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CES Day 2: New Speakers from Joseph Audio & RBH

CES Day 2: New Speakers from Joseph Audio & RBH

Joseph Audio’s statement speaker, the Pearl has been a stand out success for this company–now in its 17th year. At $28,500/pr however it wasn’t for every budget. So Jeff Joseph took his venerable compact winner, the RM7 and filled it to the brim with Pearl technology. The result is the Pulsar (pictured with Jeff Joseph). It takes the tweeter of the Pearl, a scaled-down version of its long-throw magnesium woofer, the double side panels for added stiffness  and Joseph’s asymmetric infinite slope crossover and finishes the entire package with a deep poly lacquer finish. The sonics were tonally well-balanced, smooth, dynamic, and within limits yielded surprisingly deep bass. The Pulsar will easily be one of the compacts to beat in 2009. Due out in the 2nd quarter. The target price is an estimated $7000/pr.
 

The RBH 8300-SE/R ($8450/pr) should be a floorstander to reckon with in the coming year. It’s a hefty (118lbs) six-driver , three-way reflex design that boasts powerful cinema-style punch and extension with some bona fide audiophile finesse and delicacy. Available as the 8300-SE ($7999/pr) with a standard Vifa tweeter or as the upgraded “R” version (pictured with RBH’s Daren Egan) which adds a higher end Scanspeak tweeter and more exotic phase-plug mid-bass transducers the speaker featured rich, warm, full range output. Inter-driver coherence was very good and from my seat it impressed with speed and image focus. The tight quarters of the room didn’t allow for much in the way of soundstage depth but this will likely not be the case in a more spacious listening room. Suggested power is 100-400Wpc. Due to ship at the end of the 1st quarter.CES Day 2: New Speakers from Joseph Audio & RBH

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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