Down Under Audio

I know what you're thinking. All this talk about Australia has to lead to something. Well, it does.

For the better part of the last year I've been planning to do an audio show in the US where I feature a lot of the high-end audio products I've been discussing here and in other places. While I worked with Brad Serhan, David Allen and Morris Swift on the final design of the Brigadiers Audio speakers, I spent the entire time bugging everyone to finalize production by June 2016. That, of course, is when the Newport Show takes place in Southern California.

As soon as we returned from the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in early January, Colleen and I have been working overtime to bring together a consortium of manufacturers from both Australia and New Zealand to feature their gear at the show. And that was the beginning of "Down Under Audio," the theme of the two rooms we will promote at the show, which will be held on June 3-5.

The first choices were obviously PureAudio, Axis and REDGUM Audio--the three "Down Under" brands that we already represent at Colleen Cardas Imports. John Reilly (Axis) and Ian Robinson (REDGUM) quickly came on board--they manufacture from the same factory and their products obviously mate well together. From the swiftness of their actions, it became quite obvious to me that they've done this all before. So Room 1011 at the Newport Show will be an all Axis/REDGUM room. Of course we will be featuring the Axis VoiceBox S loudspeakers, but everything else will be REDGUM since this Australian company known for its high-current amplifiers also makes digital sources, cables and even equipment racks. John and Ian are all ready to go.

Of course Colleen and I wanted to spotlight PureAudio from New Zealand in the other room. We've represented the line since 2012; this brand has always been close to my heart and I really want people to know about it. The most exciting thing for me about including PureAudio is that I finally get to meet Gary Morrison in person. We've been Skyping for years, but I've never been able to shake his hand. I've met everyone else in person--John Reilly, Ian Robinson, Brad Serhan, David Allen, Morris Swift--but not Gary.

That, of course, brings up all the other brands we're featuring. But here's the deal--I'm going to have to hold up my promotion of those products for different reasons. One manufacturer is busy getting his legal doo-dads in order for trademarking and patenting and whatever else he needs to do, so mum's the word for a few more weeks. We're still working with another manufacturer on all the fine details, so I don't want to jeopardize this involvement because it will be awesome if it happens as planned.

One more manufacturer is involved, and I want to wait just a little bit to announce it because this is a really cool product that's been in production for a while. I've just recently been introduced to it, and it's the kind of product I love--great performance, solid engineering, amazingly low price. I want to give this company its own separate place in the sun.

But I'm not worried about announcing the US debut of the Brigadiers Audio BA2 bookshelf speakers. These are obviously the two-way monitor speakers that prompted me to go to Sydney and work with Brad, David and Morris. You know how I kept talking about the perfect 2-way speaker? In its final production form, I believe it's as close to perfect as it gets. This two-way stand-mounted monitor has evolved into something unusually impressive and satisfying for its size, and I left Sydney last September thinking it was absolutely amazing in every way.

We talked about bringing the BA1 floorstanders instead, but I think the excellence of the BA2s will act as sort of a lead-in for those speakers. I'll bring a pair of those into the US sometime this year, and I'll probably drag them around the country for a while and have people listen to them. Or maybe I'll keep them to myself. Mine! Mine! Mine!

So that's the scoop for now. Room 1011 will feature Axis and REDGUM Audio, and next door in Room 1012 we'll have PureAudio, Brigadiers Audio, Furutech and a few surprises to be announced. I'll keep everyone updated, and I hope to see everyone at the show!

The Chronicles of Sydnia, Finale: The Brigadiers Audio BA1 Loudspeaker

I'm currently fulfilling my own prediction that I'll be talking about my trip to Australia for the rest of my life. Here it is, nearly two months to the day after I returned to the US, and I'm still acting like one of those '50s dads who invites everyone over for twenty minutes of drinks and three hours of vacation slides. I'm ready to wrap it up now, although my trip will influence the direction of CCI over the next year.

For me, the single biggest reason to travel to Australia--outside of getting that first official passport stamp--was to hear Brad Serhan and David Allen's masterpiece, the Brigadiers Audio BA1 loudspeaker. I didn't even get a chance to hear it until about two weeks into my trip. I'd heard plenty about them beforehand, however. One of the many things I learned about Aussies was that they consider bragging to be poor form. (An American friend of mine has sarcastically noted, however, that Aussies like to brag about their modesty.) Brad wasn't telling me that he had made his masterpiece, a speaker so good that I should travel 8,167 miles just to hear it.

Instead, he said things like "we're anxious to have you over for a listen" and "we think it's really good but we want your feedback" and "we've had some reviewers and dealers here give it a listen and they really love it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Here it is in all its glory. The Brigadiers Audio BA1 is much like its creators, understated and modest on the outside and utterly engaging while going about its daily business. Featuring two of those famous SEAS magnesium mid/bass drivers per side as well as a Raal ribbon tweeter, the BA1 seems very much like a traditional 2.5-way design--albeit one using the finest parts and materials. With this speaker, God is in the details with its birch-ply cabinet construction, constrained layer damping cabinet design using a new adhesive between the layers, and a remarkably refined crossover that is the culmination of Brad's thirty-plus years in speaker design.

