Author Archives: Part-Time Audiophile

Reus Audio Let’s start with the sound that everybody at the show heard, the Reus Audio SLS. Granted, everybody heard this thing belting out “Hotel California” on the kind of infinitely repeating playlist that can make you pretty sure that you’re … Continue reading →

Zesto Audio George and Carolyn Counnas’s Zesto Audio room was, as always, a real pleasure. The source was a Merrill Williams Audio REAL 101 turntable ($7,200) with a Tri-Planar 9″ tonearm ($6,000), running through Zesto’s Andros PSI phono stage ($4,300). … Continue reading →

Hilton Marketplace The Catalina Room in the Hilton was once again turned into an open bazaar for music and gear. I’m going to concentrate on the gear, because Chad Kasem (in the big pink shirt) managed to take enough of … Continue reading →

Profundo / Blackbird / Heed Four of Heed Audio‘s minimal looking Obelisk PM monoblocks ($4200 per pair) were used to biamp Heed’s odd, upward firing Enigma speakers ($4250 as shown) for a musical, social sound. The rest of the electronics … Continue reading →

Snake River Audio Look at this. Just look at it. Honestly, that’s all I did. Sorry about that. The impressively eye-catching speakers in the room came from the Italian EMMESpeakers. Their large, white Gamma speakers ($30,000) flanked their more reasonably-sized, … Continue reading →

Audience AV The folks at Audience AV brought their small, ClearAudient 1+1 speakers ($1800) and enough confidence to plug their new Wavepower amplifier ($18,000) into them. The Wavepower is built around the Hypex NCore platform, with front end engineering (transformers!), … Continue reading →

Anthony Gallo Acoustics Gallo was showing off their Strada 2 speakers ($999 each) and TR-3D subwoofer ($985 each) in the Atrium. It’s hard to believe how good these things sound at reasonable volumes. When we stopped in, the folks were … Continue reading →

I used to work with a guy who was awfully cagey about how he spent his vacations. Eventually, I learned that he raced pigeons as a hobby, but he’d gotten so sick of being teased about it that he just … Continue reading →

Attending a show is a fun game for some folks. The 2013 edition of THE Show in Newport Beach (or Irvine if you have to be pedantic) was my third show in the last year. My wife and I actually attend … Continue reading →