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Coming in July 2009: Gecko Boutique Vevey. How do you combine your love of tea, Bali and music after you've worked for Universal Music as a regional rep and got laid off due to the general purse tightening all over? One man now operating Gecko Boutique out of Vevey just two blocks from Lac Leman in Switzerland has a surprising answer... |
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Coming in July 2009: Roadtour Geithain. In a small 6,000-strong town south-east of Leipzig, one of Germany's purveyours to studios, broadcast stations and home listeners plies his trade of loudspeaker maker. Jörg Dames was there to report... |
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July 2009: Roadtour Marten Design. Mike Valentino travels to Sweden for a look-see at this speaker design house... |
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July 2009: Swansong for an ugly duckling. The e-mail was from papa. Well, not really. But that's how his many DIY fans refer to Nelson Pass on the DIYAudio forum. The thread on how to build a FirstWatt F5 from scratch has developed into 174 colossal pages by now. Which segues smoothly into today's note. In his typically terse e-mail, the man had indicated that the last of the F5s were trundling out of his kitchen workshop and that a new product was nearing completion... |
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July 2009: Seven Years and still Here. The verflixte 7th year. The human body is said to renew its cells in 7-year intervals. The esoteric traditions talk of seven chakras or energy vortexes which connect the human body to different vibratory dimensions. In relationships, the number seven is believed to signify the arising of unresolved issues while astrology looks at one's 49th year (7x7) as a time of enforced emotional and issue-based house cleaning when stuff one hasn't handled or procrastinated on catches up to present itself unavoidably. 6moons launched in June 2002 out of a very small... |
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June 2009: Snarky. I have an admirer in Rome. But this time, Michele Surdi's e-mail began ominously enough. Was I in need of a major Zappa-esque attitude adjustment for the busy executive? "I see you're getting a bit snarky and censorious in your latest reviews..." I knew what censorious meant. I had in fact been so accused recently by Simon Yorke, for not attending the offboarders' event that ran parallel to the Munich 2009 HighEnd show in the out-of-the-way Fleming hotel. I'd had a perfectly rational explanation for my choice of focusing on the main event. I thus questioned Yorke's attitude. Did his censorship accusation include those magazines which hadn't sent even a single reporter to Munich, period? Snarky however wasn't...
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June 2009: My Dream Component. The phone rang. It was an audio manufacturer checking in. After two hours of shooting the breeze -- about the usual, the need for high-end audio to become relevant to a larger audience -- I had proposed a dream component that could accomplish just that. Before I tell you what it is, two disclaimers. One, having an idea is like sex. It's easy, quick and takes no commitment. Turning any idea into reality is more like pregnancy and giving birth. It involves time, effort, risks, complications, pain and definitely commitment. Two, having a component that's relevant to the masses doesn't mean you're positioned to reach and sell them. Talk is cheap....
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June 2009: Audio Art Café. It's been a while since I last made contact but we are now happily installed in our Audio Art Café and enjoying the fruits of all the hard work that went into creating such a new concept. We have been open for about 10 weeks or so now, we had our official opening a few weeks ago with over 200 attending, it was a great night. The response to the concept has been wonderful and its certainly nice to see women enjoying the place including the Hi-Fi side too, for the audio industry to survive we need them to feel comfortable and included in the process.... |
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June 2009: How easy it is to be a reviewer. Money. Fame. Perks. Vacations. The secret costs of "doing it"... |
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May 2009: HighEnd 2009 Show Coverage Page 2. The "European CES" is the biggest and most important audio event in the Old World and Dutchies Marja & Henk were there again as last year to report on what captured their cameras and fancies. Part 2 with 5 pages. |
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May 2009: HighEnd 2009 Show Coverage Part 1. The "European CES" is the biggest and most important audio event in the Old World and our editor was there again as last year to report on what captured his camera and fancy. Part 1 with 25 pages. |
