Tone Arm. Get it?

Hee hee. Thanks to Russ Gates for this one. Don't ask me how it sounds.

And no one got my joke about the cartridge being named the Apple.

Vapor Audio at Lone Star Audio Fest 2011

See this man? It's none other than Russ Gates of Polk Audio checking out the competition. The competition, by the way, is Vapor Audio, and they featured a surprisingly good system based on their Cirrus Loudspeakers and Eastern Electric amplification and sources. Vapor had quite an unusual set up in their room; the system was set up along the front wall in front of the door, so you had to literally walk through the cables and the speakers to get to a listening chair. I'm sure they arrived at this solution after careful voicing, because this system rocked.

When I say it rocked, I mean this literally. I entered this room toward the end of the day after I had heard hours and hours of recordings featuring delicate female vocals, beaten down acoustic guitars and small-scale obscurities from around the world. I was asked what type of music I wanted to listen to, and the only thing I could think of was that I was dying to listen to something gutsy...like Tool. I asked if I could hear some rock. The answer was yes, which kind. I replied "Hard," but them amended my answer to reflect the fact that I didn't really expect HARD, but just sort of rocking. What did the gentleman play for me? "The Pot," from 10,000 Days. A star fall, a phone call, it joins all...

While I was quite surprised with the weight and the power of these relatively small yet exquisitely shaped stand-mounted speakers, I shouldn't have been. The Cirrus starts at $3495 a pair, and each one weighs 53 pounds. It's a well-built and well-designed loudspeaker. I think I assumed that just because I hadn't heard of Vapor, they were another product from a DIYer who was ready to throw his hat into the commercial audio ring. But this a mature product that's available in many exotic finishes and with many intriguing upgrades and options.

Needless to say, they were more than dynamic enough to work with Tool and send me off into the Texas night with a big smile on my face. For more about Vapor Audio, check out their website at http://www.vaporsound.com/.

Polk Audio at Lone Star Audio Fest 2011

One of my main reasons for attending the Lone Star Audio Fest was to meet my longtime Facebook friend Russ Gates, who works for Polk. I've always enjoyed Polk speakers but wondered why they dropped off the high-end audio map over the last few years. Their amazing SDA speakers, which throw out a nearly 180 degree soundstage, were among my favorite speakers in the late '80s. Polk really seemed to employ a lot of research and development into their loudspeaker designs, but they suddenly switched their focus to home theater and car audio. They excel at both (my brother Greg owns a Polk-based surround system in his living room, and it has always impressed me), but I've missed their more ambitious speaker designs.

My concerns have been answered with their new flagship speaker, the LSiM707. This relatively tall floorstanding speaker is both gorgeous in appearance and impressive in performance, especially when mated with Jaton Operatta amplification and CD players, all hooked up with Cardas cable (Russ was the only exhibitor to use Cardas, which certainly gave him an edge in my opinion). Throughout the Lone Star Audio Fest I found myself wandering back to Russ' room to hear some truly nice sound. Toward the end of the show I gave Russ a CD copy of Dean Peer's Airborne and was taken with the LSiM707's ability to reproduce all of those splendid low frequencies. Russ, in turn, was equally impressed with Dean and made a comment about wishing he had had this CD for the entirety of the show. It's such great demo material.

The LSiM707 will be part of an upcoming line of speakers that will include a smaller floorstander (called the LSiM705, I think) and a bookshelf version (the '703) that basically looks like the top half of the '707s with the same three drivers. Best of all, the '707s will retail for just $4000 a pair, which makes them very, very competitive at that price point.

Polk Audio is definitely back on my radar, thanks to Russ. Now if we could just get Celestion to start making great mini-monitors like they did back in the '80s...