There was a healthy turnout at the Monaco AV show held for the first time this year at the Hotel Fairmont from 30 October to 1 November.

I went along to help out Avantgarde Acoustic and Podium Sound

In the Avantgarde Acoustic – Audio Aero room, the fabulous La Source was used for CD playback into the diminutive, though very high performing Model 3 amplifier form Avantgarde, driving the new Duo Omege G2 Horn Speakers.

La Source statement CD player form Audio Aero manages to be very smooth and natural sounding while at the same time, resolving right down to the minutest detail. Such resolving power without being overly analytical made for one of the most satisfying listening experiences I have ever had from CD. La Source is also an SACD player. Those of you with an SACD collection would be sure to hear the best from that format through La Source as well.

As if that wasn’t enough you can tap into the very high quality La Source DAC which supports high resolution 96khz 24bit playback. It accepts the following digital input connections: BNC, RCA,TOSLINK, AT&T and USB. I asked if I could try connecting my iPad through USB using the iPad’s camera connection kit. This worked like a dream and provided very satisfying results with just a bog standard USB cable. When we substituted that for a very high quality USB cable, the results were even better.

My 64 gig iPad stores about 300 CD’s in uncompressed format.

In the Podium Sound room the new version of the .5 model was sounding even better with new improved drivers now being employed to excite the panel. To my ears the sound was even smoother from top to bottom with a more powerful and well defined Mid-Bass. Daniel explained that the new drivers, which are sourced in France will be standard on all .5 models going forward, without any price increase.

Class A Plinius amplification from their SA103 was used to drive the Podium’s. The model used provides up to 300 WPC in Class AB. The 125 wpc provided in pure Class A is easily sufficient for the Podium models, which can be driven well with a high quality 25 wpc amplifier.

The pictures above are from the Avantgarde, Audio Aero and Podium rooms:

There was a healthy turnout at the Monaco AV show held for the first time this year at the Hotel Fairmont from 30 October to 1 November.

I went along to help out Avantgarde Acoustic and Podium Sound

In the Avantgarde Acoustic – Audio Aero room, the fabulous La Source was used for CD playback into the diminutive, though very high performing Model 3 amplifier form Avantgarde, driving the new Duo Omege G2 Horn Speakers.

La Source statement CD player form Audio Aero manages to be very smooth and natural sounding while at the same time, resolving right down to the minutest detail. Such resolving power without being overly analytical made for one of the most satisfying listening experiences I have ever had from CD. La Source is also an SACD player. Those of you with an SACD collection would be sure to hear the best from that format through La Source as well.

As if that wasn’t enough you can tap into the very high quality La Source DAC which supports high resolution 96khz 24bit playback. It accepts the following digital input connections: BNC, RCA,TOSLINK, AT&T and USB. I asked if I could try connecting my iPad through USB using the iPad’s camera connection kit. This worked like a dream and provided very satisfying results with just a bog standard USB cable. When we substituted that for a very high quality USB cable, the results were even better.

My 64 gig iPad stores about 300 CD’s in uncompressed format.

In the Podium Sound room the new version of the .5 model was sounding even better with new improved drivers now being employed to excite the panel. To my ears the sound was even smoother from top to bottom with a more powerful and well defined Mid-Bass. Daniel explained that the new drivers, which are sourced in France will be standard on all .5 models going forward, without any price increase.

Class A Plinius amplification from their SA103 was used to drive the Podium’s. The model used provides up to 300 WPC in Class AB. The 125 wpc provided in pure Class A is easily sufficient for the Podium models, which can be driven well with a high quality 25 wpc amplifier.

The  pictures above are from the Avantgarde, Audio Aero and Podium rooms: