Friday opened the show to the public so we tried to be at the Hilton on time. From our budget-friendly room list, we decided on Yamaha, oddly enough the only mega audio corporation at the show which is usually dominated by Sony's giant exhibits. Yamaha demonstrated the YSP-1, a speaker array of 40 x 4-cm speakers each with their own DSP and (digital) amplifier. When placed under a television or projection screen, a single YSP-1 replaces the usual 5 loudspeakers of surround-sound setups. Just add a subwoofer and you are almost done - almost because some setup remains to be done. It is possible, for example, to have the YSP-1's far drivers project at the right wall to create some cross-feed with the sidewalls for a virtual sound envelope whose results were amazing. At $1,500 plus perhaps $300 for a decent subwoofer, this is money well spent and should also appeal to interior designers. We enjoyed The Incredibles' saucer chase without missing any sound effects.
More amazing stuff was to be found with the ELP laser turntable. Slide an LP into the reader and a laser beam follows the groove to extract the musical information. The
promise is zero groove wear although we hope that the temperature stays low enough to not damage the vinyl. Considering how hot a CD can get inside a Linn CD12 for example, this seems like a valid concern.

Lee Landesberg imports the Sicilian Ars Aures loudspeakers. We auditioned these alien-looking Mini Sensorials on several prior occasions with KR Audio amplification and, just as here in New York, with Art Audio. Every time they conveyed musicality and ease. Bass is not ground-shaking but sufficient for many hours of joy. Lee used a very under-appreciated Yamaha MCX 1000 music server as source. This server is a steal for its quality.

Almarro came really close to offering within-reach-of-the-many equipment. This was our first live encounter with this make and we were impressed. A nearly complete range of audio equipment save for a source component, all decent

to attractively designed and from what we heard in this room, very pleasant-sounding. Come to Holland, please!

Perfect for our budget equipment hunt was the little ThiPhi two-way loudspeaker in near-production version. At $400, it's a very attractive proposition when combined with the matching subwoofers.
Sound Fusion was new and hot and from Canada. Their active Ariel looked stunning with its dedicated stand and sound to match was on hand as well. At $10,000/pr, this was clearly not the cheapest of solutions but definitely worth a closer audition.

Next door saw another Canadian product introduction, the Gershman Acoustics Black Swan fed by a hefty Linar amplifier. The speaker

is based on a very simple principle. Decouple the bass cabinet and the mid-high head unit completely by leaving a gap between the legs of the upper enclosure and the bass cabinet. The latter simply slides inside the A-framed hollow of the former. The result is a Darth Vader appearance, albeit with far superior sonics. This discrete two-piece construction also makes it possible to time-align the bass and head units by sliding one of them forward of aft until the sound clicks.
Dutch pride & joy Kharma was represented in two rooms, with the Meitner/ Kubala Sosna exhibit sporting the new D-class Kharma MP150 amplifiers. Look at the size of the amp in comparison to the cables. The sound wasn't at all 'digital' and we are very curious to learn what techniques are employed in this proprietary concept of Kharma's Charles van Oosterum.
Hørning speakers, Tron Syren preamp and 300B power amps and a massive Sound Engineering turntable with a Swiss DaVinci tonearm were on audition in NY retailer HighWater Sound's room - impressively visual, completely inaudible when the equipment simply vanished as we closed our eyes and simply listened.


On the fourth floor, Manley teamed up with Joseph Audio. Give Jeff a stage and his own CDs and LPs and he will completely go out of his fontanel as we say in Holland. His latest RM55LE speaker was doing the hard work without any effort and became a very involving demonstration. Sitting in with Jeff, one always discovers new music and artists and once again we had to jot down the names of some that were new to us.
Ray Kimber really made a big impression this year, participating in a large room with four big TAD/Pioneer loudspeakers with Pass Labs amplification playing back his IsoMike recordings direct from hard-disk. We were lucky to swipe central seats and found ourselves thoroughly enjoying a very rare occasion of multi-channel playback. The IsoMike recordings are captured with a very large dividing baffle and were so convincing that we found ourselves questioning our perception. The aural stimuli told our brain that we were in a concert hall's balcony looking down on the stage while our eyes reported to the brain that we were in a dark room with awful carpeting, a 19-inch rack with flashing lights and surrounded by funky-smelling examples of the male species. Psychosis anyone? Without kidding, Ray's persistence and belief in this recording technique needs to be given far more credit than it has yet.
No show is complete without a visit to the software department. This is one of the few audiophile places where you can spend a little to get a lot. Packed with some promising CDs, we were on our way to the next exhibits when the Halcyonics man who insisted we pay some attention to his new product stopped us in our tracks. Halcyonics --aptly named after the halcyon or kingfisher that builds his nest in an unusual way -- specializes in vibration control; active vibration control. Using ultra-fast digital motion sensors, an array of motors is activated to produce the necessary counter movements, with such broadband precision as to completely eliminate vibrations from 0.6Hz up to 10kHz. No wonder this device was originally designed for electron microscopes. If you're living in an apartment
building with elevators, in a city with rumbling subways or near free-ranging elephants, looking into this vibration control solution seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

One of the last two rooms we visited was Darren Censullo's, decorated with unusual French tuning devices consisting of a little wooden block with two green dots and topped with a titanium bowl as the active device similar to a Tibetan singing bowl. Whether this was the magic or simply the Ascendo System M loudspeakers, the Luminance amplifiers or the cables, the room sounded just fine. We played some of our own music and were pleased. What more to say?


This was followed up by a conversation with the Rives Audio guys who will soon arrive in Europe after finalizing current projects in Poland and England. Truly, Chris Huston should write a book on his musical life. The stories he told us about his years with the Undertakers were true gold!


To cool down from all the excitement, we settled down in the Damoka room last. Vinyl played back on a large Thorens table, amplification occurred by way of beautiful Lamm Industries products and through a pair of Vitavox corner hornspeakers. Vintage met 2005 in a most musical way. Could Mark Levinson be right with his PCM-induced stress theory?


In the end, we did not find an abundance of budget-friendly systems on display. Our mission for that genre remains open-ended. On the other hand, we encountered fascinating new theories to ponder. One of these is that nowadays, the definition of budget probably needs to be redefined. Budget is no longer a financial but more of an emotional function. So yes, shit does happen. [The pix of Srajan show him with Yoshi Segoshi of Sakura Systems above and with Gabi Van Der Kley of Crystal Cable to the right. Is another 6moons/Crystal Cable CD in the works?]