HE 2007 Show Report

GamuT! Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:35 PM ET
By Wes Phillips

Lars Goller proudly rests on the GamuT Phi7 (price tbd), which couples five-midrange woofers in what he calls "perfect unison," thanks to GamuT's proprietary DC Coupled Midrange technology and Acoustic Coupled Driver technology. He says the tall, thin baffle, which arrays the woofers along almost its entire height, delivers excellent acoustic coupling to the listening room.

Since Goller has been Mr. Loudspeaker at ScanSpeak for the last 20 years, developing new driver technologies and writing acclaimed peer-reviewed articles about designing loudspeakers, we believed him.

Besides, we thought they sounded great.

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Omaha Heat Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:17 PM ET
By Wes Phillips

Omaha was showing this nifty little 10Wpc No.OD-300B integrated amplifier ($1400), which was driving Omaha's Omaha Speaker (price tbd). Do I need to say that the No.OD300B uses a pair of 300B tubes? The system sounded warm and spacious. 10Wpc may not sound like much, but the Omaha speaker seemed comfortably driven. Fit'n'finish were impressive.

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Logical Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:09 PM ET
By Wes Phillips

Logitech, which has acquired Slim Devices, was showing its $499 Harmony 1000 remote. The H 1000 has a 3.5" touch screen that allows you to configure a control pad that features only those functions you need regularly. That means that Squeezebox and Transporter owners like me can say goodbye to scrolling into menus three or four command lines deep. That means heavy users like me might actually find a remote worth $499.

Harmony makes an RF extender for it, too. My wife asked, "Does that mean I can turn down his music from the other room?"

"Only if you have the remote," the Logitech rep said.

"Oh, I'll have the remote," she said grimly.

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Seductive Magicos Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 5:52 PM ET
By Stephen Mejias

With a sound that was seductively full-bodied and convincing, the Magico room was actually the first to lure me into a listening seat. And I stayed there for awhile, happily listening to music I was not at all familiar with.

"May I take your photograph, please, standing beside the speaker?" I asked Magico's designer Alon Wolf.

"Sure."

He smiled, I snapped. "Great. Thank you."

"Does it look better than the last photo you guys posted of me?"

I took a look and thought it over, "Um."

The three-way Magico V3 ($22,800/pair) made its US debut at CES 2007, and is available now.

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Bring Your Own Battery? Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 5:34 PM ET
By Stephen Mejias

Also on display at the Audio Advancements' booth, the Altmann BYOB Amplifier, naked as it was, caught my attention. Why no clothes? The idea goes that doing away with the enclosure eliminates the chance for resonances which might otherwise corrupt the original signal.

And you'll never guess what "BYOB" stands for. In this particular application, it's: Bring Your Own Battery.

The Altmann Amplifier is powered by a basic car battery. Altmann, explained Hart Huschens, recommends Optima Red Top batteries, but any old battery will do. Even if it can no longer start your car, it'll start the Altmann. One two-hour charge should provide 2 to 3 weeks of uninterrupted listening pleasure.

The Amplifier puts out a cool 10Wpc and weighs just a few ounces (not including the car battery, of course). Every aspect of its construction has been tested and specifically selected for its sonic character from the choice of wood (spruce) to the violin lacquer that coats it. The Altmann BYOB sells for $1050. I wonder if Sam Tellig has heard one of these.

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ESE Lab Phono Cartridge Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 5:06 PM ET
By Stephen Mejias

The lovely little EarMax headphone amps listen along as ESE Lab's Rudi Korosec, standing here with Audio Advancements' Hart Huschens, takes some time to explain his latest phono cartridge. So new, in fact, it remains nameless, the ESE cartridge has a graphite body with a hyperelliptical stylus, a mass of 9g, and a recommended tracking force of 1.5g. Korosec seemed most pleased, however, with the cartridge's "extremely low impedance" of .85 ohms.

"Its graphite body makes it ideal for stopping vibrations," said Korosec, "and provides an excellent interface for many different tonearms."

Though there is no name, there is a price: $1500.

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Hart! Hart! Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 4:41 PM ET
By Stephen Mejias

Way back in the day, when I was just a wee li'l Stereophiler, taking orders for classified advertising in Audio Mart, I shared the most enjoyable telephone conversations with one advertiser in particular, Audio Advancements' Hart Huschens.

After only a few brief chats, I got the sense that Hart was a truly gentle and honest person. Six years later, I still have the opportunity to speak with Hart. Only now, we talk about different things: the Buyer's Guide and "Recommended Components," mostly. It wasn't until yesterday, however, that I had the real pleasure of meeting Mr. Huschens in person.

Hart is the US distributor for, among others: dps and EuroLab turntables, RS Labs and Schroeder tonearms, ESE Lab phono stages, and EarMax headphone amps. My conversation with Hart was interrupted continuously by enthusiastic customers, exclaiming, "Hart! Hart! You sold me my first headphone amp five years ago. I still love it."

