Neil Young’s point of view was accepted by Steve Jobs.

I’ve just discovered that qobuz is making their entire library available for streaming at 44.1khz 16 bit FLAC. In other words at full CD quality, since FLAC is a lossless format. Their “HiFi” subscription for this is a bit expensive at €29 per month. If you spend that much or more on CD’s per month though, it might well be worth it.

I’ve been testing the service over the last few days and it works ex-streamly (pun intended) well. This is a bit like Spotify on steroids for the serious music lover/audiophile. Hopefully, Spotify and others will follow suite. Then will it really make sense for iTunes to continue to sell their music at a compressed lossy format?

See also these comments on Computer Audiophile.

…and here at gearslutz.

Stereo Times have just published a gushing review of the Burson HA160D combined DAC and Headphone amp. Once again Sound Galleries were ahead of the game. We’ve been featuring the full range of Burson equipment from Australia for almost a year now.

The Paris show will be taking place at Paris Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel & Conference Center next weekend Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 of November.

Sound Arts Network will be there as well as Analysis Audio.

Analysis will be demonstrating their Omega and the Omicron speakers driven by the Swiss Dartzeel or BAT amplifiers.

Here is brief report of our visit to Top Audio Milan last week.

Avantgarde Acoustic were demonstrating a Trio with Double Basshorn system together with their new XA series Power Amplifier.

Due to current parts shortages, the XA power amplifiers won’t go into full production until towards the end of this year.

They will be worth the wait however, judging by both the sound and their specifications. The amp will be full class A up to 7 watts, which is easily sufficient for all of Avantgarde’s Horn Speakers. Where more power is required for other speakers they will automatically switch to class AB and provide up to 150 watts per channel. Enough to easily drive just about any speaker on the planet with room to spare. This great flexibility will be one of the hallmarks of the new XA series.

The pre-amplifier was a prototype of their battery powered pre-amp which will also be part of the XA series.

In a room of about 60 square meters, they were achieving excellent results, with a wide range of music. A lot of large scale classical works, Rock, Jazz and World music, with all the life and vibrancy you expect from Avantgarde.

The Trio Horns were in a beautiful light bronze colour.

Audio Note had two rooms at the show. One to demonstrate their “affordable” system, the other, their “cost no object” system. Audio Note always amaze me at how much room filling life-like sound they manage to squeeze from their simple looking two way speakers. As is usually the case in Audio you would probably be very satisfied with the “Affordable” system, until you heard the ultimate Audio Note system which sported the top of the range famous Gaku-On mono block amplifiers with 211 tubes.

Audio Note have done more than simply continue the Kondo era legacy. Although a Kondo-San era Audio Note amplifier may seem the holy grail for many audiophiles, Audio Note’s Mario Binner confided in me that they have several customers who have switched from the Kondo version of one of their amps to the newer Audio Note UK equivalent. Obviously, the quality of passive parts and other factors do improve over time and I’m sure Kondo himself would be proud of the current Audio Note range of amplifiers.

 

KEF Blade We have been waiting with bated breath for the Blade for a few years. First shown as a concept back in 2009, we experienced it at the Bristol HiFi show in the UK and were very impressed. At that time a carbon fibre body was used and the crossover filter was in very large separate box on the floor. It sounded fantastic; but KEF were either teasing us when they told us it was purely a concept to test what was possible, or they weren’t sure themselves if it could ever become a reality. Well today it has. It is being launched right now to coincide with KEF’s 50th anniversary. Expect some glowing reviews from magazines and web-sites though-out the world.

Here is KEF’s Italian distributor demonstrating the Blade in Milan and looking appropriately excited by the event:

The Blade is designed as a virtual point source. In other words all the music seems to be emanating from the same place, despite multiple drivers being used. This was achieved by having two woofers symmetrically placed on each side of the speaker with each pair occupying the same acoustic space, as well as the placement of the main uni-Q array mid-range/tweeter driver and the shape of the enclosure. KEF finally settled on a fibre glass composite construction for the enclosure. A number of visitors were enthusiastically feeling and taping it to experience the complete absence of any vibration while music was playing. Quite an achievement.

Julia Davidson from KEF’s engineering team was responsible for the shape of the enclosure. Of course there are very “sound reasons” for choosing this particular shape.

The feminine influence is particularly apparent though and is likely to appeal equally to the ladies. The pair shown at the Milan show are in silver finish. The standard finishes are glossy white or black with a very wide range of additional colors available on request.

Hide your Amplifier and CD player, etc. in an AV cabinet from Spectral and you would have a system elegant enough to grace any home.

 

Fujitsu-Ten Eclipse is another High-Tech speaker with an acoustically inert rounded enclosure. In the case of the Eclipse the inert enclosure is achieved using a synthetic marble. The point source coherency is achieved by a single large band driver.

Their latest 712z MKII in a very sexy glossy black enclosure was being demonstrated.

A large subwoofer was placed in the middle of the room. It wasn’t connected though and didn’t need to be as the Eclipse was generating sufficient bass by itself.

Hideto Watanabe of Fujitsu-Ten showed me a cross section of one of their smaller speakers to show how these unique speakers are designed:

Finally, I was surprised to hear how good they were sounding with just a small rack of simple, relatively inexpensive electronics from Cyrus.

Music First were showing off their new “Baby Reference” passive magnetic. It uses exactly the same transformer as in their “Reference” model, except instead of remote volume control there is a 24 position stepped attenuator. As a consequence the “Baby Reference” comes in at around half the price of the “Reference”. For anyone looking for the ultimate passive pre-amplifier, this must be the solution. The pure sound obtained from passives, with their freedom from the mains, would be a fine choice for anyone who’s looking for a preamplifier that doesn’t add any qualities of its own.

