Music Night at Blackbird Audio Gallery...with PureAudio!

Next Saturday night, November 16th, I will be visiting with Dan Muzquiz of Blackbird Audio Gallery in Santee, California, to demonstrate the entire line of PureAudio amplifiers from New Zealand. This is another one of Dan's fantastic Music Night events--the last time we did this I was just a blogger from Texas and not the US distributor of six different brands of hi-fi equipment. (That event, held back in 2011, was to debut Dean Peer's album Airborne). We will have the Vinyl phono preamplifier, Control preamplifier and Reference monoblocks that see you in the picture above. Dan will also have additional guests there...TBA.

Dan was our first PureAudio dealer in the US, and we're proud to have him as a partner for this event. This is the first time we've had all of the PureAudio products in one room since the New York show last June, so I'm looking forward to hearing these extraordinary products before we have to send send them back to John Atkinson--he needs to finish his Stereophile review!

If you live in the San Diego area--or anywhere in Southern California and beyond--and you want to attend Music Night, contact Dan at 619-449-2787 to RSVP, or email him at dan@blackbirdaudio.com. You can also check the Blackbird Audio Gallery website for more updates on the event over the next few days.

Pics from the New York Audio Show

We just returned from the New York Audio Show, and frankly we're exhausted at CCI. New York is always a bit tougher when it comes to trade shows--traffic is brutal, the cost of everything is exorbitant and the attendees are knowledgeable and predictably hard to please. That said, I love New York. I love the food, the excitement, the gorgeous architecture (the show was held at the legendary New York Palace Hotel, and our room had exquisite views of St. Bart's and Rockefeller Center) and the food.

Did I mention how much I love the food in New York? While the hotel restaurant took some criticism for its tasty $13 bagels and remarkable $25 burgers--you could almost hear the ghost of Leona Helmsley yelling, "but it's worth it, you whiners!"--Colleen and I managed to hit Peter Luger's in Brooklyn with Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio and Rob Robinson of Channel D. After the show, we snuck off to New Haven, Connecticut, to indulge in one of the finest pizzas on earth--Modern Apizza. (When we visited last year, we hit Pepe's.) Modern Apizza--my God.



We had equipment in three rooms. First was the MAD room, which Colleen and I ran. We featured the MAD Duke Royal Limited loudspeakers, the MAD 1920S mini-monitors, the PureAudio Reference monoblock amplifiers, the PureAudio Control preamplifier, the MSB Data IV digital transport, MSB's The Analog DAC and Furutech cabling and power management. Unfortunately, the Dukes had been shipped one too many times--they've been to five different shows in the last few months--and they weren't quite sounding right. We substituted the 1920S mini-monitor and achieved incredible sound. We thought it might be a blessing in disguise, since many New Yorkers live in small apartments and are really looking for smaller speakers that sound great. We heard many people complain that all of the rooms featured gigantic mega-speakers that wouldn't fit into their digs or their budgets. In the context of our extraordinary system, the 1920S wound up being huge crowd-pleasers.



Here's a pic of the two speakers standing next to each other, with one of the incredible PureAudio Reference monoblock amplifiers to the side.



This is the main system--the PureAudio amps and preamp, along with the MSB digital front end. I had a chance to play with the Data IV transport and The Analog DAC before the show, and I have to say that the build quality and the sound quality are both magnificent. The DAC is especially noteworthy because it looks like an isolation platform instead of a component. It's a solid piece of aluminum with small compartments milled out for the components, which isolates the circuitry. It's a gorgeous piece and offered some of the best digital sound I've heard yet.



As I said, we used power cords, speaker cables, interconnects and a powerline conditioner from Furutech of Japan. The construction, fit and finish of these cable products were amazing--these are probably the most beautiful cables I've used. The connectors were polished and gleaming. Furutech, in its own way, made our room more beautiful. Yes, they sounded fantastic as well. Colleen and I were extremely happy with Furutech and will definitely use them again in the future--in fact, at the upcoming T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach in June.



Here's a shot of the passive powerline conditioner. While the cables from Furutech are far from inexpensive, this conditioner retails for only about a grand--a considerable bargain compared to some of the other power management products we have used in the past that cost three, four or even five times as much.