In addition, Brigadiers can customize the BA1 and the BA2 in a number of different ways. An outboard crossover will be an option, for example, as well as driver gaskets made from additional constrained layer damping material from Les Davis. But one of the most unique aspects of these two speakers are their almost bespoke quality. When a customer decides to order a pair of BA1s or BA2s from a dealer, they will begin a relationship with that speaker. They can decide between exotic hand-oiled Australian veneers such as brushbox (seen in the completed BA1 we evaluated) and Australian rosewood and much more. Toby Hogpin, the master carpenter who is making the complex and beautifully-made cabinets for these speakers, can also encase them in dozens of different Corian finishes.

Then, once an order is placed, the entire team will send the customer video updates of the speaker being made. The customer will literally know his speaker inside and out before it even arrives. And while many manufacturers would use this custom approach to stretch out the delivery time of the finished product, Brad figures he can build a pair of these in just a few weeks.

Brad and David and I visited Toby at his shop in Sydney about a week into my visit, and to tell you the truth I had been looking forward to it for days. I have kind of a fetish about wooden loudspeaker veneers, and I'll be the first to admit that a gorgeous wooden finish is very, very important to me when I'm making a loudspeaker buying decision. I want something breathtakingly beautiful, something that no one else has. So I love the idea that you can discuss options with your dealer based on hi-rez photos supplied on the Brigadiers Audio website and choose a unique pair of speakers that no one else will have.

In other words, if your buddy buys a pair of custom BA1s or BA2s and you listen to them and decide you also want a pair, your speakers will not look exactly the same even if you choose the same veneer. Toby is always on the hunt for exciting and beautiful veneers, and he knows that the variations from tree to tree are profound enough to create a distinctive look for each pair of speakers. Then again, if you want a pair of speakers exactly like your buddy's, then it can probably be done. But what fun is that?

For instance, Toby showed me these blocks, which are all Australian rosewood. You can see the differences in color and grain patterns. That's why Toby will supply Brigadiers Audio with hi-rez photos so that the potential customers can see close-ups of the wood grain. The photos have to be hi-rez, of course; I don't know about you, but I've received speakers that looked completely different than they did on the website, thanks to these differences in veneers. Hi-rez photos are the best way to give the customer an almost exact idea of the final product.

Once a veneer is chosen, Toby gets started on the construction of the cabinets. With all of the layers of birch play, these speakers are very heavy for their size. I've had the 2-way BA2s since January and they're heavier, in my opinion, than any other wooden speaker of its size--more than 40 lbs. each. The BA1, despite having a relatively compact footprint and height, is a monster. It took two of us to carry each one of the empty cabinets back to Brad's house. They're not one of those behemoth loudspeakers that require you to place hydraulic jacks under your suspended floor, but they are surprisingly hefty.

As an additional choice, Toby can make the BA1 and BA2 with a Corian finish instead of the wood veneer for customers who want a more modern, streamlined look. Corian is a really interesting material for loudspeaker cabinets because, unlike wooden cabinets, Corian cabinets are repairable. If you scratch the cabinets of your BA1 or BA2, anyone who is a certified Corian installer can buff out the scratch and make your speakers look like new again. If you knock a chunk out of your loudspeaker cabinet, a Corian technician can merely shape a new chunk, fit it to size, and work it into the cabinet. You'll be able to see where these bigger repairs were made from up close, but not from your listening position. Minor scratches and dings, however, will not be detectable after repair.

Toby also has the ability to produce different combinations of veneers, so you can have brushbox on the outer sides and Corian on the front baffle, or anything else that might strike your fancy. Toby has more than 30 different colors available in Corian.

Once we carefully packed up the empty cabinets in the back of Brad's wagon, we returned to Brigadiers to assemble the speakers. For my initial listening impressions, we left the crossovers on the floor behind the speakers so that we could change resistor values if needed. (This is what we did with the BA2s, by the way.) Within a couple of hours, our BA1 was ready for my approval.

My input, as it turned out, wasn't really needed. Unlike the smaller BA2, which was still an unfinished prototype when I arrived in Sydney, the BA1 was a finished design and was already making the rounds. Indeed, this pair wasn't even serial number #001. With that Einstein integrated, the BA1 was an incredibly complete speaker, one that did everything I wanted it to do. After spending more than a week fine-tuning the BA2, I was beginning to think that my quest for the perfect two-way speaker was over. The BA2s were, in its final reiteration, so solid in the lower bass that I could not imagine needing more. When I heard the BA1, however, I heard that more and knew I had to have this speaker. Natural, detailed, extended and the frequency extremes--I knew that Brad had made his masterpiece. The perfect speaker for me, in other words, is a 2.5-way.