"I'm glad to hear it," Hart would respond. "Would you remind me of which amp it was?"

"The standard EarMax," one such customer might respond.

"Oh, yes. I remember," Hart would say.

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Overcoming Obstacles Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 11:38 AM ET
By Stephen Mejias

Surprisingly, the Proclaim Audio DMT-100 loudspeaker is not nearly as imposing or, shall I say, all-up-in-my-grille, as I imagined it would be. It's actually kind of graceful. In fact, it has a sort of happy-go-lucky presence.

Hi-ho, wanna twist my tweeters? Okey doke. Feel like messin' with my midrange? No prob.

Designer Daniel Herrington seemed genuinely pleased with his loudspeaker solution. "This speaker is different, but it's not different simply for the sake of being different."

While Loiminchay's Patrick Chu creates trouble, locking himself in limitations and working to get out, Proclaim's Daniel Herrington looks at speaker design as a search for the most direct route.

"I'm always looking to overcome obstacles, achieve simplicity," he said.

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Happy Cry Funny Gift Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 11:06 AM ET
By Stephen Mejias

Please forgive my so very foul language, but when I walked into the Loiminchay room, I just had to shout: "What the FUDGE?" Seriously.

That's the truth.

The Loiminchay speakers look like nothing else I've ever seen. "I know nothing about this brand," I said to Montague Luxuries' Mark Montague.

"Well, that's because we're absolutely new," he responded.

The designer, Patrick Chu, is better known for his fine pens. "How did he go from pens to loudspeakers?"

"Well, he's also an audiophile and a collector, and everything he's interested in is about quality of life. He's been hiding for five years, working on these speakers."

"Basically," said Patrick Chu, "I made a speaker to give myself trouble."

For Chu, loudspeaker design is about defining physical limitations and accepting the challenge to work within those limitations. Driver and crossover placement, cabinetry and lacquering, and everything in between are painstaking processes. A special challenge for Chu is the act of working with vibration in the subwoofer cabinet. With the Patrick 3 (starting at $50,000/pair), Chu has attempted to combine two design philosophies. While trying to utilize the vibrations of the speaker body in a way that mimics the natural resonance of say, an acoustic guitar, Chu also fights vibration by mounting the woofer in concrete block.

And the name, Loiminchay, is a combination of elements, too. "Loimin" is the Chinese word for "delightful understanding." (Hmm?) And "Chay" means "atelier or studio." So, we have delightful understanding studio.

"Can you explain that again?" I asked.

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"Seriously?" he asked. Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 10:40 AM ET
By Stephen Mejias

"So," I began innocently, "how do you determine the shape of your loudspeakers?"

Loiminchay designer, Patrick Chu, gave me a look. "Seriously?" he asked.

I nodded. Seriously.

"I love women!" he exclaimed.

I gave him a look. He laughed and laughed and laughed. The Loiminchay Mandarin Supreme (starting at $80,000/pair) uses a 19" horn with a 1" driver, and employs 10" and 12" bass woofers.

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Hard Black Anodizing Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 10:04 AM ET
By Stephen Mejias

I could hardly keep my hands off of Chord Electronics' CD Transport and DAC. I'm not kidding. In the new Jet Black finish seen here in Larry Greenhill's photo, the pair is absolutely exquisite, and begs to be touched. Chord's founder and chief designer, John Franks, explained the cosmetic design was inspired by the hard black stone found between the cliffs of Whitby and Staithes. Like many things of beauty and wonder, its origins are fabled and obscured; Whitby Jet is believed to be either a form of carbon or the remains of hardened sap dating back to the dinosaurs. I'm putting my money on the dinosaur theory because T-Rex is cooler the coal.

Each piece is milled from solid aluminum and hand-polished to a mirror finish. "A special anodizing process" opens the pores of the aluminum, while retaining the sheen. Black dye is then introduced to the open pores, saturating the aluminum in smooth, solid color. The pores are then closed—with a few magic words, I'm willing to accept—and the black dye is forever sealed. "Hard black anodizing," they call it.

And I'm happy to report it doesn't take 65 million years to perfect.

John Franks added that the Jet Black finish was also inspired by the look of the latest mobile phones and Bulgari watches. "I always want to keep our designs on the leading edge of style."

"I think you've achieved that," I said.

In standard finish, the Transport goes for $10,400, the DAC for $5000, and the stand a weighty $2100. Jet Black finish bumps that total from $17,500 to somewhere around $21,000.

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Bel Canto, Bon Chance Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 9:35 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

We got to talking to Bel Canto's John Stronczer and he pulled us into an empty conference room to talk. "I did something interesting," Stronczer said.

"I wondered if you always need to reclock digital signals when you distribute them, so I ran upsampled data into two S/PDIF outputs into two separate converter/amplifiers and measured the group delay over several days and got no drift. It sounded noticeably better for reasons I don't completely understand, but here's the part that startled me, if I used one channel only from one amp's output and then the other channel on the other one, we had major sonic improvements. I offer no explanation —yet. But it does have me thinking about digital distribution on an entire other level."