Here are the loudspeaker cables plugged into the back of the red 1920S...



...and the black one. The mismatched colors of the cabinets of the two speakers had some people talking, but the 1920S were originally meant to be part of a static display. We even had a white one for CES earlier this year, but they were part of the pair that I auditioned last year and they were sold to a customer. We joked about the colors representing the right (red) and left (black) channels, but we even switched that. MAD speakers are built to such close tolerances, however, that even a pair of different colors is perfectly matched.



Here's the 1920S from the front. I've reviewed these before, so I won't go into much detail here. I will say that with all the exceptional ancilliary equipment, the 1920S sounded better than I've heard them before.



We also provided the MAD Baron speakers for the Care Audio room four doors down. Care Audio is our brand new MAD dealer in Edison, New Jersey, and proprietor Sunil Lekhi amazed us with his ability to build and tweak and extremely musical system--one that went far beyond our expectations. The Barons are smaller two-way versions of the Duke Royal Limited, and this was the first pair we've brought into the US and therefore the first pair we have heard. From the pics we had assumed that the Baron was a slightly smaller floorstander, but when we saw them we were surprised to see how small they were. Sitting on the floor, they barely reached past our knees. They produced a huge, exciting sound from the floor, but the soundstage was unique in that it seemed to exist below the floor--like you were listening from a balcony. That's certainly a legitimate perspective, but probably one that wouldn't generally work in the audio marketplace. Then we realized that the Baron are indeed stand-mounted speakers, albeit with relatively short stands. Once Sunil found a pair of suitable stands, we were in business.

The diminutive Barons throw up an amazingly huge soundstage, and they go fairly deep in the bass. And like the Dukes, they are gorgeous in both shape and finish. Jeremy Kipnis, of Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS) fame, is currently reviewing them. Colleen and I visited Jeremy and his wife Carolina in Connecticut after the show, and he was quite enthralled with their performance.



Finally, Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio used our Unison Research Unico 50 integrated amplfier in his room, which he shared with Cardas Audio and Channel D/Pure Music. Jeff and Rob usually achieve "Best of Show" sound quality in their rooms, and we were honored that he chose the Unico 50 this time. Their system was beyond reproach--is there a stand-mounted speaker that can throw up a bigger soundstage and can offer more bass than the Joseph Audio Pulsars? I don't think so. He played a rare recording of Louis Armstrong playing the classic piece "St. James Infirmary" and I've never heard Satchmo sound more alive and real. I've forgotten the entire story of the recording--it might have been from a rare master tape which Rob processed through the Pure Music software. It was better than the clam pie at Modern Apizza.



I'll finish up with an observation/gripe about audiophiles at trade shows. In the photo above you'll see our room when it was basically packed. There's only one available seat, which happened to be the sweet spot. No one wanted to sit there. I'd repeatedly
watch one audiophile offer the sweet spot chair to another, only to have the other decline. "No, no," they would say, "you take it." And then both of them would sit elsewhere. It's as if no one wants to be a sweet spot hog!

Here's a tip: if you walk into a room at an audio trade show and the chair in the sweet spot is available, take it! Don't worry about being impolite. As an exhibitor, I worked hard to make my room sound its best, and it sounds its best in THAT chair. Sit down. Enjoy. Stay there for an hour. I want you to!

In Chicago, I had an audiophile walk into my empty room and then stand along the back wall and listen to the system. "Have a seat," I told him. "I'm getting some nasty room reflections against the back wall and it sounds awful there." He looked at me and sneered, "I'm aware." Then he walked out. In other words, he was more interested in showing how knowledgeable he was as an audiophile than hearing an excellent system. So please--show the sweet spot some lovin', dammit.

CCI at the New York Audio Show

I can't believe it's been nearly two years since Colleen and I went to the AXPONA Show in New York City and announced the start of Colleen Cardas Imports. We're headed back to New York this week, but we'll be attending the New York Audio Show this time. Things have changed a bit since June 2011--we had no dealers back then and just two lines, Unison Research and Opera Loudspeakers. Now we have five lines--we added PureAudio, MAD Loudspeakers and MOOS Audio over the last few months--and around twenty dealers. At AXPONA, we exhibited in one room full of Unison and Opera. This week we will have the equipment in three different rooms.