I'm going to stop right now with the hyperbole and the marketing talk because I don't want this to be about sales. It's just that this has been one of the highlights of my audiophile life, actually working with designers and consulting with them and getting results that are far better than I ever expected.

The challenge, of course, is bringing these two wonderful speakers to the US market and beyond. In just a short time, Brad and David have found a couple of dealers in Australia, and they're already talking about New Zealand distribution. But the US has become a very tricky market for high-end audio. It's not enough to say here, listen to this, you'll like it and want to buy it. As an importer and distributor, my main obstacle is usually bringing in brands to the US that represent good value, something that can be tough to do when you have to work in the cost of global shipping and still pay the bills. That has become one of the main requirements for CCI carrying a brand--when someone asks me how much a product is, I want them to say "Oh, is that all?" and not "Why is it so expensive?"

With this level of design, however, every little thing makes a difference in the final product, and everything costs money. These two speakers will not be cheap. That means Brad and Davis and Morris Swift (a third partner I haven't mentioned yet...sorry, Morris!) will have to ensure that they are running their operation as lean as possible without affecting the results. Plus, there are hundreds and hundreds of new speaker companies trying to get a foothold in the US market. They all want to be the next KEF or Harbeth or Quad or whatever.

All I can say is that this is the speaker I want when I retire, when I get off the audio merry-go-round. Is that enough to make people notice? Well, I aim to find out. Right now I'm trying to get all of these Down Under brands together at a US high-end audio show, possibly next year's show at Newport, so people can listen for themselves and decide whether or not I know what I'm talking about when it comes to good sound. I'm talking PureAudio, Axis, Redgum Audio, Brigadiers Audio--and let's not forget Les Davis' intriguing new CLD material--all in one room, or maybe two.

Australia and New Zealand are hot spots for high-end audio. They know good sound, and they are serious about achieving it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. And I can't wait to go back.

The Chronicles of Sydnia, Part 5: Les Davis and Constrained Layer Damping

About a year ago I was hosting an exhibit room at one of the hi-fi trade shows--I'm about 99% sure it was RMAF 2014--and a salesperson from one of my dealers came and sat in my room and evaluated our system. He came away quite impressed with the sound, which is a good thing since he sells our products to his clientele. Before he left, he recommended one thing--I should use footers and vibration control from a particular company in order to "sharpen" the sound of each component.

When I priced these products I was a little dismayed at the high cost of just a single set of footers. And I was supposed to stick these under every single component I demonstrated? Whew. I was going to have to cut down on cigars in order to find the budget to include these products so CCI could have that advantage over the other exhibitors--who were also using these products as well.

Flash forward to this year's RMAF, from which we've just returned. While there, I noticed the aforementioned footers in what seemed like every other room. The word was out--if you're serious about audio, you need these expensive thingies. I found myself in one of the better-sounding rooms at the show, where the actual designer of the footers demonstrated the sonic differences with and without his product. There was no doubt about it...with the footers in place, the noise floor lowered and the overall sound was fuller and more detailed. I was sold, except for one thing; I'd heard a similar demo in Australia the month before with another product that was more modest in looks, and therefore potentially more affordable.

The man in the photo above is Les Davis. Les has been in and out of the audio game for many years. He's a gifted musician as well as an audiophile with excellent hearing. A mate of Brad Serhan and David Allen, Les wanted a few minutes of my time so that I could hear the effects of a new damping material he had developed using constrained layer damping techniques. While in Australia, I heard about constrained layer damping many times--Brad uses this design concept to seal the cabinets of the Brigadiers Audio BA1 and BA2 loudspeakers.

Les, however, has taken the concept one step further. He showed us a simple sheet of his material, which we then cut up into squares to slide under the components of the system we used to evaluate the voicing of our two speakers. The sheets looked like aluminum foil that had a distinct grid-like pattern stamped into them. First we placed a sheet under the Arcam CD player we were using. We heard those same gains in clarity, frequency extension and detail. We then placed a sheet under the Einstein integrated amp that we had all grown to love during the development of the BA1 and BA2. We heard even more gains. Finally, we placed sheets under the Brigadiers Audio BA1, which you can see below. What I thought was one of the greatest speaker designs I've heard in quite some time became even better--deeper, clearer, more coherent.

I told Les that he was definitely on to something. After the demo, Les and I talked about everything under the sun, including our favorite music. Les, who is British and grew up during that stellar era of UK music in the '70s and '80s, had quite a bit in common with me, the kid who was totally into the LA punk scene back in the early '80s. You know, SST bands like The Minutemen, Husker Du, Meat Puppets and Black Flag.

So what is constrained layer damping? I'm not an expert at this point, but I'm learning so I'll proceed with caution. (Both Les and Brad can offer a more eloquent explanation, I'm sure.) CLD is used for damping and vibration control in a number of technical applications. CLD usually consists of a three-layer sandwich of damping materials--a base layer, a damping layer and a constraining layer. The alternating layers then dissipate all vibrations as "low-grade frictional heat."

