Day Two at the Festival
     It's the Saturday that should indicate that the Festival is a success...or a mitigated success. We'll be interested to see the official statistics, if any, nut our collective impression was that the crowds were thinner. The other disquieting detail: among four of us, we got to see nearly everything in a couple of days. Bad sign?
     Still, there were crowds, rather too dense crowds for the small rooms upstairs and the narrow corridors. And we did get to see some interesting stuff.
     We got a good look at a new Arcam product, the C$4000 solo (shown at right). As the name suggests it can be a home theatre system all by itself...well, it and an HDTV monitor, plus some speakers. It contains a DVD player, a preamplifier, a surround sound processor, and five power amps. It will leave you with lots of empty shelf space, which we understand to be a Good Thing. It looked and sounded rather nice in the midst of a compact home theatre system.
     As sometimes happens, we will be getting some products for reviews in the next issue of the magazine right after the show. That is the case of several products from Linn.
     One is the Artikulat speaker, at left. It's a large (and--we are told--heavy!) speaker, but it's more than that. Each speaker contains three of Linn's heavy-duty Klimax amplifiers, each amplifying its own part of the audible band. This is, in other word, a fully active system.
     There will be a couple of "accessories" with it, namely the newest Linto phono preamp and the Klimax Kontrol (we think that's how it's spelled) preamplifier. Oh yes...plus somehing else.
     It was a couple of years ago that we bought a fully-tricked-out Linn LP12 to replace our Omega turntable (an Alphason), whose motor had turned into stone, or something like that. So who knew that, two decades beyond what was billed as the twilight of analog, Linn would continue to work on the turntable that practically defines the company? The newest LP12 includes a major rethink of the subchassis (named the Keel, because it is shaped roughly like the hull of a ship), a new Ekos II arm made of titanium, and a renewed Lingo power supply. Oh sure, hurt us, punish us, make us compare your new creature to the turntable we are barely through paying for. In the Linn room the new LP12 was run alongside an older one, and of course it looked bad for the older one.
     This may be a good time to mention that the LP12 was by no means the only turntable spinning vinyl at the Festival. To be fair, the one at right was not really spinning, as you might guess from the absence of a drive belt, to say nothing of a tone arm. This is the Pluto 12A Spécial Luxury, which Mutine will be selling. The company does, we hope, know that Pluto (the planet) has been busted down to private.
     We'll mention Mutine again in a moment, because it had no fewer than two rooms worth mentioning.
     At left is yet another German turntable, the Musical Life. Several visitors guessed it to be a Clearaudio, though it doesn't have that company's trademark translucent platter. The dog, which seems to have lost his master's voice, is not included. Why is it that Germany seems to have so many turntables? And does that explain that country's leadership in what is now a worldwide vinyl revival? We're just asking.
     A downtown Montreal store called Son Idéal came to the Festival three years ago with a boatload of gorgeous vintage hi-fi gear, including two dual pairs of the original Quad electrostatic, mounted vertically. Everyone still talks about that. And this time?
     This time Son Idéal brought a Technics direct-drive turntable (at right), with some audiophile-oriented mods. For one thing the original Technics tone arm has been trashed in favor of a Rega RB-300, which required some fancy machining. The feet replacing the ridiculous factory-fitted feet are a lot more elaborate. And check out the impressive record clamp!
     And here's one more, shown at left, the Merill-Scillia Research MS2, complete with a collar to flatten those inevitable warped discs. It was spinning vinyl in an entire roomful of gear we had never heard of, including rather striking Opera Audio Consonance tube monoblocks. We did recognize the loudspeakers, which were Lamhorn full-range speakers. They are of course a great match for a small monoblock (small in power, not size or price, we hasten to add). The turntable, by the way, has a price tag of US$10K.
     We got another listen to the attractive Sonus Faber Elipsa, which first showed up at CES. This somewhat smaller version of the company's flagship Stradivarius, is pleasantly natural, without the invasive emphasis we heard in too many other rooms. Of course at around $20K it won't fit all budgets, but it is a winner in both visual and musical aesthetics.
     Kharma speakers often turn up at shows, not always because the company itself is exhibiting, but because...well, it's an attention-grabber. The one at left was playing with a pair of the huge and powerful Tenor monoblocks. As usual, the Kharma sounded something more than ordinary, but its distinctive ceramic drivers are unusually revealing, not only of musical details, but of problems as well. And there are always problems, aren't there?
     We went back for a second listen to the Reference 3a Grand Veena, now mated to rather larger tube monoblocks, the Antique Sound Lab Cadanzas. The match may still not be right. We wonder whether this large speaker might need a little more muscle and discipline. We know that Refereence 3a speakers are generally forgiving, but this is not like previous ones.
     We got a brief listen to the much-praised Modwright 9.0SE preamplifier, which with a bit of luck we will be picking up after the show. Look for it in our next issue.
     One of the more restful rooms was that of Advanced Ribbon Technologies, which was playing its Metro hybrid (ribbon tweeter, dynamic woofer) speaker. We know that tweetes can sound harsh to the point of provoking bleeding, and in the early days of ribbons we actually expected that. Ribbon design has improved, fortunately, and the Metro has a smooth, almost laid-back sound, driven by a Moon I-7 integrated amplifier and fed by a Naim CD player. The Metro costs US$6900.
     Much as we love expensive gear that we (and perhaps you) can dream about, we also like to run across affordabnle products that can make real music. That's the case of the Omaha OD-300B (at right), an inexpensive (US$1575) single-ended tube integrated amplifier. It was feeding a rather nice pair of stand-mounted speakers whose name we tried, without success, to make out. In fact they are prototypes, and they are also made by Omaha.
     (By the way, wouldn't there be a moral duty to make Omaha products in Nebraska? Nope...they're from California.)
     We did promise we would get back to Mutine. The company had two rooms, and wisely kept the doors closed, with people outside taking the names of those who wanted to get one of the coveted seats inside. Most of the gear is familiar to us. In one room were the Equation 35 speakers (we reviewed the slightly smaller 25 some time ago), an Audiomat Récital tube integrated amplifier, and a CEC TL0X transport with an Audiomat Maestro converter. In the other room were the Atlantis Argentera speakers with a CD player and integrated amplifier from Mimetism. In both cases, the rooms were an oasis of musical pleasure which contrasted with the hideous noises emerging from a number of surrounding rooms, some sounding more like chains saws than music.
     Aside from the Pluto turntable already mentioned, Mutine had one more new product, seen but not heard: a tube amplifier (shown at right) from CEC. CEC is well-known for its belt-driven CD transports (one of which is among our reference components) and for several solid state products. Does the company know anything about tubes? We will soon know.
     We've got a lot more pictures to show you, and they'll be in the next issue of UHF, along with appropriate text. And we will be picking up more pictures (and things to talk about) Sunday, the final day of the Festival.
     At this show, Albert and Gerard toured together a part of the time, and Albert also toured with two young audiophiles, so that he could note down what they thought of all this gear offered to them. As we shall see, there were rooms they adored, but they also had some devasting comments that all concerned would be well to heed.
     We all did. Details tomorrow.
  

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