I kind of feel that I am way off in my familiarity about what is going on with new audio products. My horizon is very restricted with my own needs and with my own interests. I am irregularly read audio publications and irregularly visit some audio sites and although I do monitor what is going on out there but not as carefully as I use to in past. It is not that I am sweepingly against any commercial audio products as a concept as many idiots-DIYers are. It is juts the most of the audio products that I have seen out there in their performance are way beyond the level where I would found them worth attentions. Therefore, I’m not wasting my time to monitor the new crap that keep coming to the market monthly.

Still, even with my very limited attention I would like to note some new audio products that I would welcome and would have interest to see.

In analog I do not see any interesting tendencies in turntables or in tonearms. The new expensive turntables and tonearms do not impress me and I do not particularly like their design approaches. I would like to see some light TTs that would be not-ported bass able but I do not see anyone talk about it….

In phonocorrectors I feel there is a large unfulfilled gap in the high level performers. I very much, to my big surprise, loved the expensive Boulder 2008 when I played with it a few years back but I never had it in my own listening room. It would be interested to try it… A few years back a Swaziland company DaVinci Audio made their MM LCR corrector. It had a number of very appealing solutions and I found that it was a very interesting product. I think since then the DaVinci Audio becaume more or less “for profit” company and the corrector that I was talking about got converted in a simplified commercial version. How good is it ?  I do not know but it might be fun to try it… The British’s Thorsten use to make interesting low impedance LCR phono filter and he promised to make then in it’s 10K version. If he did and someone put them between gain stages then I would be very interesting product to try as well….

In digital the general tendencies are way out of my interest. The SACD is a fraudulent crap and it looks like the industry is got consumed with SACD back hole. The commercially available DVD-A are not good as well. The same Thorsten made up a new company, I think the Abington Something and they make a new 16/44 CD player. I did not hear it and I look forward to it, I will have a local guy to have one soon, – it might be interesting. The Ayre Acoustics I heard have a new CD player – I always like what they do and it might be worth to see in which direction the Ayre’s played gone. There are a lot of new exciting DACs out there. I anticipate that it is the time for very good sounding DACs for sub $500 pop up here and there - I did not many any evaluations in this direction but I would not be surprised…  BTW, the Australian’s Kostas ADC sounds very promising... Perhaps he has an equally interning performing DAC….

In electronics my needs are very limited – I need an absolutely transparent preamp (and I have one) and a low powered DSET. The stupid industry does not even look at the DSET direction, so I do not see anything worthy. In the full range amps I also see no interning low power contenders - I understand why – there are no capable high sensitivity loudspeakers. With all Advantage imperfections the Trios were sensitive and they were the only one commercially successful product. If more products like this were available then the marker would birth some interesting low power solutions. However, with Jim smith dropped the operation the Advantage in a deep shit and they went to a bogus shadow of stupid products and marketing nothingness. I do not see that any powerful amps out there worth anything as I do not see any commendable loudspeakers to use with powerful amps.  Also, my personal visiosn about amplification are severally corrupted by Melquiades that in my personal way “out there” in relation to any other amps that I heard. In the preamps I found that Lamm long-promising new line-level amp (I think it will be called Lamm L3) will be extremely interesting to watch. If Lamm would be able to make it absolutely transparent and at the same time to preserve some of the amassing and unique sonic qualities of his L1/L2 had then it might be a phenomenally exciting preamp.

