New Product Premiers Highlight AudioVision San Francisco Store Opening

August 16, 2014: San Francisco high-end retailer, AudioVision San Francisco, opened its new store with a launch party that featured some exciting North American product premiers. There were plenty of manufacturers and attendees from the California Audio Show in nearby Burlingame on hand, too, which made for a “standing room only” event, hosted by co-owners Antonio Long and Randy Johnson. How the AudioVision SF team managed to juggle demos in multiple rooms at the California Audio Show during the day and the store opening in the evening boggled my mind. They are certainly committed to their craft and quite knowledgeable, too.

Unfortunately, AV San Francisco lost its lease at its old store location, necessitating the move. The new store looks somewhat similar and is only a few blocks from the previous store’s location off Van Ness in San Francisco. In the 2000 square-foot space, I counted three sound rooms in addition to the lobby area. As before, the store stocks an incredible number of products in all price ranges, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a larger number of high-performance loudspeakers available for demonstration at any retail store. (Most are in the store’s aisles for easy transfer to the sound rooms.)

The KEF Reference Series made an impressive North and South American debut. The series includes the Reference 5 ($18k), which sports technology from the KEF Blade in a more traditional cabinet, the smaller floorstanding Reference 3 ($13k), and the stand-mount Reference 1 ($7500, or $8500 with stands). I heard the Reference 5 in Munich a few months ago and its performance was very impressive. In San Francisco, it was featured in demos in AVSF’s main sound room, driven by the sleek, powerful, and flexible Devialet 800 ($30,000) and cabled with Nordost’s new Valhalla 2 speaker, power, and digital cables, as well as Nordost’s Quantum power strips. The Dr. Feickert Analogue Woodpecker Turntable and 12″ Jelco tonearm fitted with Acoustical Systems’ innovative Arché headshell and the new Kiseki Blue N.S. cartridge ($10,200 complete) served as an outstanding analog source. The KEF Reference 5 includes two 6.5” aluminum bass drivers above KEF’s remarkable Uni-Q driver array, with two similar 6.5″ bass drivers below it. As with all KEF speakers that use the latest generation of Uni-Q drivers, wide and deep soundstaging was a real strength. As in Munich, the sound was reminiscent of the highly-regarded KEF Blade, with very good transparency and soundstaging, fine detail retrieval, and articulate and extended bass. While it doesn’t have the exotic looks of the KEF Blade, the KEF Reference 5 doesn’t give up much to it sonically, and since it costs considerably less, the Ref 5 must be viewed as something of a bargain.

Speaking of bargains, although it was on silent demonstration while I was there, the KEF Reference 1 bookshelf speaker looks like it could be perhaps an even bigger bargain, as it uses some of the same remarkable drivers as the Reference 5, including a 6.5″ alloy cone bass driver mated with KEF’s latest generation Uni-Q array. The latter is made up of coincident midbass and tweeter drive units mounted at the same point in space, creating an ideal point source that not only time-aligns the two drivers but also optimizes them in directivity. This approach enables the loudspeaker to create first-rate stereo imaging, with wide dispersion and an even balance of reverberant energy.  

Proving to be a very capable companion to the KEF Reference 5 was the sleek Devialet D-800 monoblock amplifier. Like its sibling, the D-170 I heard earlier this year at AudioVision SF, the D-800 is a model of flexibility, with an advanced phonostage that allows it to be configured precisely to one’s cartridge via Devialet’s on-line configuration utility. It also offers Devialet’s new AIR Universal Streamer, as well as an advanced DAC, among other features. As the KEF speaker has relatively high efficiency (90dB sensitivity), the 800Wpc Devialet provided more than enough power and slam.

In another one of AudioVision’s sound rooms, I heard the DALI Rubicon 6 ($5995), also making an impressive North American debut. This floorstanding speaker features two 6.5″ woofers, a soft-dome tweeter, and a ribbon super-tweeter. It draws upon the low-loss driver technology developed in DALI’s remarkable Epicon Series loudspeakers, which have impressed me with their low coloration and distortion. The front ends were a Rega Apollo-R CD player ($1095) and a Rega RP8 turntable with a RB-808 ’arm equipped with a Rega Apheta moving-coil cartridge ($2995 for the package)—and driven by Rega’s Elex-R integrated ($2995) connected by Nordost Red Dawn Leif interconnects, speaker, and power cables.

The Elex-R was yet another North American premier, and it made a lovely match with the Rubicon 6 loudspeakers. This integrated amplifier is based on technology from Rega’s Brio-R and Elicit-R designs and employs a new, larger custom transformer, which enables it to deliver 90Wpc into a 6-ohm load. It has a unique volume control, preamplifier output, an integrated phonostage, and other useful features. More importantly, it sounds good, too!

Although I did not hear the Rega Apollo-R CD player, the sound on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony via the analog front-end was quite spacious, with very good transient quickness, and surprising bass punch and dynamic range from such a relatively small-footprint speaker. Moreover, the sound brought a genuine smile to my patient wife’s face. I liked this system’s rich tonal balance and walked away thinking it was another great value.

While Rega’s RB300 reportedly was the best-selling tonearm in high-end history, the hand-built RB808 is a higher-performance tonearm, which will be available separately ($1195) or mated with the RP8 turntable ($2995 for both). It features a tapered armtube with a new low-mass, vertical bearing assembly designed to complement the design philosophy of Rega’s RP8, an innovative turntable that shrinks the plinth down to its smallest mass—less than 2 ounces!

In these challenging economic times, the opening of any new high-end-audio store is cause for celebration. I’m already looking forward to attending more events at AudioVision San Francisco’s new store, including its informative seminars and product premiers. This store is off to an auspicious start.