home entertainment 2007

call (530) 320-1576 or e-mail
kathanta@wildblue.net.
DELAWARE/TRI-STATE AREA
❚ Wednesday, May 16, 7–9pm: HiFi
House (Wilmington) will host an open
house celebrating the US-dealer premiere
of the Sonus Faber Elipsa loudspeaker.
Donald Brody and Bill Peugh
of Sumiko will be on hand to demonstrate
the Elipsa. Refreshments will be
served. Space is limited. RSVP: Gene
Longo, (302) 655-4780.
❚ Friday, June 1, 6–9pm; and Saturday,
June 2, 1–4pm: Overture (Wilmington)
will present a Wilson Audio
Specialties seminar featuring Wilson’s
newest designs. Peter McGrath, Wilson’s
director of sales, will be on hand
to play some great new recordings
and answer questions. Overture has
planned a program that they feel will
be exciting for all music enthusiasts,
and, as always, they’ll have a few surprises
for all who attend. For more info
and to RSVP: (800) 838-1812 or visit
www.overtureav.com.
MICHIGAN
❚ Thursday, May 3, 6pm: Overture
Audio (Ann Arbor) will host an
evening of music and home-theater
auditions featuring Garth Powell, director
of engineering at Furman Sound.
Garth and the Overture staff will aim
to demonstrate the audible and visual
benefits of Furman’s new Reference
and Elite Line of AC mains conditioners.
For more info and to RSVP: Keith
Moorman at (734) 662-1812 or
mail@overture-audio.com.
NEW YORK
❚ Friday–Sunday, May 11–13: Home
Entertainment 2007 will take place
at the Grand Hyatt, near New York
City’s Grand Central Terminal. For
more info, visit www.homeentertain
ment-expo.com.
OHIO
❚ Saturday–Sunday, May 19–20,
12–6pm: Don Better Audio (Shaker
Heights) will host a seminar with
Jonathan Halpern of Tone Imports.
Shindo and EMT electronics will be
featured, along with the Auditorium
23 Solovox speaker system. Demonstrations
of proper mono and 78rpm
playback will be part of the event. For
more info and to RSVP: (216) 375-
1393 or info@donbetteraudio.com.
INDUSTRY UPDATE
feedback, which is seen as an evil in
some quarters. Larry would have none
of that. What you aim for, he told me,
is “feedback correctly applied.” I think
Steve Keiser, of Luminance Audio, told
me something similar.
Larry served in the US Air Force
during the Korean War. Before joining
McIntosh, he was chief engineer for
H.H. Scott, where he met his future
wife, Dot, who became good friends
with my wife, Marina, and me. From
1969 to 1972, Larry and Dot lived in
Japan, where he worked as vice resident
for Teloem, Inc., a subsidiary of
Yokohama. Larry learned to speak
pretty good Japanese.
Ron Evans, who succeeded Larry as
McIntosh’s Vice President of Engineering,
recalls Larry as wonderful to work
for—open-minded and supportive.
Maybe Larry was a little old-fashioned.
While younger engineers were into
cutting-edge technology, Larry would
be concerned about how the equipment
appeared to the customer, and
how user-friendly it was.
UK: BRISTOL
Paul Messenger
Sound & Vision 2007—aka “the Bristol
show”—was not a landmark event in
terms of attendance or new products.
But a record of 20 consecutive years is
an achievement in itself for an audio
show, and, as usual, the excellent organization
by dealers Audio Excellence and
Audio T made for a thoroughly enjoyable
show.
While S&V is very much a dealerbased
“selling” event aimed at the
mainstream audio and video marketplaces
and has few high-end exhibitors,
it must now be regarded as the UK’s
premier audio show—especially now
that it’s rumored that the venerable fall
show at Heathrow, sponsored by Hi-Fi
News, might not take place this year.
(Should that happen, presumably the
Chesterfield Communications show,
sponsored by Hi-Fi World, which took
place simultaneously with and across
the road from the Hi-Fi News show in
2006, will take up some of the slack.)
And if Bristol has relatively few unaffordable,
globally sourced goodies to
drool over, it does give UK brands a
chance to show off their more modest
new designs.
One example of genuine High End
at Bristol was Kevin Scott’s Living
Voice room. His battery power supply
provided immunity from mains-borne
interference, and allowed some lovely
amplifiers from Japan—the parallel, single-ended
Kondo Gakuoh
monoblocks—to deliver notably sweet
sounds via some very promising, highly
efficient, compact, and as-yetunnamed
horn speakers based on a
Vitavox design.
Another high-end oasis, Martin
Brewster’s Audio Reference room,
had a more European flavor, with exotic
Clearaudio vinyl replay via Aesthetix
Rhea and Calypso tubes feeding
GamuT electronics and sensibly compact
Gamut L3 speakers.
Missing the opportunity to introduce
an LP13, Linn used S&V to introduce
its new SE upgrade of the venerable
LP12 vinyl spinner. Described in more
detail last month and priced at nearly
PMC’s EB1 uses a dome midrange unit.
£5000 for the Ekos SE tonearm and
Keel subchassis, this is by far the most
costly LP12 upgrade yet. Even a quick
listen clearly indicated impressive
improvements in dynamics.
Down in the large basement rooms,
Meridian/Faroudja delivered a
superb home-theater demo that was
digital from beginning to end and
showed remarkable mastery of the
medium. Just next door, KEF’s new
Reference-series speakers, now sans
supertweeter, showed the predicted
improvement in treble smoothness from
the revised UniQ driver. I’ve discussed
this technology in previous “Industry
Update” columns, but hadn’t appreciat-
www.Stereophile.com, May 2007 13
PHOTOS: PAUL MESSENGER