Brad's use of constrained layer damping is applied through the use of birch-ply construction in his cabinets, with a specialized adhesive between the layers. Les' approach adds even more damping--as we saw with the initial demonstration, each layer of CLD improved the sound in an almost linear manner without diminishing returns.

The differences, as I said, are not subtle. We did extensive A/B comparisons and everyone in the room heard a difference. Those differences, as I said, were almost identical to the improvements I heard in Denver a few days ago. CLD is not a gimmick--it's effective engineering applied to our hobby. So I told Les, "this is something people should know about." So I told Les that I thought he should start applying his sheets into a finished product, one that could implement the sheets into an attractive footer between attractive pieces of wood, or metal, or anything that would not dilute the impact of CLD.

After a few weeks, I started thinking about Les' sheets and how I want others to hear what this material can do for their systems. So I'm hoping to sneak a few little squares under our Opera and Unison Research system at CES in January. I'm also eager to try the CLD sheets in my own system at home.

So this is one of those unexpected developments--an Australian encounter with something that I think could be great. Les is going to manufacture some CLD gaskets to fit around the drivers inside the cabinets of the BA1 and BA2 and we'll see how that affects the sound of a speaker I already feel is outstanding in every conceivable parameter. So if you come visit us at CES (room 29-110 at the Venetian), hopefully I'll have some of Les' fantastic CLD sheets on hand so you can listen for yourself.

The Chronicles of Sydnia, Part 4: A Visit with Edgar Kramer

As I've already mentioned, I do have a moderate case of arachnophobia. In the weeks leading up to my visit to Australia, quite a few people took to teasing me about my completely rational fear of those eight-legged little bastards and how Australia, land full of things that want to kill you, would be the end of me. Most of my concerns revolved around a nasty little bugger called the Sydney funnel-web spider, one of the most venomous spiders in the world. To make matters worse, they're known for being aggressive. And they're not out in the boonies, which is why they call them Sydney funnel-web spiders. Bloody hell, what's that crawling up my leg?

Once I arrived in Sydney, I quickly learned a few things as I constantly scanned the ground around my feet. Funnel web spiders, for instance, couldn't really be found in central Sydney, where I spent most of my time. They scampered around in the outer suburbs, and especially in the the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney where they apparently blanket the landscape like morning dew. In addition, I also learned that funnel-web spiders hadn't killed anyone in Australia since 1981, when they developed the anti-venom. So I was told not to worry about them so much, and to stay away from the Blue Mountains where herds of them ravage and pillage the countryside at will.

Brad Serhan and David Allen, along with Morris Swift (President of the Audiophile Society of New South Wales), arranged for me to meet with Edgar Kramer, well-known audio reviewer for 6Moons and his own publication, a gorgeous print magazine known as Audio Esoterica. Edgar reviewed the Axis VoiceBox S for 6Moons some time ago, and he had already spent some time with the larger floorstanding speaker from Brigadiers Audio, now known as the BA1.

The purpose of the visit was for me to meet Edgar, a very civilized and gracious host, to bring him the smaller two-way monitors from Brigadiers, known as the BA2, and for me to spend some time in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Gulp. The Blue Mountains, guys? Really? Can I borrow a hazmat suit and a flame thrower first?

Despite the beautiful home and the extraordinary sound system, I was told by the others that Edgar was a "bloke." Up to that point, I always thought that bloke referred to anyone of the male persuasion, a mere synonym for guy, man or dude. But it really meant that Edgar was a buddy, a pal, a regular guy who can joke around and have fun and perhaps even come and bail you out of jail one night, no questions asked. He was all that, and even more--he served us all tea and cake.

I've only seen tea and cake in the movies. But let me tell you this--tea and cake is awesome. As an aside, I drank so much tea in Australia that it actually became a habit, and now I miss it a little. But I digress.

Once we were done, we sat down and started some serious listening. While Edgar played DJ, I browsed through a few issues of Audio Esoterica, and I have to say that I really miss this kind of audio publication with its huge, glossy pages and wonderful photography. It's like a bigger version of Architectural Digest for hi-fi enthusiasts. AE dedicates itself to the very best high-end audio, so you're assured of lots of wondrous eye candy. While you can download a hi-rez version on Zinio, I'm set on getting the print version ASAP. It has such a classic look and feel, and I get nostalgic just thinking about it.

Edgar's current system consisted of the new Alexia speakers from Wilson Audio, the big Parasound Halo monoblocks, a Supratech preamp and a very cool-looking digital player from AMR. Within the context of Edgar's astonishing home, this is one of the great listening rooms I've ever seen--spacious, comfortable, filled with light and, of course, tweaked to the nth degree for the best sound quality.

We were treated to some wonderful musical selections and I was instantly impressed with the sheer weight and size of the system. I haven't always been a fan of Wilson, but the last few times I've heard them they had a distinct, enveloping roundness to the sound that was very unlike the more aggressive presentation I heard from the earliest versions of the WATT/PUPPY back in the early '90s. This newer Wilson sound is more welcoming and intimate and therefore more musical. The Alexia sounded absolutely engaging and musical every step of the way.