In loudspeakers I hardly see a lot of excitement. The British’s Mike threatens to reintroduce Vitavox – it might be fan but it should be seen how good it might be. The Cogent boys might found some civilized horn-maker and improve their installation to a “demonstrable level”. I do not know how about the “excitement” but they do might be worth to watch in future, primary because no one is trying to make compression drivers but they do try.  I hope the Cessaro Acoustics Company from Germany gets this US representation and their “Gamma” model will be available for auditioning. It might be very interesting and would not mind to pay some price for the auditioning admission…

One of the greatest area where a lot of done but with zero success is the power treatment – the electricity still is the main bitch of audio in my world. Well, I should not say that what among what is done everything has zero success but whatever I have seen was not what I would like to have. The power line devices come to the market like the mushrooms after rain but I still do not see anything radical (like a dynamic decoupling of anything like this). The power devises is the area where I would like to see something drastically improved…

SearcherOfBetterSound wrote:

Why is Acoustic Solid so interesting to me? Well, it should be to most when you read stuff like a $1,600 Black Wood Classic model can beat out a $5,500 Super Scoutmaster model from VPI, and a $4,000 Solid One can compete with a TW Acustic Raven and a Verdier La Platine which can cost over twice as much. It's not just about beating out respected companies, it's just there has to be some great technical/sonic standard and scientifically/sonically advanced ideas AND, gasp, real price value implementation materials worth, marketing worth, whatever's worth, if the value is really THAT high. I get the feeling high-prices on turntables just isn't the same worth of investment as a good digital whatever...why waste thousands on it even it's better, when digital needs it more and there's a lot of CDs out there. For me, I'd probably spend $1,600 on phono, and $4,000 on digital, but I suppose I could do with around $2,000 digital....$4,000 total sources? yeah man! I wouldn't be too surprised if the Black Wood Classic would be worthy replacement for Romy's turntable setup. Acoustic Signature is related to this company too, but I've not read much about them. On digital I'm just writing to say that I wanted to know what Romy felt on computer digital, and didn't see enough on it for some time, but I did find some old posts a bit ago and it appears that it didn't work out as good as his transport. This is for others to know, remember, consider. I guess it makes sense as the digital inspiration at Wavelength's website did only mention they used an around $10,000 transport as reference, and Romy's CEC is probably better, his whole system has to be better too. Point is I would trust to not get too enthusiastic over computer storage especially since it's harder and more expensive to do then it seems, but it's realy the hard part that makes it like that especially. Perhaps a cheaper storage can be a better value than cheapish players (perhaps DACs are more efficiently transparent to them), but for high-end, people still need more trustworthy comparisons. Now if only Romy had some Nova Audio Physics player and Empirical Audio help...

I do not feel anything about computer digital, and frankly speaking I do not exactly understand your posts, if I read them. I do not exactly “get” what you want. To course across the web site  picking superficial information and to built in your mind a virtual hierarchy of what might be “better”...  is it your definition of “being in audio”? You might spread your thinking about the quality of cooking knifes but how valuable it would be if you do not cook and has no habits or desire to cut food. Perhaps I am getting a wrong message in here, and if so then my apologues but I do not see in your posts a lot of compliance with the subject of “evolved music reproduction techniques”.  Please, do not take my reply as a criticism but rather as an optometry for yourself to nail down what you are doing.

SearcherOfBetterSound wrote:

Not released yet though. They are an interesting company to me and whether or not their products are acceptable to you or me or not, they at least talk about some of their experiences and knowledge and tech on products more than a lot of other companies, or specifically in a reasonable and casual enough way... Taking in mind them and Nagra and some other companies, the highlights are probably the transports, and are the specific things to take notice of and consider all-around. They say CD doesn't play as good on more universal-like sources, yet their players have HDCD compatibility, so it makes me think about it and it does make sense..other formats/player-types are probably too different, but HDCD may be the most similar to CD which allows it to play well. Their new player costs around $20,000 like other top transports (a big increase from their $10,000 model which is the only other model I know of from them). But since this can play HDCD, that could possibly be the breaking point in deciding to get it over a Nagra or whatever other player, assuming of course that specifically CD is done right. I have no idea how it looks like or anything, I just read that it premiered at CES recently and what it's price might be.

Dick Sequerra it looks like made his new monitor available: Met 7.7 Mk. 6

http://www.sequerra.com/

It uses looks like a custom paper woofer and a custom paper tweeter, both geometrically naturally aligned, behind first order crossovers, unfortunately sub 90dB sensitivity. I never heard this monitor but the direction Dick went certainly is very perspective. I think if the opportunity comes then this monitor should be heard.