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May 2009: Emillé News - Emillé Labs from South Korea introduces three new models and will exhibit them in two active systems at HighEnd 2009 in Munich. System n°1 will show the new Emillé Quintessence preamplifier, the KM-300SE power amp, the new Allure phono preamp and for non-Emillé ancillaries, Dr Feickert Analogue's Twin Black turntable, AMR's CD 77 and Rethm's Saadhana loudspeakers. System n°2 will show Emillé's new Cha'am integrated amplifier, the Emillé Allure phono preamp and for partners, another Dr Feickert Analogue Twin Black turntable, another AMR CD 77 and the French Triangle Electroacoustique Cello loudspeakers... |
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April 2009: Custom amp from Serbia - "Business is terrible. The phones stopped ringing..." but not in Serbia it seems where Trafomatic Audio responds to custom commissions to make happy clients which competitors would never hear from. Going the extra mile works as well in today's climate as it ever has to get and stay ahead. Even if 'ahead' just means to pay the bills and continue doing what you love doing... |
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April 2009: A Visit To Audio Consulting - It's been going on ever since men first began sponsoring the oldest profession in the world. And even spiritual seekers partake. "My master is so patient, he corals a wild yak, feeds it just one grain of sugar, then combs its tail until it gets sweet and completely tame." "That's nothing, man. My master is so strong, he takes your hairy wild beast and blows into its nostrils until the horns uncurl and go straight as arrows."... |
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April 2009: Now that our local second hand vinyl shop in Rotterdam has closed its doors, we had to start shopping elsewhere for pristine and affordable vinyl. But where? We discovered a shop a good hour's drive away in Antwerp of Belgium. For us Antwerp is not just another city, it's really abroad. Although Dutch, the Flemish dialect there adds something very attractive and musical to our ears. Our Dutch Dutch is harsher. It is laden with guttural G-sounds whereas the Flemish variant is softer, with a much more pleasing G coming from the mouth rather than throat. Grrr. Anyway... |
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April 2009: After a 4-year lapse, the Doelen Spring Hifi Show in Rotterdam has been restored to it unique former glory. Previous incarnations ran parallel to a music student contest between various conservatoriums of our country. Winners of these competitions often grew to become established artists who were and are regularly seen and heard in Dutch and foreign venues. Besides these competitive performances, our spring show always also issued a special event CD whose program the recording artists then perform live. This made for great live/canned comparisons for those so inclined... |
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April 2009: Held in the lake side castle of Greifensee just outside Zürich, April 4 and 5 2009 saw the fourth installment of the Klangschloss event which translates simply as Castle of Sound. Organized by Markus Thomann, the proprietor of Swiss loudspeaker house Klangwerk of Biel, it's an opportunity for Swiss audio makers and importers to show off their wares in a public forum that's not a store front or the very expensive HighEnd Munich show. With per-day room fees from CHF 140 to 650 -- as a Stiftung or foundation, the castle routinely rents its rooms for public functions -- participation is cost-effective and the location by the lake a valid ruse to attract couples in search of some weekend fun, not just hard-boiled audiophiles... |
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March 2009: Stockholm Hifi Show 2009: 14-15 February, Sheraton Hotel - It may not be the most significant international hifi show there is but, it is a pleasurably compact event with loads of positive vibes. Whether those good vibes are due to some objective show ingredient or the simple fact that the show is on Swedish soil I don't know. And I don't care as long as an outsider like me senses a promising and curious attitude among the audience. Which is less obvious at our Helsinki show in Finland for example. Visitors, approximately 2000 over two days, seemed knowledgeable and civilized, critical but not cynical. I like that... |
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March 2009: WLM Acoustics Ascendent: February 29, Hannes Frick of WLM announced himself for a half-day social call to pick up his La Scala and Sonata review loaners and get Sasa and Misha of Trafomatic Audio a well-deserved break from a 3-day intensive in Sülz/Austria where their team had cracked the whip on new models for HighEnd 2009 in Munich...