Edgar's system, obviously, is an incredibly neutral and resolving tool for his reviewing duties, but it's also a joy to listen to, and I couldn't help but feel just a little envy.

At one point I was led to a smaller room off to the side of the main listening room--the home theater room--where Edgar has used the Axis Voicebox S for multi-channel duties. I noticed that the tweeter on the center channel had been rotated 90 degrees so that the speaker could be set on its side. John Reilly of Axis designed the tweeter to do this--something the current US importer and distributor didn't know.

Of course I jumped on Facebook and immediately revealed this "new" feature on the Colleen Cardas Imports page. John, of course, jumped on within minutes and warned that the tweeter rotation is something that should be performed by the Axis dealer. So, kids, don't do this at home. But it's still cool.

After an hour or two of listening, we brought the Brigadiers Audio BA2 two-way monitors in for an audition. We were anxious, of course--Wilson Audio is a tough act to follow sometimes. And I'm not about to tell you that the BA2s came close to the performance of the Wilsons at a fraction of the price, because then you'd know I was just tryin' to sell you sumthin'. But once we had everything warmed up and playing music, I couldn't help but feel a little proud of the BA2s. I halfway expected them to sound like miniatures compared to the Alexias, but they sounded big and warm and full with plenty of extension at the frequency extremes.

I've had this particular pair of BA2s since January and I've used them in a lot of different systems, but the majority of my amplification is of the modestly-powered vacuum tube type and I've always felt that I needed to place a good 100 to 200 watts per channel on them to hear their true potential. Here they were, powered by the gigantic Parasound monoblocks, and they just kicked ass all over the place.

After our listening sessions, the five of us went down the road a bit (I saw a herd of wild cockatoos standing around on someone's front lawn on the way) and visited the iconic rock formation known as the Three Sisters. I was quickly reminded of CES back in January, where Colleen and I took a road trip to the Grand Canyon with Bartolomeo Nasta of Unison Research and Opera. Bart has wanted to see the Grand Canyon all his life, and every year he's asked us to take him. Well, this year we finally did. We rented a tiny and worthless Chevy Speck...er, Spark and the three of us drove for four hours across Nevada and Arizona. When we finally arrived, the entire canyon was socked in with dense fog. Bart was so disappointed that we thought he was going to throw himself over the edge.

Just eight months later, I was facing the same problem at the allegedly lovely Three Sisters. We managed to be patient for a while and slowly this three-tiered rock formation revealed itself to me, especially as I hiked toward it. The only downside was that it was a very cool and rainy day, and I thought I could brave the temperatures in just a long-sleeve shirt. I had to borrow one of Brad's "jumpers," which is what Australians call jackets and sweaters.

I never did see a funnel-web spider. In fact, I had to go to a zoo to finally see one. But I did see this snake and decided to make friends. I posted this on my Facebook wall and everyone went nuts. One of my oldest friends exclaimed, "Marc, what are you DOING?" But as you can see, this particular snake was docile and slow-moving. VERY slow-moving. Almost motionless. Okay, completely motionless.

Thanks go to Edgar Kramer for a wonderful afternoon. And I'm planning on getting a subscription to Audio Esoterica as soon as I can--it's a welcome return to the sexy, beautiful pictorial magazines from the not-too-distant past.

Random Pics from Knox Audio

Just a couple of days after I blogged about Jeff Knox Audio just outside of Sydney, Australia, Brad Serhan sent me a truckload of new photos from my visit. So here are some better photographs of Jeff's Million Dollar System, his snakes and more!

The Chronicles of Sydnia, Part 2: Getting to Work

In the interest of disclosure, I must state my biases about Brigadier Audio up front, especially in the context of my recent visit to Australia. I've been consulting with Brad Serhan and David Allen on these two speaker models all year long. I'm not even going to try to say that I had something to do with the final design--Brad and Dave have been completely obsessed with these two speakers for more than a year and a half. My role is little more than an audiophile who came in, listened and offered feedback. Despite all that, the Brigadiers Audio BA1 and BA2 are sort of my babies, in a godchild sort of way, and my main objective in going to Australia was to sit down with Dave and Brad and listen and tweak until we were absolutely sure they were great enough to bring to the US market. So of course I'm going to tell you that I love these two speakers--but just not because I want to sell them to you.

Let me illustrate. I love pizza, and the best pizza I've ever eaten was mine. Ask most of my family and close friends about their favorite pizza, and they'll probably tell you it was mine as well. While I was in college I worked at a local pizza parlor, then I managed it, then I started my own pizza parlor based on my own recipe, and then I sold it and partnered up on a second one. When I developed my own recipe, I basically started with solid recipes that I truly enjoyed, and then I tweaked it until it had evolved into the best tasting pizza I had tried up to that point. It wasn't culinary skill, and it wasn't luck. It was just about indulging my own preferences, and hoping that my tastes in pizza had a somewhat universal appeal.