The main room Colleen and I will be running is the My Audio Design room, which will feature a system slightly like the one we demonstrated at the AXPONA Show in Chicago last month. (Above is a photo of that room.) We'll be using the My Audio Design Duke Royal Limited speakers again, as well as the PureAudio Control Preamplifier and PureAudio Reference monoblock power amplifiers. While I'd still love to have that analog rig in the photo--a Sota Millenia, SME iV.Vi and a Soundsmith Hyperion--we will not be doing vinyl this time. We have a surprise guest for a digital playback system, and you'll have to stop by to see what it is. Colleen and I will be manning this system in room 1015 for Timothy Jung of MAD.



In addition, our good friend Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio is borrowing the Unison Research Unico 50 integrated amplifier for the room he is sharing--1007--with Channel D/Pure Music. Jeff is well-known for achieving great sound at audio shows, and we're honored that he's using the Unico 50 at this show.



Finally, you'll be able to see the US debut of the My Audio Design Baron loudspeakers in Room 1019, which is the Care Audio room. Care Audio is a brand new dealership in Edison, New Jersey, and they will be a MAD dealer once they open their doors. The New York Audio Show is a christening of sorts for Care Audio, and we are proud to be there at the beginning. The speaker you see in the photo is the actual Baron that will be at the show; the pic was snapped at the MAD factory in the UK just as the speaker was finished. These are a smaller version of the Dukes with one less woofer per side and are more affordable. I'm looking forward to listening to them at the show.

The upcoming New York Audio Show will be held at the New York Palace Hotel at the corner of Madison Avenue and 51st Street from April 12 through the 14th. For more information on the show, check out the Chester Group website at http://www.chestergroup.org/newyorkaudioshow. Hopefully I will see you there!

The 2013 AXPONA Show Report

The reviews are in, and AXPONA 2013 was a hit. For months everyone in the industry had been talking about AXPONA--mostly because it was the first high-end audio trade show in Chicago since 1999. Chicago used to host the Summer CES back in the 20th century (that sounds so weird, doesn't it?), and the Windy City has always been a strong market for audiophiles. It seems strange that Chicago has been neglected for so long, and all of the AXPONA exhibitors were anticipating a very strong turnout despite the fact that the show was being held in early March, when Mother Nature likes to play cruel tricks on the entire Great Lakes region. It did snow for a couple of days before the show, but for the most part the weather wasn't too severe for Colleen and me. We were reminded once or twice from the folks back home that Texas was in the 60s and 70s while we were gone, however.

For CCI, the AXPONA show was full of blood, sweat and tears. Blood: the day before we left, I burnt the hell out of my right index finger while making breakfast for Colleen (yes, it was bacon). A couple of days later at the show, I sliced open my left right index finger while opening a recalcitrant wooden crate carrying the MAD Duke Royal Limited speaker. I had to work the show with just eight fingers.



Sweat: Colleen and I had to supervise two rooms instead of one, and there was a lot of gear this time. We had plenty of room partners helping out from Tweak Studio (our Chicago dealer), SOTA turntables (who graciously manned our second room) and Steve Holt from MIT Cables. But a funny thing happened to Steve on the way to the show--first he lost his phone on set-up day, and then he didn't show up for the first day of the show at all. We were worried and couldn't get a hold of him. Then we found out--on Facebook, of all places--that Steve was quite busy having his appendix removed. (For all of those customers who came into our first room to talk about MIT cables, Colleen and I are sorry for not being more prepared. But shit happens, especially in the world of high-end audio.)



