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large speakers were driven by McIntosh
tube amplifiers that had little difficulty
filling the big room with music of gratifying
clarity.
Not far away, another amplifier was
turning out impressive sound, the new
Hovland Radia. This 150 watt/channel
amp is solid state, unlike the very good
tube preamp. Of course it had great
stuff both upstream and downstream: a
ClearAudio turntable and the wonderful
Acapella Violin speaker, with its astonishing
ionic tweeter.
I saw two “universal” players. One was
the Lexicon RT-10 (C$5000), which was
being used for music videos at the ProAc
room. Much more expensive, at about
C$16K, was the Linn Unidisk, which I
had heard in Vegas. It was actually being
used to do comparisons among formats.
On Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, the
sound from SACD was quite superior
to that of the Red
Book CD.
The most unusual room was
that of Aurum, a small company
from Newfoundland. The
Aurum system, which is shown
on the next page, is triamplified,
and comes with its own amplifiers,
which contain the appropriate
crossovers. Because the
speakers are so efficient (99 dB),
the tweeter and midrange are driven
by small single-ended tube amplifiers.
A more powerful solid state amplifier
handles the woofer. The cost for the
complete system will be somewhere
between C$20K and $30K. The Aurum
is not yet fully developed, and seems to
suffer from a crossover phase problem,
but the clean sound made me hope that
it will actually come to market. Aurum
seems to be on to something.
Toronto’s Fab Audio was showing the
production version of its large speakers.
And this time there was an add-on:
MuRata supertweeters, which don’t go
to work until the sound hits 18 kHz.
As always there were lots of video
demos, though we thought there seemed
to be fewer than usual. Easily the most
unusual was in the Niro room (the company
was set up by Niro Nakamichi, also
the founder of…). It was demonstrating
surround sound with just two speakers,
but not the way you think. There was
just one speaker at the front, and a
second one at the rear. The setup did
seem to work, as nearly as I could tell
despite the huge crowds the demo was
drawing every time I went by.
More conventional but first rate was
a home theatre setup using Parasound
electronics and player, and a large
number of JMLab speakers. Madonna’s
Drowned World Tour had much of the
impact and excitement of a live rock
concert.
Of course I put sound (and image)
above the look, but I enjoy components
that look good as well as sounding good.
I’d award top prize for design to Chord,
whose rack components look like nothing
I’ve ever seen. The one at lower right
is a phono stage, believe it or not. Like
the other components of the line, it is
tilted forward so that you can see the
top…which includes a magnifying porthole
atop the circuitry. It’s an intriguing
mix of geek chic and elegance. Oh, and
it sounds good too.
Also gorgeous are
the Cyrus components,
shown at left.
Cyrus was once
part of Mission,
but is now independent.
Cyrus was also
showing its Icon
speaker, which looks
like an electrostatic
but actually uses an
NXT flat panel. It
was hard to judge
its sound from the
home theatre demo
that was running,
but the design is
most interesting.
Linar was back
at the Festival for
the first time in
several years, with
redesigned amplifiers
and preamplifier.
I didn’t run across
Victor Sima, founder of Linar and also
of Simaudio.
Speaking of Simaudio, its excellent
room was using a pair of W-6
monoblocks, each about the size of a W-3
stereo amp. They put out 425 watts each,
and it’s rare to hear such powerful amps
sound this good.
Among other gems: the huge Rogue
Zeus tube amplifier (225 watts a side)
making beautiful music along with
Meadowlark Blue Heron speakers…and
the very transparent (and extra efficient)
LammPipe speakers driven effortlessly
by Tenor 15WE monoblocks.
For more show coverage, see our site
(www.uhfmag.com), where you’ll see a
link for our daily on-line reports. And
turn the page for Albert Simon’s own
impressions of the show.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 27