It was the same with these two speakers, especially the BA2 2-way monitor that I've been evaluating since last CES. I was going to listen, offer my opinions, and then step back and let Brad and David decide whether or not my recommendations were valid. When I told Brad that after listening to the BA2s my only reservations were the extreme bottom end and a reticent midrange, he nodded and agreed as if to say, "I thought so." It turns out that Brad was able to voice the speaker in one of two ways, and he basically flipped a coin to decide which setting he was going to use on my sample pair. After hearing my comments on the BA2's performance, he basically told himself, "Ah, the other setting."

Once I arrived in Australia and my body clock adjusted somewhat, we dove into work. Brad's first recommendation was to experiment with a variety of resistor swaps that would set the impedance at different values between 4.5 and 5 Ohms. David, shown in the photo at left, suggested that we swap out the rear ports as well. In the workshop they had a variety of wooden O-rings of different shapes, as well as matching tubes of differing lengths. When I told Brad that I wanted deeper bass, he and David decided to try a longer port with a smaller diameter hole. Dave got to work on machining the O-ring so that I would fit perfectly into the rear of the BA2 cabinets.

Sure enough, the change in the port dimensions produced a much deeper and much more satisfying bottom octave. I told Brad and David from the beginning that every smallish two-way monitor sold in the US had to have one salient feature in order to be successful--it had to sound "much bigger than it looked." After the port tweak, I no longer had reservations about the bottom end of this speaker. The deep bass was huge, deep, full, round and musically persuasive. The port fix also seemed to cure the laid-back midrange, the proverbial two birds with one stone. If these different ports had been available to me while I had the BA2s in the US, I wouldn't have needed to go to Australia at all. They would have been perfect, in my honest opinion.

But I'm so glad I did get to go, so that point is sort of moot.

By the way, we did all of our final testing of the two Brigadiers Audio speakers with this Einstein integrated amplifier with internal phono stage. We had quite a few amps on hand to test out the speakers, but we decided unanimously that this German-made Einstein did the best job of stepping aside and letting us hear what the speakers were really doing. We compared the Einstein to another very highly-regarded amplifier from a very highly-regarded European manufacturer--and we were all surprised when the Einstein came out head-and-shoulders above in terms of detail and focus and imaging.

I know very little about the brand--I did have a chance to audition one of their phono stages years ago when I was reviewing equipment, and I remember liking it. But this amp right here, well, wow. What a nice, beautiful, state of the art amplifier that is, incidentally, light enough for one person to carry around comfortably. Someone told me they thought it retailed for around AU$16,000, but that's actually a bargain for this level of performance.

I found the sound room in the workshop to be a little on the live side. I could hear around the room acoustics to a certain extent, but I was concerned that some of the room reflections could mask minor problems with the sound. So we moved the BA2s and the Einstein to Dave's gorgeous condo right on Sydney Harbor. If you've seen the photographs of the Axis VoiceBox S on the Axis website, the ones with the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background, well, then you've seen Dave's place. Despite lots of glass sliding doors and sleek, modern surfaces, Dave's living room actually turned out to be a great place to listen. Solid floors and soundproof rooms combined to make the BA2s sound focused, warm and full of inner detail.

We did proceed with a few transistor swaps and finally came up with an impedance value that balanced the midrange perfectly against the frequency extremes for a totally coherent and balanced sound. We listened for hours, and at the end of a long night we all decided that the BA2 design was finished.

So I've been talking about the search for a perfect two-way speaker in this blog, to which SpJ's Judy Spotheim-Koreneeff told me "No such thing, and no such creation." I know that in high-end audio, there is no perfect and there is no best. But I can say that the Brigadiers Audio BA2 is a lot like a slice of my pizza circa 1982--it's what I want in a two-way if given the choice. Because it's a two-way, it's small and easily managed when it comes to speaker placement. (Someone, I think it was Brad, mentioned that the strength of the two-way is that it's much easier to set up in a small room, and I believe we all agreed.) It images like crazy, with musicians and voices inhabiting very specific spaces between the speakers, their actual sizes perfectly reproduced in Dave's living room.

But because of the complex, solid birch-ply construction, constrained layer damping and high quality drivers, I just got the impression that this was a basic two-way design taken to the nth degree. Now I know there are some pretty ambitious and expensive two way speakers out there from the likes of Magico and Raidho and others, tiny speakers that sound magnificent--and cost about the same as a new Honda Accord. The BA2s will cost a fraction of that, but they will still seem fairly pricey to the uninitiated. But this is simply a matter of looking a little deeper--seeing the love that Brad and David put into every pair, and then hearing the results. I'm very proud of how this speaker turned out, and I can't wait to share it here in the US.