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March 2009: New Music Review pages: The king is dead. The king is dead. Long live the new king. Nothing this drastic has occurred here on the moons, not to worry. But one moon has vanished and a new one risen in its stead. World Music became Music Reviews and the relaunched page is now shepherded by the trusted team of David Kan, Frederic Beudot, Ken Micallef and Paul Candy, with yours truly playing only a minor supporting role... |
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February 2009: Cancellation! Shit happens. Mentioning it can mean wallowing, dishing or complaining. In this case, it's meant to avoid reruns. What happened is that... |
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February 2009: Enlarging the carbon footprint of audio: Reducing the carbon footprint. This has become a new term to signify the global need to control harmful emissions released into the atmosphere. Increasing the carbon footprint is an unthinkable proposition in that context. But perhaps not in audio. I'm not talking about carbon monoxide of course. I'm referring to the use of carbon fiber for enclosures and sub assemblies of loudspeakers and electronic components... |
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January 2009: Anthony Gallo rides again: A first look at OPT which stands not for outrageously priced trash but Optimized Pulse Technology, the new ingredient to Gallo's forthcoming new Reference 3.5 loudspeaker... which isn't a gimmicky voodoo circuit or new driver -- tho there is more than one new driver in there -- but a combination of tweaky mechanical solutions that... |
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December 2008: You will be remembered: John Potis passes away... |
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December 2008: Guangzhou AV Fair: Be like water snake - elusive, slippery, never mind the lines (sage advice on how to negotiate Chinese traffic). Whilst attending HighEnd Munich 2008, I met Allen and Alex Wang of Melody Valve Hifi and was subsequently invited to a sponsored visit of their factory and the Guangzhou AV Fair held annually at the White Swan 5-star hotel. To mitigate the language barrier, Alex offered chauffeur, tour guide and translation services and additionally hired Laura, an English teacher intern, to be at our disposal while he was busy. Alex also turned out to be a master of the stone-cold bargain ... |
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December 2008: Factory Tour of Melody Valve HiFi: True for everything to a gwai loh foreign devil visiting China for the first time, scale is king. The enormity of it is overwhelming. Add the incredible hospitality we encountered -- we left with an extra suitcase full of gifts from complete strangers such that Finnair demanded we transfer an excess 10 kilos to carry-on to conform to airline weight regulations -- and the challenge of doing justice to our visit looms just as large. As such, our visit to Melody one hour outside Shenzhen is far better expressed in pictures than words... |
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November 2008: Combing the fringes: Becoming aware of two separate but interconnected announcements in the same week so much as forced the virtual pen into my hand to suggest a few parallels that might send intrepid audio explorers on a specific path of inquiry. After all, nothing is as boring as dull repetition. These new products from Synergistic Research and LessLoss promise to shake things up a bit and trigger discussions, preferably among those with first-hand experience... |
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November 2008: WLM's Sonata: In RoadTour Serbia's Trafomatic chapter, I had reported on a 35wpc EL34 push/pull integrated amplifier platform Sasa Cokic was developing for Hannes Frick of Austrian loudspeaker house WLM. At the time Sasa was close to finalizing the circuit inside a basic chassis that would ship to Sülz for Hannes to audition before green-lighting the project. Hannes meanwhile confirmed that the Sonata is indeed a go. With an unexpected twist... |
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November 2008: Raal Revisited: RoadTour Serbia's chapter on Raal followed the development of Aleksandar Radisavljevic's ambitious Eternity omni project. RMAF 2008 witnessed the first public demonstration. Afterwards, Alex called me in Switzerland to report back: "This was my first trade show. We learned a lot. Our room was so lossy in the bass that Bert Doppenberg of BD Design next door heard all of ours and we all of his. We joked about synchronizing the same music. In the upper bass, this gave us way too much output." Having now heard his first pair in 5 different rooms, the performance at RMAF was the worst, he said. He didn't open his room in earnest until Saturday, being busy trying to revoice the crossover with parts Lynn Olson made available.... |