Hi Keith,

Great to hear from you.  I will try someday in the near future to get to over there.  Perhaps the hifi show in Heathrow?  Hmmm...did you try contacting Vacuumstate directly about a possible demo?  As you probably know they are a very small company with probably not a lot of pres on stock I can imagine.  You can contact me directly at morricab@hotmail.com
Cheers,
Brad

Thanks, Brad, interesting feedback about the Cessaro.

It hard to look at bass within the show’s hotel rooms but since Cessaro use “closed bottom” topology for their LF solution it always, at lest in my mind, will be a room for improvement in Cessaro’s bass. What is interesting that Cessaro really do not do anything good or special - they juts, it appears so, do not do the wring things. I always say – the horns are very smile – juts do not do stupid things and the result will be fine.

I never heard the Vacuumstate. A pair of 300B in the “differential SET” application… Hm, would it sound different then a regular 300B? Juts kidding… The last “SET tandem” that I head was with a pair of 6C33C in “differential SET” pushing 45W. The amps were made by Vladimir Bazelkov, who runs a company Audio Mirror.

http://www.audiomirror.com/

I do not know is too welcome this approach, I think paralleling the output tubes to get more current is better solution (the one that I do not like as well). Bu since people have no high sensitively acoustics, then what kind options do they have?....

coops wrote:

'Closed bottom'?

Look for the James’ thread about “Barn Conversion” :

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?postID=3663

we were taking there about the “opened bottom”  and “closed bottom” solutions. The Cessaro’s LF is horn loaded. Do not forget the horns do not “load” frequencies that are lower then the size of the mouth allow them. it is possible to get out of bass horn frequently lover then the horn rate. Altec did it with 515B driver and back-chamber with port but it is VERY different sound.

So, the Cessaro’s LF horns looks like have no more mouth opening that might support anything lower let say, then 60-70Hz. What happened next? Next we have an excessive polluting exertion of driver and a huge compressed boom coming from the horn mouth. You see, a properly operating and sounding bass horn should be high-passed and half octave (deepens of the slope) below the mouth’s rate. It will be high-passed by the horn mouth anyhow, but it is nice (for sound) to unload bass before the mouth’s high-passed kick in.
So, what we have in care of the Cessaro’s LF? We try to make bass section but we in the environment when bass should be …. high-passed. Very nice, thank you! It is what I call “closed bottom” bass salutation as bass by the nature of the topology does not allow itself to be developed free to it’s natural bottom. When you put a bass horns in “active zone” of you room:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=4421

Rony,

There are two possibilities as I can see them.

First is that your new hybrid amp just simply better then you former amp. Between us in case of Threshold, Jeff Rowland or McIntoshes it would not be so hard to come by to a better am, not to mention that nether Threshold, Jeff Rowland nor McIntoshe shell driver compression driver to begin with.

The Second possibility is more interning – it is possible that something in your new hybrid amp makes audio more immune to bad power (electricity). If so, then it makes sense to know what amp it was and try to speculate what in this amp might be responsible for this result. BTW, I have two new promising electricity-battling devises are coming…

I would keep your comment about benefit of a tweeter for S2 - I think you might revise your view about it. As you remember I went over it multiple times myself – though I do agree that even without any tweeters and VERY good electricity the top of S2 is very sufficient and very musical – might be even more interesting with a right tweeter.