I'm jumping the gun a little--I'm saving the coverage of the cabinet-making aspect of Brigadiers Audio for later--but I did want to show you an unexpected development in the cabinet choices of these two speakers. Brad and Dave and I went to visit Toby Hogpin, the master carpenter who will be building the exquisite cabinets for the BA1 and BA2. In addition to plenty of exotic Australian hardwood veneers, the cabinets of the Brigadiers Audio loudspeakers can also be made from Corian. You probably know Corian from its applications in kitchen counter tops. My personal pair of Trenner & Friedl ART loudspeakers have Corian on the front baffles, which is very polished and shiny and attractive.

Well, Toby made a couple of BA2 enclosures using black and white Corian and they are simply beautiful. What's unusual about Corian is that it can be repaired and re-polished if there's an incident. So if you scratch the outside of these speakers, you can take them to anyone who is a certified Corian installer and have them re-polished and restored to their original pristine state. If a chunk gets knocked out of them--and I've seen this on many traditional wood veneer enclosures--you can get add a piece and re-contour the surface and get them almost back to perfect--supposedly you can see where the piece has been added if you look up close, but not from your listening position, where it counts.

These speakers can be finished in 35 or 40 different Corian finishes. Many of these finishes will remind you granite counter tops, however, so sticking to the solid colors is probably wise.

So for now the Brigadiers Audio BA2 2-way bookshelf monitor is finished. Brad and David are going to perform some measurements so we can get some specs on the Brigadiers Audio website. Then I'm getting another pair sent to me so I can show them to dealers, at trade shows, all the usual venues. I'm nervous and excited, as are Brad and David. But we're eager to see how audiophiles and music lovers respond to the BA2.

The Chronicles of Sydnia, Part 1

I've been back from my Australian adventure for about a week now, and it's occurred to me that I'm one of those people who get to travel somewhere cool and far away just once in my life, and I'll spend the rest of my life talking about it. Even in Sydney I was joking that I'd go back to the US and officially become an expert on all things Australian. What can I say? It was an incredible trip, and I'm very lucky to have visited this wonderful country. I want to go back as soon as possible.

Other than the whole driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-street issue, which of course is related to the why-did-they-put-your-steering-wheel-on-the-other-side-of-your-car issue, I was surprised that the greater Sydney area only felt sporadically exotic. Just throw in some half-dead banana trees and it'd look a lot like San Diego. Maybe it was all the palm trees and eucalyptus trees--something I grew up with in Orange County--but I never expected to feel so relaxed and comfortable in a country on the other side of the world. Plus, they spoke English. I understood every word, too--unlike when I travel to Chicago or Detroit. The only guy I had trouble understanding turned out to be British.

Reason #1 why I love Sydney: the tap water tastes like bottled water. Seriously. I've heard so many claims of drinkable tap water in my life, including here in western Colorado where people act offended if you don't drink right out of the faucet, that I was genuinely surprised that yes, the tap water in Sydney tastes like Aquafina or Dasani or Fiji or any other bottled water out there. The plumbing is just generally awesome in Sydney--I felt like I could flush a Persian rug down one of those Aussie toilets with no issues. (And yes, the water does swirl the other way when you flush.)

The main reason for going to Australia, of course, was this bloke right here. His name is Brad Serhan. He's an Australian speaker designer. He's been my buddy for many years now. Colleen and I already import and distribute one of his designs, the Axis VoiceBox S, which he finalized with partner and Axis head honcho John Reilly. Brad and his partner David Allen are starting a new venture called Brigadiers Audio which will feature upscale, practically bespoke designs that feature high-quality drivers, birch-ply enclosures and constrained layer damping (which I'll go into further in a future blog entry). I've been listening to their 2-way monitor since January, as I've mentioned already, and I traveled to Australia to help the tweak the design a little, and to hear their bigger 2.5-way floorstanding speaker.

I had very few reservations about the 2-way, and I approached my summary of its performance like a professional audio reviewer so that I could remain objective and make a sound business decision about carrying the line in the US. After my first listening session I proclaimed, "This is a speaker I could actually live with for the rest of my life." That was said with all honesty, and as little marketing hyperbole as possible, but I also knew that the Brigadiers designs were going to be expensive with their complicated birch-ply cabinetry and semi-exotic Australian hand-oiled veneers, and that a small expensive two-way monitor needs to do a couple of things in order to sell in the US--it needs to go low in the bass, at least relatively so, and it needs to sound like a big speaker. My only two pieces of feedback for Brad and David were to see if the speaker could dig a little deeper into its lowest frequencies, and that my personal preference was a midrange that was slightly more forward. Very, very minor nitpicks.

Brad said "No worries"--he knew it was just a matter of changing the value of a resistor, and the midrange frequencies would come forward a bit. David also made a rear port out of slightly different dimensions--deeper and narrower, and that brought some truly deep bass into the sonic picture. I learned a lot about port design that day.

