Fred Manteghian

The DCS Scarlatti CD player and Brinkman Balance turntable, arm and cartridge were a formidable front end in one of the Singer rooms. VTL's TL-6.5 tube preamp and TP-6.5 phonostage gently handed off the signal to a VTL Reference S-400 stereo tube amp. The big surprise for me was the speaker system at the end of this audio reproduction chain. Escalante Design's Fremont speaker had an unusual two toned finish that made me think palomino pony. The speaker was very boxy, very unconventional by modern aesthetics, but boy, this speaker was blessed with a beautiful tonal range with powerful but controlled bass. Big well designed tubes amps like the VTLs will do that.

I spent some time in the Lipinski / JVC room. Lukas Lipinski showed us a more stylized version of the L-707 speakers on custom stands that include stereo amps (either bridged and biwired or not-bridged and biamped – we're still a little confused). Tom Norton goes into more detail in his coverage below, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say, the sound from these speakers was, once again, very good, if a bit too loud.

This new Krell speaker continues the tradition of machined aluminum cabinets, but uses a new 6-1/2" midrange with an aluminum cone. As the name implies, the midrange / tweeter and woofer sections are separate. Not shown are the cables connecting the two modules. The three 8" ScanSpeak woofers are also new, but the 1" tweeter is the same as that in the Krell LAT-1000 speaker. Not yet available, but estimated to sell for $35,000 / pair, these expensive speakers had no trouble filling a large room driven by Nordest cable and a pair of Krell Evolution 600 monoblock amps.

No trip to an audio / video show is complete without a $10 massage. Thanks Philip Craig of Louis Harrison Chair Massage. It's just what the needle doctor ordered.