Isn't that getting kind of complicated?, we wondered.

"No," Stronczer was emphatic. "Analog connections are complicated, unpredictable, and prone to many ills. Getting rid of that can of worms is a no-bainer."

Put that way, we await future developments with bated breath.

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Big Sound, Small Package Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 9:31 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Jeff Joseph was demoing his RM7si compact monitors ($2300/pr) with Bel Canto's 150Wpc 3001 integrated amp ($2200) to spectacular effect. Why was that surprising? Because his source was an iBook laptop feeding a usb output into the 300i.

"The sound is great," Josephs enthused. "But the best part is that now you have permission to buy a new, high-performance system for your office."

Obviously, Jeff's chancellor of the exchequer has a different set of authorizations than mine.

"Your mileage may vary," he allowed, "the the limitation is no longer that you can't get the music out of your computer. We love this little amp."

So did I.

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Nice 'Stache Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 8:01 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Jeff Wong (left) and Ken Kessler compare mustache waxes at the Classic Records event.

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Best Sound In Show Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:57 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Bob Silverman wowed a select but enthusiastic audience Friday with a concert that consisted of two Mozart sonatas (K303 and K300) and three Brahms piano sketches. He was playing a Steinway parlor grand that sounded wonderfully Mozartian.

Afterwards, the gentleman standing behind me put into words the thought that was only beginning to form in my mind: "Just one of those Brahms sketches was worth the price of my three-day ticket."

And Saturday at 11:30, we get to hear Silverman play a program devoted to Chopin.

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Albert Wu Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:45 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Hyperion Sound Design's Albert Wu holds up his SVF midrange driver. It's quite a piece of work. It has no spider, incorporates what Wu calls "rear pressure reduction," and the flat-carbon fiber plate that I took for a dust cap is really the transducer.

Obviously, the driver is proprietary to Hyperion—and it seemed like a lot of innovation for such a modestly priced speaker. "We like keeping prices sane," Wu smiled. "We think of ourselves as providing balance to an industry that needs some."

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Quart Bottle Tubes Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:43 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

The HT845 single-ended monoblock amplifiers ($2500/ea) were so new, Hyperion had no literature on them. They looked and sounded good, though.

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Hyperion Sound Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:35 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Art Dudley and I didn't so much enter Hyperion Sound Design's room as get dragged in by our ears. Standing in the Hyatt's hallway, we heard some close harmony quartet singing that sounded mighty darn real.

We went in sat down and were given a demonstration of how to run a demo right. The room was modestly treated with RealTraps, the speakers were artfully placed to minimize boundary issues, and the music was playing at sane levels and was absolutely mesmerizing.

The best part? "You can buy the whole system, including four channels of single-ended tube amplificatiion,for under $15k," said Albert Wu.

Shown here are the HPS-968 loudspeakers ($6000/pair), which feature Hyperion SVF(Synchronous Vibration Flattop) midrange driver, which is run from about 150Hz to about 3kHz. "That makes it sound open and coherent," Wu said.

Exactly the words I was thinking.

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Proclaimer Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:20 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Proclaim Audioworks' Dan Herrington had a revelation one day while sitting in the smallest room of his house. "I was reading old JAES papers," he said, "when I read a measured analysis of speaker radiation patterns based on cabinet construction. A sphere was extraordinarily close to the perfect form, but then you had to deal with using multiple drivers."

His solution?

Multiple spheres. He also came up with a nifty "stand" mechanism that allows the consumer to adjust the position of the three drivers relative to their listening position and the room in which the speakers sit. Oh yeah, and an external crossover.

The DMT-100 (that stands for Driver Manipulation Technology) sells for $25,000/pair.

I thought they had promising transient response and were getting extremely good low-end response, given the size of the room. I also thought they sounded a tad hard and bright, which very well may have been because Herrington was using a 1990-era 25Wpc receiver to drive 'em. "To show they can sound good in the real world," he explained.

Fair enough, but given their striking looks—which people will either love or hate—and price tag, I wondered about his definition of that term.

But if you live there, Proclaim can bring their demo room to you.

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Verily Verity! Posted Sat May 12, 2007, 7:00 AM ET
By Wes Phillips

Verity Audio had Nagra's CDP CD Player ($13,495) driving its P-LP line stage ($11,495) and pyramidal PMA mono amplifiers ($10,995/pr)—all connected with Silversmith Audio Palladium interconnects ("starting at $4000/pair). At the other end was a pair of Parsifal Ovation loudspeakers ($19,495/pair).

The Parsifal's looked like large speakers for such a small room, but Verity's John Quick explained that the PO's rear-firing woofer module actually helped in small room placement. He might be right—Art Dudley and sat there for ages (in show time) feeding in CDs by the Move, Tierney Sutton, and Dino Saluzzi.

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