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November 2008: Helsinki High-End 2008: Had this September not come, there wouldn't have been a hifi show in Helsinki. September seems to be for audio shows what April is for falling in love - and not just in Helsinki but in Milan, London and who knows where else... Kari Nevalainen reports. |
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November 2008: Distortion & Negative Feedback by Nelson Pass: Audiophiles seem to revel in minor controversies - vinyl vs CDs, tubes versus solid state, capacitor, wires, magic dots... and negative feedback. At one extreme, the position is that "feedback makes amplifiers perfect". At the other extreme, "feedback is a menacing succubus that sucks the life out of the music, leaving a dried husk devoid of soul". The former viewpoint usually belongs to so-called 'objectivists' who have a fine appreciation for electronic theory and measurements. Their opposites would be the 'subjectivists' who emphasize the listening experience and often own tube amplifiers. Accusations are occasionally made that objectivists can't hear, and conversely that subjectivists hear things that aren't there... |
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November 2008: D Class Semi Finals?: Class D continues to make inroads, no doubt spurred by looming EU legislature that is planned to outlaw class A consumer amps for energy inefficiency. This would kill off the species known as SET aka the single-ended amplifier since that, regardless of transistor or triode, operates in class A. But that's not the only connection between D class and tubes. Very curiously, many designers of valve amps have begun to embrace class D rather than crossing over to more traditional class A or A/B transistor topologies. John Stronczer of Bel Canto probably started the trend, migrating from 845-based amplifiers directly to Tripath. Today we have Audio Research and Cary with class D amps. But even in the truly exotic sector, there are migrations... |
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October 2008: Status Quo me arse: When audiophiles belabor the status quo, I just don't get 'em. The offerings available today in the lower-priced sector are more attractive than ever. Case in point? Alon Wolf's Magico Mini, remember that? ScanSpeak Revelator tweeter, ATD Titanium-sandwich mid/woofer, stacked ply cabinet, $20,000/pr. Now consider Chris Hoff's BPT Cirrus which starts at... |
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October 2008: With Feelings: The apparently opposing or contradictory forces that would separate 'audiophile' and 'music lover' are as old as our hobby. As caricatures to press a point, the audiophile is obsessed with hardware. He listens to the same few CDs over and over to assess technical performance merits against a mental check list. The music lover spends all her money on software, often enjoying music over a system an audiophile would consider insufficient. There are many more ways to make the implied distinctions. I trust this one is as good as any other. Here it simply sets the stage... |
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October 2008: Hiend Show Vietnam: Do Nhu Quynh is the organizer of the Vietnamese Hiend Show which recently concluded. For a sampling of this year's action, Do forwarded some informal shots he took in passing... |
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October 2008: Why Music Matters Most: Enjoyment, Illusion and the Audiophile - Hifi's ultimate goal is the enjoyment of prerecorded music in our homes. As unlikely as it may seem, hifi hobbyists are embroiled in endless debate over the finer points of this enjoyment. Some of the most popular and ongoing include: do cables matter, do all amplifiers sound the same and are LPs better than CDs. And there are hundreds more. Just read any hifi forum on any day of any week. With such a seemingly simple purpose -- musical enjoyment -- why so much discord and disagreement over the means to that end?... by Michael Lavorgna |
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October 2008: Audiophile destination IKEA: If yera phile ona buggered budget, keep reading. We're going to Ikea today. If there's no outlet near you, let your fingers do the walking. Visit their website. Amp stands and cable lifters made from cross-sawn Butcher block and real hardwood respectively are there for the taking. The kitchen department has a wide variety of chopping boards and in the DIY shelving department, those book ends make perfect cable towers. To convert chopping boards into hifi platforms only requires selecting some hardware that'll act as footers. I've used various Ikea drawer pulls, buttons and door handles... |
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October 2008: DirectGrace: What happens when documentary film makers chronicling the plight of street urchins meet the right audiophile who then meets other supportive audiophiles? Learn how you can contribute to their cause at the upcoming RMAF 2008 show. - by Steve Marsh |
