High End Society 2003 Show Frankfurt Germany

Sunday Page 2

  Of course Germany based Avantgarde Acoustic had their Duo (€10,000) hornspeakers. These units have been a personal favorite of mine for years because of their incredible speed, transparency, and dynamics.

Tron's first push-pull tube amplifier uses two 807s per monoblock to produce 30 watts (£8,000).

Here is the designer Robert Siegert of Clearaudio with their new Balanced Reference phonostage. It has two truly balanced inputs (XLR) and one balanced output [or all can be switched to single ended (RCA)]. Gain can be changed between 30dB to 65dB in 5dB steps. There is a mute switch as well. Technically, this is a four chassis affair as each channel has a separate right/left channel power supply box and separate right/left channel analog stage.

Penaudio's new Rebel2 loudspeaker (€3,800) is their two-way monitor on top of their passive 7-inch side-firing subwoofer.

As Enjoy the Music.com™ gave the world a first look at Bösendorfer loudspeakers during our Frankfurt High End Society show report in 2002, they now have a new generation of units. Seen here is their Model 7 (€4,800 on up depending on finish). It has two 1-inch tweeter mounted on front and two 13cm woofers on each side (four total).

Seen here are small ducts that are mounted on the arm rest of a lounge chair. Welcome my friends to Smellovison. Makes me wonder how the scene in the movie Trainspotting where he climbs into the toilet would smell like... and would anyone really want to know? But then again the pornographic industry usually grasps new technologies and, again, would you really want to know. On a good note, stoners will watch Cheech é Chong movies over and over again. Overall the presentation was interesting at best, premature at worst. Think of it as automatic scratch and sniff and you get the basic idea. Close but no Cohiba, er, um, cigar.

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