 

Sound of the Valve Now to some extreme audio and for that in Italy we can always turn our attention to “The Sound Of The Valve”. Not a very Italian name, I know. They are a dealer for Scheu Turntables; but at this show they were showing off their own new Air Bearing Rosewood Reference Turntable with Linear tracking arm. This involves two surge tanks an air pump and filter. The Sound was simply gorgeous. Effortless and liquid, through NEAT speakers with their own “Sound Of The Valve” amplifiers (which were obviously not solid state).

A few hard whacks on the plinth with a solid object yielded no disturbance to the record playback whatsoever. Very impressive!

Ensemble A more down to earth, though still beautiful sounding turntable was an original Voyd 3 motor deck in the Ensemble room. This one is very close to my heart as I have owned a Voyd myself since 1988. The entire system was sounding very transparent and lifelike without any hint of aggression. To assemble entire systems ensuring that all parts work well together, including the accessories is, of course, the Ensemble approach.

We knew we made the right call when we took the superbe Voxativ Ampeggios on board. As if we needed further proof they are now featured on the front cover of Stereophile, August edition and a very positive review awaits you inside.

With so many awards for their recordings from Diapason d’Or, Gramaphone and others for their artists, performances and superb recordings it’s wonderful news that Channel Classics are now offering their catalog as high-resolution downloads up to 192khz 24bit.

Sound Galleries will be closed from Tuesday 28 May until Friday 1 July while we visit the premises of various High-End Audio designers in Europe.

My new Media/Gallery website is currently under construction. Here I will be featuring more photos, videos and sound files to help you explore this wonderful world of audio. Please visit and provide me with feedback. Thanks, Geoff Armstrong

The following is part of a post from John Atkinson of Stereophile on the amazing Voxativ Ampeggio speakers: “…But the Ampeggios, seen here with importer Gideon Schwartz, just produced the same uncolored, dynamic-sounding music in Atlanta as they had in Canada. I’ll be driving up to Artie Dudley’s in update New York in a few weeks to listen to and measure the Voxativs in his room. Intrigued by what I’ll find.

These amazing speakers are available for you to audition here at Sound Galleries.

Read the full post here.

Well now I’m a radio star! Please listen to my interview with Riviera Radio.

One correction to this, when mentioning the KingRex/John Blue system, I said these systems start at €2000, in fact they start at less than €1000 if you just add a Mac or PC as your source to the T20U combined USB dac and Amp.

The Stones now available at 176.4/24bit from HDTracks

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/24.bit.music/index.html?iref=NS1

The award winning Burson HA160 and HA160D have arrived at Sound Galleries. Just as Srajan’s reviews indicate they are awesome sounding.

The HA160 is a combined pre-amplifier and headphone amplifier and the HA160D is a pre-amp, high-rez DAC and headphone amp all rolled into one.

The HA160D is performing brilliantly on the Avantgarde Primos right now.

Sound Galleries will be closed between Friday 11 February until Wednesday 16 February

Un article très bon au sujet de l’exposition de MonacoAV.

We change our systems around from time to time. Here are pictures of the systems currently set-up and ready for demonstration. We’ll post new pictures in the future, especially when new equipment arrives.

Great news!

“HDtracks is excited to now offer selected titles in full 192kHz/24bit resolution. The enhanced clarity is remarkable: improvements in dynamic subtlety and shading are the first things you notice, followed by the absolute perfection of the high-frequencies. These new downloads transcend mere hi-fi sonics; they’ll transport you back to the original musical event. You are there. “

Tom Evans has been very busy lately. He’s made several important improvements to his Linear A amplifier. We’ve found this to be a fantastic match with Avantgarde speakers and the new version should be even better. We expect to receive it in a few weeks and will post more details here when it arrives.

In the meantime for true connoisseurs of Vinyl records, Tom has produced his ultimate phono stage to date: The Master Groove.

The Mastergroove is a major leap in Evolution from Tom’s previous statement phono-stage, the G+SRX and in Tom’s own words, “The front end gain stages have 50% less noise and distortion and twice the dynamic range compared to the G+SRX, all signal path resistors are Vishay 0.1 % tol and 15ppm tempco. Each stage of gain is powered by a Lithos 7 class a local voltage regulator, both left and right channel local voltage regulators are supplied by my higher powered Lithos 6 regulators, in all 14 pcb’s. We even went to the trouble of designing and winding ‘in house’ a new 200va low flux transformer with an electrostatic screened primary winding to dramatically reduce RF entering the power supply. Nine values per / ch of cartridge loading resistor settings are provided with dip switches on the rear panel. MM (and Decca ) versions can be built to order.”

To put this in perspective, readers may be interested in this review of the Groove Plus from 6 Moons.

We can expect some more exciting announcements from Tom this year and I’ll be sure to post them here.

We are starting the New Year with some new products from KingRex that prove great sound can be had from very small and inexpensive components.

The UC192 is a USB to S/PDIF converter that allows you to take advantage of computer based audio playback, even if you have a DAC without any kind of computer interface. As its name suggests it supports up to 192khz playback, so you can start enjoying the High-Rez files from HDTracks, Qobuz and Linn records.

We’ve also received the amazing little JohnBlue Audio Art JB3 speakers which are distributed by KingRex

These products complement well our existing KingRex T20 U amplifier with accompanying separate power supply.

We also have their PSU MK II with dedicated output for the Wadia iTransport, which improves significantly on the sound of the iTransport over its supplied switching power supply.

The very diminutive and inexpensive UD01 USB Dac as well as the larger (but still very compact and low priced) UD01 PRO USB DAC.

Incidentally this DAC just received a very good review from Positive Feedback online Magazine.

So why not start the year by finding out just how little space and finance is required for a very nice sounding system from KingRex.