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October 2008: SCAD: No, that's not a misspelling. We didn't mean SACD but SCAD - Scandinavian Audio Design, a new company that launched at the recent Arken hifi show in Gothenburg, Sweden... |
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September 2008: Milan Top Audio show report: Lots of brands - especially from Italy -- were news to your scribe. Attending was thus mission accomplished without any listening. But we did do some of that as well. With a special focus on new brand Angelis Labor from Sicily, here goes our 10-page photo reportage of the show... |
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September 2008: RoadTour Serbia: A number of Serbian hifi manufacturers invited us to inspect their facilities, sample their products and report on their domestic scene. Here is the bumper crop of impressions we collected at N.N Acoustics, Solaja Audio, Trafomatic Audio and Raal Ribbon. |
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September 2008: Crystal Cable Arabesque: Eagle-eyed readers with good memory will recall early concept sightings of a Crystal Cable speaker called Arabesque whose cross section was based on a tear drop and whose enclosure was glass. Converting concept into commercial reality proved challenging: "We had to change the idea of the curved glass concept as it caused big problems with reliability and was nearly impossible to manufacture... |
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September 2008: RoadTour St.-Croix: You can't fake having history. Actual time had to be put in. And has Thorens ever put it on the clock. Their roots trace back to 1883 in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland where one of the Cima Museum's rooms today maintains an exhibit which contains working examples of early Thorens turntables. Older St. Croix residents well remember the company's halcyon days of operating out of a local six-building complex there. Even the original single building still stands. A Serbian expat now machines select watch parts out of its back. These locals pronounce the company name To-rá by the way, emphasis on the second syllable... |
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August 2008: China to California in 4 days: Having recently relocated from Cyprus to Switzerland, I had reason to procure the services of KLine freight forwarders to get our belongings from Limassol to Chardonne. Because of some freak data entry error, my 40-foot container wasn't forwarded from Hamburg where it sat for 2 weeks growing moss. To expedite its onward journey when the cause for the delay was finally discovered, I drove to Basel to meet KLine's Swiss agent in person. In the course of our conversation, Fabio Crosilla joked how because of the current weak US dollar, certain enterprising Europeans vacationing in the colonies acquire a snazzy US car to import back to Europe. "They're rich and slick as hell... |
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August 2008: Running with wolves: I can't know about you. With me though, "the world's best speaker" and sundry related claims cause an inverse reaction to what I expect the ad writers or tag line creators desired. A recent press release about a TopDog did not. First perhaps because unlike all-encompassing claims, a top dog is specific to a pack. There's other packs. Nobody presenting an alpha dog even implies it's also the omega and everything in-between. With the big dawg in question, the accompanying descriptions also simply hit home. Dipole 10-inch dual-cone paper widebander. Dipole 18-inch woofer for total cone surface of 1600cm². Active 6dB/octave crossover with time correction and equalization. Sensitivity above 100dB. Max SPL better than 115dB... |
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August 2008: RWA becomes WLM importer: Three years in biz and, let's see - mods; amps, a remote-controlled tube preamp; a DAC; an optional headphone module; interconnects and speaker cables. What Red Wine Audio still lacked were speakers. Clearly ambitious, Vinnie Rossi now has those as well. But, he was smart enough to not get into loudspeaker manufacture himself. Rather, he collaborates with his Austrian importer who just so happens to be a fully mature loudspeaker house: WLM. By squaring the circle and becoming the US importer for WLM, Vinnie builds on a proven synergy; strengthens the bond between two companies doing business together; and gets into the enviable position of... |
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August 2008: Auspicious Beginnings: With the recent announcement of my relocation to Lake Geneva, Switzerland, readers and friends alike have asked for some images of the region. Seeing that our 40-foot seafreight container hasn't arrived yet to render me deaf and mute on all personal things audio, it's a welcome excuse to pound the keys and write something - even if it's got nothing whatever to do with hifi... |
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July 2008: Steve Marsh visits Red Wine Audio: Vinnie Rossi, proprietor of Red Wine Audio, has been enjoying a lot of positive press around his new 30.2 and 70.2 T-amps, much of it from 6moons.com. With Vinnie's recent move into a new factory facility, Srajan thought it apropos for a moonie to check out his new digs. Living about twenty minutes away from the Red Wine Audio factory in nearby Meriden, Connecticut, I was the natural choice... |
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July 2008: Fertiginous: Regular reader Russell Dawkins: "Hi Srajan, I thought you would enjoy these photographs. Hard to believe the very antique paraphernalia on the bench top was not put there by a movie set designer. I seem to recall a mention in 6moons about this speaker but a quick search turned up nothing, so this may or may not be news. [Actually, we did post this in our news room months ago but once aged news are purged, they're truly off the server and no longer to be found - Ed.] Seems to me the surroundless idea is not new, though - I believe a Japanese company called Sano made one in the 70s and it was a 30 kg monster. Exact copied it. |
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July 2008: 6M in mainland Europe?: Cabin fever? That's what friends predicted when we moved to Cyprus 2-plus years ago. What neither they nor us could have predicted was a fierce draught which now has the capital of Nicosia (and friends 15 minutes away) on two days of running water per week, with the reservoirs depleted and tankers from Greece shipping in sweet water. "Sit there and get run over" seems the applicable term du jour. This article sheds some light. Barcelona in Spain has similar issues, all the fruit trees in our yard are in really bad shape. That sketch barely scratches the surface of impending desertification... |
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June 2008: Fine Audio in Monaco: I'd first heard about Geoffrey Armstrong from Jacob George at Rethm. He had signed a dealer in Monaco. What I didn't know until just now is that Sound Galleries has selected for its brands a solid baker's dozen we've reviewed. Coincidence? Armstrong says not: "Sound Galleries is very much inspired by 6moons. Here you will find 47Labs, Analysis ribbon/planar speakers, Ancient Audio, Opera Consonance, Podium Sound, Red Wine Audio, Rethm, Tom Evans and Zu, together with longer established companies such as E.A.R Yoshino and PS Audio. We even feature a Garrard 301 mounted in a Cain and Cain plinth as per Jeff Day's Garrard 301 project." |
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June 2008: Steve Marsh visits VSAC 2008: My friends in the Portland, Oregon area have been prodding me to come out to a VSACfor several years now, claiming it has the collegial spirit that is essentially non-existent at the larger commercial shows like CES. I've never been to Oregon or Washington so the invitation was easy to accept. The Vancouver, Washington Hilton hotel was the site for VSAC 2008 and provided attendees with reasonable rates and overall good food, from all reports. The show was certainly on the smaller side as shows go, with a total of nineteen exhibitor rooms. In addition to exhibitor rooms, there was a Craftsman's Room for the DIY builders to showcase their creations, a vintage room ... |
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May 2008: 1883 - 2008 = 125 years: Thorens CEO Heinz Rohrer had been holding out on me. But I caught him in flagranti and for penance, he spilled the beans now. Actually, those privy to the news of Thorens' new flagship vinyl deck were simply those chosen for a private demonstration in Dresden prior to the Munich HighEnd show. Rohrer is a classy guy. Here's them beans now: "To celebrate the company's 125th anniversary, the Jubilee is "a turntable without limits, the best 58 kg the company has to offer..." |
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May 2008: VSAC 2008 impressions: Stephæn was there and returned with some photographic atmosphere. |
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May 2008: VSAC 2008 preview: I'll be back. We all know who said that. But it's true also for the Vacuum Tube State of the Art Conference. New organizers Carolyn and Michael Kilfoil have resurrected this event in the Pacific NorthWest after original founders Dan and Eileen Schmalle of BottleHead relinquished it for the last four years. Remember that the original installment of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had its conceptual gestation as a quasi 'centralized' dovetail run against VSAC's every-other-year schedule. With RMAF's focus by now having grown well beyond VSAC's DIY core, resurrecting the original event which was keenly focused on the men and women with soldering guns, basements and ... |
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May 2008: Izmir gets tchanged: The editor of Turkish hifi e-zine Stereo Mecmuasi reports on Franck Tchang's visit to the sea resort of Izmir in Turkey. |
