debut CAT-777 Vacuum Tube Control $17,000 *Single-ended no negative feedback *Output tubes 12AU7(x 2) & 12BH7A (x 2) *Rectifier 6x4WA(x 2) *Solderless wiring, non-magnetic Carbon resistors, InFiniCap film […]

St. Tropez Hotel Main System 4704 PITrace CD transport $25,000 with optional, 2nd 4700 power supply for seperate motor drive and laser pick up operations. Total MSRP = $26,800 4705-G Gemini Progression DAC $3,500 with two 4799 power supply ($1,800 each) for dual mono operations Total MSRP = $7,100 4706 Gaincard Amplifier with two “S” […]

January 25, 2004 A stretch of US 1 in Maine is called the Coastal Route. When Lee and I drive south to Camden, we have the option of taking Route 1 or going inland. Both have their attractions, and we are aesthetes, no use denying it. We relish what pleases the eye and deplore the […]

On November 1, 2003, I auditioned a Goldmund system driving a pair of speakers identical to the $20,000 Audio Note AN-E SEC Silvers I reviewed in February, 2003. Joe Cutrufelli of JC Audio recently became Goldmund of Switzerland’s Northern California dealer, and invited my wife and me to his place for a private auditioning of […]

BACKGROUND The HE 2003 Show that was co-sponsored by Stereophile in June included a semi-horn speaker system from Italy, the Royal Device Laura Studio Mk II with Miranda Horn. Royal Device is a trademark of the Italian speaker company, Aliante s.r.l. that offers eight special, 2-way high-end horn loudspeakers under the RD name, ranging from […]

Preface Inventing a solid-state rectifier made from a Tantalum-Lead Alloy, Guy R. Fountain began his audio-related career in 1926, and subsequently founded Tannoy in the early 30s. In 1947, Fountain’s chief engineer, Ronnie H. Rackham, developed the landmark, Dual-Concentric™ driver system, in which “a horn-loaded compression driver was built concentrically with a direct radiator bass […]

DECEMBER 23, 2003 As a stone devotee of classical music from age eight, I’ve found a reaction to recordings I’d play for the occasional visitor amusing and disconcerting. Generally, if the piece was composed anywhere from the latter part of the nineteenth to about mid-twentieth-century and was in any way emotional or however vaguely programmatic […]

Loth-X is a German-owned international enterprise with operations in countries such as South Korea and Singapore. They design and manufacture complete high-end audio systems including turntables, amplifiers, speakers and cables. Quoting from the company’s website, Loth-X’s expressed goal is “… to create products far beyond the norm which would satisfy the dreams of the world’s […]

Klimax Twin is the stereo version of Klimax 500 Solo, Linn’s latest amplification statement. The Twin is identical in dimensions and weight as one monoblock 500 Solo with a little less than half the output capability. The Linn’s accompanying, ring-bound 24-page Owner’s Manual rivals the readability and resourcefulness of manuals I have read to date […]

Prologue Nearing the completion of this review, my wife and I paid a short visit to the residence of Audio Note’s U.S. Distributor, Ray Lombardi, in Southern California’s Simi Valley. 380 miles from my home, Simi Valley is several thousand feet above sea level on the far side of a mountain range that the southbound […]

Continuing The Journey In my earlier look at the Decware SE84C Zen Triode amplifier, I examined and recognized the petite amplifier’s subtle but efficacious tonalities and excellent contrasting dynamics during low to medium volume levels in the company of the Klipschorn. Still, the persistent dynamic compressions and loss of soundstage coherence during higher listening levels […]

As the Gaincard was the primary amplification in my earlier reviews of ELAC 518, Loth-X BS1 and Linn Ikemi, I encourage readers to examine my findings in those pages for a broader perspective, and I shall attempt to refine my opinions on the Gaincard in these pages. The Gaincard Preliminaries The main body of the […]

As evident in my recent 47 Laboratory 4713 Flatfish CD Transport/Player and 4705 Progression DAC review, it would seem that as our understanding and implementation of the art of CD playback advances, more companies are able to produce excellent CD playback systems with unprecedented implementations of the 16-bit/44.1kHz non-upsampling technique. Prime examples are 47 Lab’s […]

The High-End audio industry is resplendent with value-oriented products as well as cost-no-object, performance-oriented ones. In the course of reviewing, rather than criticizing the shortcomings of the lesser products and giving lavish praises to the superior products, I try to maintain a balanced perspective of the values of the High-End. If an expensive piece of […]

Brian Morris of Linn stopped by San Francisco on June 7 2002 after the New York Show, and we got together for an evening of music listening and conversation at my home. I played him some CDs not readily available in the U.S., including a track from a British CD, “Moonlight Shadow”, from Mike Oldfield’s […]

Minimonitors have become significant products nowadays, beginning back with the advent of the Rogers LS3/5A. Although they possess space-saving, non-intrusive appeal to both the audiophile and his/her aesthetically driven spouse, these advantages are quite often offset unfortunately by an equally uncompromising need for individualized system matching to exploit the speaker’s full potential. The subject of […]

Background Information ELAC is a German speaker company that offers eight series of speakers, ranging from the most affordable 1 Series through the more affluent 5 Series, with the 4 Series representing the company’s finest efforts, culminating in the $12,000 pair of Spirit Of Music. The company also offers the infamous NXT technology in the […]

April 2002 marks the twenty-first anniversary of the CD, and in that time the format has gone through two decades of refinement in the forms of oversampling, jitter reduction, upsampling and so forth. In our continuing understanding of the CD playback process, each innovation resulted in higher levels of sophistication, propelling CD playback to an […]

The Amplifier Scene Half-a-century ago, supposedly in reference to driving his hundred-some-dB-sensitivity Cornwall, Paul Klipsch said, “What this country needs is a good five-watt amplifier.” What Mr. Klipsch probably didn’t anticipate were the commanding prices of some of today’s five-watt amplifiers. In the vacuum tube amplifier family, the single-ended triode tube amplifier is the much […]

Foreword The one most deplorable sight for an audiophile upon unboxing new equipment is probably that of a generic power cord. In fact, of all the equipment I have purchased, common emphasis was placed on power supplies and regulations. Not one manufacturer had addressed the importance of the power cord. This is a predicament for […]

by: Laurence A. Borden & Chris White Audiophiles tend to spend a lot of time evaluating audio equipment. We evaluate equipment because we are trying to decide what gear to buy. Other times, it’s because we are reviewing equipment for a publication (paper or electronic). Most of the time, it’s simply because it’s fun and informative […]