Tears: This is the good part, because we managed to get great results in both rooms. In room one (Unison Research, Opera, MIT) we had attendee after attendee come in and ask, "Are these the Opera speakers I've been hearing about?" We decided to show the Quintas ($5495/pair) since we hadn't had a pair in our possession since we debuted it at the 2012 CES, and we even had to drive down to Indiana the day before the show to pick them up from a reviewer. With the exception of the Quintas, we used pretty much the same system we used at CES in January: Unison Research Simply Italy, Unison Research Unico Upower booster amp, Unison Research Unico CDE...with the MIT cables being the main difference. But there was something about those Quintas. They made love to that room, and people noticed. Arnold Martinez, owner of the Tweak Studio, came in to listen and tears starting coming to his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I get emotional when I hear something this beautiful!" Two reviewers came in and said this system was one of the best in the show (and this included Constantine Soo of Dagogo, who took the above photograph.)



The second room was a bit more ambitious. We featured the My Audio Design Duke Royal Limited loudspeakers ($48,000/pair), the US debut of the PureAudio Reference monoblock power amps ($15,500/pair) and Control preamplifier ($9500), the PureAudio Vinyl phono preamplifier ($4500), the SOTA Millenia turntable ($9500) with SME iV.Vi tonearm ($4000) and Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge ($7500), all tied together with the wonderful cables and power conditioning from WyWires. Scot Hull, the Part-Time Audiophile, covered our room for The Absolute Sound (that's his photo above) and said the Duke was "putting out some of the most elegant sound on display at AXPONA." Colleen and I were a little nervous about the room for several reasons: the PureAudio amps were brand-new and I hadn't spent much time with them in advance, and the price of the Dukes might seem prohibitive to Chicago audiophiles who might not want to pay that kind of money for the stunning Union Jacks on the sides of the cabinets that take almost a month to create. (The Dukes sell very well in places like Hong Kong and the UK, where they are considered true works of art.) I'm very glad Scot "got" the system--I was certainly thrilled with the end result.



Aside from Steve Holt's mad dash to the hospital, as well as an unexpected fire alarm at the Doubletree on the second day of the show (see pic above), AXPONA far exceeded our expectations. The show was such a success that Steve Davis, who heads AXPONA North America, has already announced that the 2014 AXPONA will take place in Chicago as well. The Doubletree was a great venue--good sounding rooms, an attentive staff and the legendary Gibson's Steak House on the ground floor (where I had one of the best slabs o' meat in my life)--and Colleen and I definitely have plans to return.

PureAudio from New Zealand Has Arrived...

Colleen and I just received the full line of amplification from PureAudio of New Zealand just in time for the AXPONA show, which is in Chicago in just less than two weeks. I've been eagerly awaiting these pieces for quite a while--I've had some seat time with the Vinyl phono preamplifier already and I was hoping the Control preamplifier and Reference monoblock power amplifiers would be equally good. They are. In just a few minutes I had the four components unpacked and hooked up in my system. The first song I played, of course, was "Yulunga" from the MFSL pressing of Dead Can Dance's Into the Labyrinth. It's what I always play first when I make changes to the system.


The Control preamp, pictured here, is unusual in that it's so simple--you'll find just one knob on the front panel (volume), making it look more like a power amp. You might notice the lack of a selector switch. You don't need one--the Control automatically senses a music signal and switches to that input. I haven't seen what happens when you play music through two inputs at once. As you may have noticed, this is a vinyl only system right now--my Unison Research CDE CD player is on its way to Chicago as I write.


This is one of the Reference monoblocks. It provides 65 wpc of pure Class A amplification. I have some support cones underneath them so all that heat from the amplifier won't singe my carpet--or, in turn, so that the carpet won't block ventilation from underneath the amp. Again, the Trellis equipment rack is on its way to AXPONA and I had to improvise. There are hefty fans underneath the chassis of the amp as well, keeping everything relatively cool so far.


The remote is also minimalist in design--just two buttons for up and down on the volume. It's sleek and sexy and the little vertical bar glows when you push a button. That vertical bar is found on all of the PureAudio products--it glows a soft white when everything is in stand-by mode and turns off when music is playing.


Gotta love those Cardas binding posts. I wish every amp used them. You can hook up a speaker cable with one hand.


I only have a couple days to put some hours on the PureAudio gear. You can hear the entire system in Room 813 at AXPONA along with a SOTA turntable, Soundsmith cartridge and the My Audio Design Duke Royal Limited loudspeakers. Cabling and power management is provided by WyWires. See you there!