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May 2008: fairaudio.de does Munich: Show time. Size matters is a slogan and 230 exhibitors makes quite a number on the neighborhood curb. It's also the figure the 27th installment of High End -- meanwhile in Munich for the fifth time -- clocked for new record attendance. Yet sheer gigantomania isn't what bowls us over at fairaudio. More interesting is that High End attracts a growing cadre of foreign firms (24 countries had representation). Some exotic flair is always welcome, we think... |
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May 2008: Run of the Mill: Jonathan Weiss opens up Oswald's Mill once a year for what he's dubbed a Tube and Speaker Tasting. People travel from far and wide to attend: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, the Carolinas, Portland, Berlin and more. The things to be tasted at the Mill include audio, music, amazing food, drink, smoke and most importantly (it appeared to me) good company. When I say Jonathan opens up his home, I mean that quite literally. There's nothing off limits, no "be careful on that carpet", no locked doors. Part of the reason is that there's vintage audio to be seen. Everywhere. Piles of it. Rows of it, stacks of it. And we're talking about an RCA professional and industrial products-centric collection with some rare and nearly extinct species... |
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May 2008: Music First (Audio) news: I tend to prefer active preamps with tubes. However, there are occasions when the amplifier/speaker interface is so locked in and dialed that you don't want to "season the stew" with any additional spice whatsoever. Now a superior passive preamp becomes necessary, a field in which Music First Audio, the subsidiary of Stevens & Billington, has major experience for their transformer-attenuating solutions.... |
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April 2008: Srajan and Marja & Henk report from the Munich show: 11 pages of packed show reportage still overlook about 60% of who and what was there. Really. Still, we've worked hard to give you our 40%... |
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April 2008: Franckenese: If you see dead people, they will surely inform your after-life notions. If you're a psychotherapist who successfully applied techniques to stop himself from seeing ghosts, anyone else seeing them will be viewed as hallucinating and treated accordingly. Should a hallucinator proceed to relay to the therapist detailed messages from his long dead grandmother only she could possibly know about, our shrink could be in serious trouble - especially when his techniques vaporize grandma's specter before she could finish describing to the hallucinator where the lost family treasures were buried... |
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April 2008: Rethmosis: No, it's not the curse of the mummy, just a humorous bow to the osmosis-like transformation of Rethm's new Maarga speaker which integrates certain design cues from the cosmetically upgraded Saadhana. From a performance perspective, the most important change is the integrated bass amp which now gives each speaker its very own power source. The integrated trap absorbers on the speakers' cheeks continue the theme begun with the Saadhana whose originally veneered side covers gave way to silk-wrapped foam/perf masonite panels intended to absorb acoustical reflections and thus subtract the speaker enclosure from the reflective listening environment as much as possible... |
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April 2008: Thorens TEP 3800: As my review of them makes clear, the Thorens TEM 3200 monaural hybrids are true reference amplifiers and, in my necessarily limited experience, the best such devices I've yet heard. Knowing that the patent-pending DC-coupled counter-parallel Circlotron iteration of the monos had also found its way into Frank Blöhbaum's matching TEP 3800 preamp, I was naturally curious how it would do there. As it turns out, readers of Germany's Stereoplay magazine already know. The TEP 3800 displaced their current Lyra Connoisseur as their new in-house reference. One might suspect nationalistic pride -- after all, Swiss Thorens manufactures in Germany -- but... |
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April 2008: Paul Candy visits Le Festival Son et Image, Montreal |
| RAM:EF - Room Acoustics Mastery: "Expert Feedback" at a glance |
RAM:EF13: On the design process
RAM:EF12: On sound isolation and noise control
RAM:EF11: On the perfect room
RAM:EF10: On room acoustics at trade shows
RAM:EF9: On the soundstage at home and in the recording studio
RAM:EF8: On rooms without boundaries
RAM:EF7: On LEDE live-end/dead-end considerations
RAM:EF6: On bass traps
RAM:EF5: Acoustical measurements - what are they?
RAM:EF4: On dipolar speakers and their specifc room acoustics needs
RAM:EF3: More on high-directivity speakers and the need to control early reflections with treatments
RAM:EF2: Introduction to room acoustics terminology
RAM:EF1: On high-directivity speakers and the need to control early reflections with treatments
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