RonyWeissman wrote:

Hi,  yes i agree that my solid-state amplifiers were not best choice for compressio drivers, they were my second amps when electricity was bad, otherwise I use a custom made 300B from La maison de l'audiophile for my system when electricity is very good... I am comparing my new hybrid to the sound I was getting from the 300B, or other tube amps that I have heard in very similar systems to mine. The Hybrid is a Tom Evans Linear A, there is very little information on the website, however your 'favorite' reviewer Sarajan Ebjen at 6moons has taken some pictures and discussed the tech layout in his 'review'. R Weissman

I printed the Jeff Day’s review and glanced over it in train. It appears to me that there is absolutely nothing in this amp that would make it to behave better in case of bad electricity. Reading my site you might imagine that the calms of Toms’ amps immunity to bad electricity go my attention right the way. I presume that your old 300B and other tube amps were juts very bad - a common tendency and we know that your SS amps were not useful as well.

What the Tom Evans’ amp does now to S2, all that “palette of infinite colors” and transients like no other compression drivers is pretty much whet any S2 user get with use of a properly sounding and suited for a duty SET. The Tom Evans Linear’s amp looks like a right amp. It is basically a low power SET with EL84/6P14P in output. Tom paralleled the out tubes to drive the composite plate impedance lower and get some power output transformer. It is legitimate and it offers even some flexibility – if you would like to change plate loading outside of the offered taps you might pull some tubes out.(Is the filaments supplies and some other thing would permit it).

Anyhow, it looks like a nice amp and I am glad that you got eventually out of S2 the sound it meant to do, your relation to tweeters is an indication that Tom Evans’ amp might have good sound – but I think you need to leave longer with it to make more concussions and observations.  It would be fun to read more about the Tom Evans Linear SET. I did not read the Jeff Day’s articles deeply and juts snatched a few phases here and there but what I read did not please me. Jeff said:

“Another innovative aspect of the Linear A is the use of two separate power supplies to power the input and output circuits. “

Is it in a two stages-amp with op-amps as drivers and tubes in output?  No kidding! What else would be considered as “innovative”? The use of metal-base hook up wires? The use of DC on tuber anodes? The use of electricity? Anyhow, it is not uncommon that Sarajan’s boys are losing themselves in their desire to show own skills of “serving public”, I guess we all use to it. Congratulations with getting eventually something that looks like a good power amp. I will read the Jeffs’ articles more carefully as time permits…

It is very much might not be a false lead. I did not read further the article but on the first glance there is nothing wrong with that amp – it perfectly maybe a good-sounding amp. It has what is necessary – no SS in output stage – a big must for any low-mass loudspeaker drivers. So, it might work out fine.

The important point that I would like to stress is that your former 300B amp was very faulty and there are pure methodological evidences of it. An ordinary sounding amp but properly operating must not have such a huge difference as you describe. A regular simple 300B amp shell not eat S2 sound all together. The Tom Evans’ amp might be better but not at the point of “no colors” vs. “full of colors”. So, I am very convinced that your old amp was just not designed or was operating properly.

Romy the Cat wrote:

One of the greatest area where a lot of done but with zero success is the power treatment – the electricity still is the main bitch of audio in my world. Well, I should not say that what among what is done everything has zero success but whatever I have seen was not what I would like to have. The power line devices come to the market like the mushrooms after rain but I still do not see anything radical (like a dynamic decoupling of anything like this). The power devises is the area where I would like to see something drastically improved…

Vasyachkin wrote:

….the answer is properly designed components which are able to tolerate garbage power.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Do you personally recognize the sonic impact of bad electricity in your own playback?

Romy the Cat wrote:

Do you have any realistic ways to deal with bad electricity

Romy the Cat wrote:

were able to accomplish better sonic results?

Romy the Cat wrote:

The most important: did you personally experimented (or know somebody) who was able to “properly” design components “which are able to tolerate garbage power”?

Romy the Cat wrote:

I know a few designers who claim that they design power supplies that are immune from bad electricity. I owned some of their components and I can testify that they have no idea what they are talks about in context of electricity influence to sound. So, I am VERY suspicion when people talk about “properly designed components which are able to tolerate garbage power”. Usually it indicates superficial understanding and experiencing of the electricity sonic influence.   The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Please, let drop any further thinking at my site about  “power conditioning” and where it need to be addressed. The Cat