This is, of course, John Reilly and David Allen, with me in the middle. On this night, thanks to John, I discovered the joys of Malaysian food. While I was in Sydney, I enjoyed Thai food, Vietnamese food, Korean food, Japanese food, Chinese food and Malaysian food, and all of it was fantastic. Malaysian food, something we don't widely have in the US as far as I know, was the best--like Thai, but less sweet and not as spicy. Since I've been back people have been asking me about "Australian cuisine," and outside of the pasty and peas I had on the airplane on the way back home I really don't know. But the Asian food I ate while there was absolutely exquisite.

This was the first time I've met John in person, and we hit it off right away. He's very interested in American politics, as are most Australians--every day I read the Sydney newspaper and at least a page was devoted to US politics. Well, not US politics as much as TRUMP. As in, "Trump's not really going to be the next POTUS, is he?" I was asked that question by almost every Aussie I met. Toward the beginning of my trip, my answer was "No way." Toward the end of the trip my answer was, "Um, er...I don't even know anymore."

Anyway, back to John and Axis. John said one thing to me that I really respected--he wanted to turn the VoiceBox S into a "heritage" product--one that stays around for a long time and helps to define the marketplace for years, even decades. In Australia, China and the Far East, I think it already is a heritage product. (Remember, I'm biased, but I do feel lucky to be associated with such a product.) At this dinner, John made arrangements for me to meet with Ian Robinson, the designer/manufacturer of Redgum Audio. Redgum and Axis share a factory, and John vouched for the synergy between his product and Ian's amps. I've got one of their integrateds here in Colorado for evaluation--more about Redgum in a later blog.

If I had a more general theme to my Australian trip, it would be something about high-end audio being alive and well Down Under. It seems like American audiophiles were all into Australian audio a couple of decades ago, not long after we were all infatuated with Australian film and The Thorn Birds and Paul Hogan. Recently it seems that some of that initial enthusiasm has waned--the affinity between the two cultures is still obviously intact, but we just don't crow about it as much as we used to. Mention Australian audio to US audiophiles and you may get a few comments about Duntech and Halcro. More often than not you'll also hear about Plinius and Perraux before you have to remind someone that New Zealand is Australia as much as Canada is the United States. It ain't.

But here's proof of how serious high-end audio is in Australia--this is a million dollar system...well, a million Australian dollars, in the main sound room in Knox Audio just outside of Sydney. Owner Jeff Knox is completely dedicated to the state of the art in high-end audio and assembled this system (Evolution Acoustics speakers, Ypsilon and Soulution amplification, AMG turntable and much more) to show his clients what is truly possible in our hobby. I have to admit that this one one of the most impressive dealer demos I've experienced. Everything was just life-like and realistic and infinite in its capabilities.

I'll talk more about Jeff Knox as well in the near future.

This is Brad and David's larger 2.5-way floorstanding speaker design. I came to Australia to listen to these. Unlike the two-way monitors, which were still in the prototype stage when I evaluated them, this larger speaker is a finished design and has already been auditioned by a handful of Australian hi-fi dealers as well as some professional reviewers. This pair, finished in Australian brushbox veneer (understated but unusually lovely close up), was actually the second pair made by Brigadiers. I watched Brad and David build these in an afternoon, and we were enjoying music by dinner time.

While this speaker has a relatively small footprint and fairly modest dimensions, not to mention more of that signature Australian understatement, it's a very substantial and complex speaker. First, carrying just the empty cabinets is a two man job. Handcrafted by Toby Hogpin, one of the top carpenters in Sydney, this cabinet feature multiple layers of birch ply that are bonded together with a special adhesive that actually controls resonances in the cabinet. Constrained layer damping also contributes to a solid enclosure that allows the drivers (two SEAS magnesium woofers and a Raal ribbon tweeter) to really sing.

It's no surprise that I loved these speakers. After spending the first day with them, I wanted to hug them and take them home.

We worked hard in Australia. Long hours, lots of critical listening tests, and lots of meetings with important folks. But I did have time to play, but just a little. This is me at legendary Bondi Beach just a few hours after I landed in Sydney. I grew up in Southern California and spent my youth at Huntington Beach and Newport, but I have never seen waves as big and as beautiful as these ones. I estimated at least 8-10 foot waves, perfect shape, evenly spaced sets. I haven't been on a board for 35 years, but I wanted to get out there anyway.

Further proof I was in Sydney. That's me and the Sydney Opera House. No photoshop. I promise.

David Allen even took me out on his 42-foot sailboat. We sailed Sydney Harbor, under the famous bridge, next to the Opera House, all through the nooks and crannies of this iconic location. Then I was offered the wheel for a few photo opportunities. After the photos were snapped, however, I just kept on sailing this big boat through the heads and out into the Pacific for a few miles. I kept asking if someone wanted to take the wheel before I screwed up too badly, but the response was always a cheerful "You're doing fine, mate!" and "You've really got the hang of it!" and "Colleen will be so proud of you!"

At the risk of being that guy, the one who's constantly talking about his big trip to Australia to anyone who will listen, I will share more of my trip in the coming days.