The Audio Note room
is always a pleasant respite from the assault of the crowds. Always musical, always worthwhile. Didn’t get a chance to price their latest gear. Too busy listening to ask.


Not far away was ANK, once formally the kit division of Audio Note, also making beautiful music for those inclined to construct a finished piece by themselves.


JL Audio and Dynaudio put together an interesting match consisting of the Focus 340 ($9'000) and JL’s F112 $4'000 subwoofer. The JL $3'000 outboard crossover added tremendous flexibility in bass management with switchable stereo and LFE ability. Combined with the Audio Research electronics, the sound was clean and had exceptionally wide dispersion that was very forgiving of listening position. Bass was tight, defined and seemingly bottomless, with excellent integration.


Sticking to the $9'000 price point, Coup Defoudre was showing the LM (Line Magnetic) Audio fullrange field-coil loudspeaker with their matching 22wpc  $4'500 LM 5181A tube integrated with an 845 tube complement. A trusty EMT cartridge was doing analog duty. Here the sound was old school, dynamic and meaty...


... with definite tube-style bass, deep solid and weighty. Inflection was great and horns had tremendous dynamic projection. You could settle into old school here very easily and for a very long time.


And again, the $9000 price had some real variety. The Lawrence Audio suite was quite a revelation. Tri Cell’s excellent Unison Research electronics were once again doing stellar work powering a number of different speakers in the Lawrence Line. The 'baby' Mandolin priced at $5'500, the Violin at $9'000 and the Cello at $18'000 were all nothing short of enthralling. The Mandolin sports a ribbon tweeter, the others use air motion transformers. Fit and finish were top notch. Sound on the models I listened to was airy, expansive, detailed and full-bodied with stunning staging abilities. Definitely a top contender for anyone’s best of show.


Mystic Audio’s room continued the Blue Circle tradition of tongue in cheek mixed with smart engineering. Proving the effectiveness of their power noise reduction devices was the responsibility of their designer Gilbert, consigned for the duration to the washroom facilities. But never fear. If Blue Circle’s approach is humorous, the musical quality of their product is deadly serious. A stacked array of their products utilizing Cocktail Audio and Moon sources made the $9995 Gershman AvantGardes sing quite gloriously.


Onwards and upwards. Distributor Kevro had assembled a sweet little Monitor Audio and Cyrus package at ca. $25'000 centered around their Platinum PL300 at the $10'500 mark wired with Clarus cable. Representative Sheldon Ginn was kind show me the small Cyrus equipment, the new XP2QX DAC Pre, the PSXR power supply and the 200w/channel class D amp. He was quick to point out that despite its size, the amp utilizes traditional rather than switching power supplies. A nice system mix of small and conventional form on the aesthetic front and very decent sound on the listening front that promises considerably more when graced with a real world environment.


The Devine Sound Stage III was an auspicious entry from a new face. A three-way loudspeaker in a time-aligned stepped configuration, it mounted a planarmagnetic tweeter atop a tuned-port planar dipole mid on a 15-inch woofer reminiscent of some of the older KEF 105s. Accuphase and Compact 845 supplied the signal. There was real promise here. Tremendous detail and jump factor. Impressive new product worthy of follow up. Show price was $6'000. Current pricing is $12'000.