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More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual Suspects

More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual Suspects

As it was at CES, the Lotus Group Granada was a model of neutrality. Even though it was digitizing analog sources via its DSP crossover (which not only crosses over the woofers to the Feastrex via fourth-order slopes but also eq’s each driver and provides sophisticated room correction), it still managed to reproduce Joan Baez’s voice and guitar on “Gospel Ship” with exceptionally natural timbre. Oh, maybe it was subtracting a little bit of the most delicate tremolo from Joanie’s soprano, but it wasn’t subtracting anything else. What it was doing that so many other speakers weren’t was sounding flat, uncolored, and utterly coherent. This essentially three-driver two-way speaker (using the marvelous Feastrex cone from Japan from 200Hz up, and a couple of Acoustic Elegance woofers from 200Hz down) needs a review in TAS. Robert named it “Best of Show” at RMAF (and I named it a runner-up), and it was a strong contender again at CES.

More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual SuspectsSpeaking of strong contenders doing repeat business, the Electrocompaniet Nordic Tone—another digitally corrected speaker of astonishing quality—sounded very nearly as marvelous in Vegas as it did in Denver. Yeah, it was still a little dark in balance (as it was at RMAF—the electronics, I think), but, oy, the dynamics, the resolution, the bass! This is a potentially great speaker that is consistently revealing details in the music and the mix that others don’t, particularly in the bass and in dynamics. The listening room was too small to tell about soundstaging, but I think it might be great, too. Whether all this adds up to greater realism is an open question, but for those who like their music gorgeous and dynamic and who also want to hear all there is to hear (at least on digital sources), they are already a top contender—and a top contender for Best of Show at CES 2010.More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual Suspects

A speaker that took me pleasantly by surprise was the $99k Venture Grand Ultimates–three-way floorstanders with four 8-inch woofers, a 7-inch midrange, and a 2-inch tweeter. The bass and midrange drivers are carbon-fiber/graphite compounds, the tweeter a banana-pulp/graphite mix. The sound the Ultimates produced via a first-rate analog rig (Verdier table, Schroeder arm, London Reference cartridge) was exceptional—detailed and beautiful on the old Pete Townshend standby “Street in the City.” The speakers were, like so many others at this show, just a tad dark in balance but gorgeous in timbre and exceptionally high in textural resolution, reproducing the very light brush of Townshend’s fingers over the strings following a strong crescendo with lifelike clarity.

More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual SuspectsFor the second time in a row at CES, the $54k Scaena 3.2s (driven by McIntosh electronics and fed by my fave, the dCS Scarlatti) sounded exceptionally natural (a rarity at this show). Yeah, the 3.2s were too close together because of the narrow width of the room, but putting those woofers at a distance (as Scaena did last year) does wonders for their blend with the ribbon/cone midrange/tweeter columns. Set up the way they were, the Scaenas generated a soundfield that was exceptionally freed-up from enclosure and drivers. Indeed, their “disappearing act” was, perhaps, the best at CES (alongside that of the M5s). Timbres were unusually lifelike on “Keys to the Highway” and other cuts. There may have been a little bit of added brightness in the upper mids due to the close seating position, but, really, I had the feeling that the only limitations with this speaker were the room. Without doubt this is a top contender for BOS.

More Contenders for Best of Show, Part Two: Usual and Unusual SuspectsWe come now to the speaker that won my Best of Show award at RMAF, the fab $46k Vandersteen Model 7, driven in Vegas by Aesthetix electronics. At CES, they sounded just as freed-up and spacious as they did in Denver. The sound was slightly more sibilant and less bloomy with the Aesthetic gear than it was with the ARC Richard used in CO, but every bit as lovely, coherent, and neutral in balance. This is simply a great loudspeaker, no matter what is driving it. On Joan Baez’s “Gospel Ship” texture, color, dynamics, and timbre were entirely lifelike, with superb resolution of Joanie’s characteristic tremolo. On “Misunderstood” Townshend and his guitar sounded so alive it was uncanny. Indeed, I wrote in my notepad: “So alive, so neutral, so present, so there!” It will be hard NOT to give another award to this masterpiece, which will certainly be a runner-up if it isn’t the Best of Show winner.

Jonathan Valin

By Jonathan Valin

I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.

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