T.H.E. Show 2019--A Reunion with Gene Rubin

My latest show report from T.H.E. Show 2019 in Long Beach is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. This one's about meeting up with Gene Rubin, my original high-end audio dealer. You can read it here.

High End Munich 2019--Unison Research and Opera

My latest show report from High End 2019 in Munich is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. This one concerns the brands I used to import and distribute in the US, Unison Research and Opera, and how seeing new products from these Italian companies brings me just a tinge of regret. You can read it here.

AXPONA 2019: Unison Research, Opera and Fidelis AV

My first show report from AXPONA 2019 in Chicago is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. This is about my past life as an importer and distributor, and how friendships have carried over into my new role as a journalist. You can read it here.

Exhibiting at the TAVES Show in Toronto

It was difficult to miss last week's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest--I've attended the last ten years in a row and exhibited the last five. But I had a chance to attend the TAVES Show in Toronto instead, and I've always wanted to attend either this show or the one in Montreal in the spring. I'll be assisting Vince Scalzitti of Tri-Cell Enterprises, the Opera and Unison Research distributor up north, as well as my brother Bartolomeo Nasta straight from the factory outside of Treviso, Italy, run the Tri-Cell room at the show.

I do have quite a few Canadian audiophile pals out there, so I hope I get to meet a few of them in person. TAVES will be held October 28-30 at Sheraton Parkway Toronto North & Best Western Hotels, 600 Highway 7 East, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 1B2. Telephone number is (905) 881-2121. You can find out more info here.

CCI's Adventures at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show

Did I say "adventures"? To tell you the truth, it was a fairly quiet CES for Colleen Cardas Imports. My theory is that CES keeps getting larger and larger--as in number of square feet someone has to cover to see it all--yet attendance seems about the same. That makes it appear much quieter than it really was--everyone is too spread out. I said the same thing about the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest last October. These shows keep getting bigger and bigger, but the same number of people keep showing up year after year. It's not necessarily a bad thing. CES can be such a stressful show because it's a trade show that's not open to the public and everyone is there to do business. The 2014 CES, therefore, was mellow compared to years past. But I wouldn't mind seeing a little more excitement next year, when they start holding CES on the weekends once more. That's been one of the criticisms of CES during the last couple of years--they switched the show to mid-week and a lot of people can't get away from their day jobs.

Oh yeah...there was some bad weather that may have affected the 2014 CES. That "polar vortex" wound up delaying something like 18,000 flights the day before the show started, so a lot of exhibitors had to work through the night to get ready for day 1.

Despite all this, Colleen and I were very pleased with the way our system turned out. We debuted two new products in the Unison Research/Opera Loudspeakers/Furutech room: the new Unison Research Triode 25 amplifier ($3495) and the new Opera Quinta SE loudspeakers ($6995/pair). Our digital source was the Unison Research Unico CD player and all the cables and power management was by Furutech. It was another simple system that only took a couple of hours to set up correctly. Once we had everything hooked up and playing music, we were quite proud of the results. For about $15K without cables, the overall sound was quite amazing.

I know--I'm expected to say that. I'm a company man. But I love the way this system played tunes. The Quinta SEs go very deep in the bass, and although the Triode 25 only has 22wpc in triode mode, the bass filled the fairly large room with ease. I had the pleasure of breaking the system in for a couple of weeks prior to the show, and it was the system I installed back at home after we returned. The Quinta SEs, which were serial number 001, have already been sold but I get to listen to them for another month or so. These speakers make me have happy feelings.

So what is the Opera Quinta SE? First, its arrival was a bit of a surprise--we had no idea Opera was working on this model. It's basically an Opera Quinta--for all intents and purposes it looks the same--but it sports a new SEAS midrange/bass driver that's formed out of woven polypropylene. It looks a lot like a carbon fiber cone but it sounds smoother.

The Quinta SE, as you can see in this photo of the back panel, is ported. The regular Quinta has a sealed enclosure. The standard Quinta can reach down to 30 Hz, so the SE version may dig down and retrieve another couple of Hertz. After hearing deep bass on familiar recordings that I've never heard before, I'd say that spec is just about right.

The Unison Triode 25 integrated amplifier was also an unexpected treat. Unlike most Unison Research tube amps, which are mostly single-eneded parallel Class A designs, the Triode 25 is a push-pull Class AB design that can switch from triode (22epc) to pentode (45wpc) with a flick of the switch. First of all, I wound up leaving the 25 in triode mode for most of the show because it sounded so darned good that way. (Pentode mode allowed more extension at the frequency extremes, but it flattened out soundstage depth a little.) That said, the Triode 25 comes close to the sound of the S6--my personal favorite in the Unison Research line-up--for almost $2000 less. I really love this little amp and I'm planning on holding onto it for a while more as well.

Once again I have to make the excuse that I was stuck in my room for the entire show, so I didn't get out and listen to a lot of other gear. (I did venture into the Joseph Audio room a couple of times, which I'll report in the next blog entry.) But I did visit the T.H.E. Show at the Flamingo to check on another one of our brands--My Audio Design from the UK. Timothy Jung, founder and designer for MAD, was showing his gorgeous Grand MM monitor speakers ($8200/pair without stands) in a system that included Burmester and SOTA, and he was getting a powerful, authoritative sound out of his fairly large stand-mounted monitors. At one point Timothy really cranked up the volume on the system and my head started to spin, but the MMs didn't fail to reproduce the accurate sound levels of a live rock performance. I'm just getting old.

Last year I reported on one of my pet peeves at trade shows--fear of sitting in the "sweet spot" chair in order to appear polite. At this CES I found something new to grumble about. Here's the scenario: a person walks into the room saddled with all sorts of photographic equipment--tripods, cameras, maybe even an assistant. They snap a few quick photographs and then quickly exit a room. Okay, that's not so strange considering all of the international press that covers CES. But at this CES, it happened every few minutes all day long for the entire show. None of these people asked questions about the equipment they were shooting. They didn't stop for a second to listen to the music. These people were on a mission--to photograph EVERYTHING at CES.

Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me, but I'm seeing a trend on audio discussion forums. Someone will mention a particular trade show, and then someone else will say, "Hey, let me post some of my pics from the rooms at the show!" Then that person posts page after page of photos of all the gear. On one forum I saw a guy post forty-eight pages of photos. Of course the other posters would ask questions like "Wow, those Magico speakers look amazing! How did they sound?" Unfortunately, the shutterbug doesn't have a clue and made some sort of lame excuse for not offering an opinion on the sound quality. This person doesn't remember because this person wasn't listening.

To all the shutterbugs, I must say that you're doing it wrong. Sure this gear is beautiful and it deserves to be photographed. But your hi-rez digital photography only scratches the surface. Set your camera down for a minute and listen for a change. You'll have more fun.

CCI at the Newport Beach T.H.E. Show 2013

"I bet you thought you were coming to Newport Beach."

That was sort of the running joke at this year's T.H.E. Show, which has been dubbed "the Newport Beach show" for some time--despite the fact that it's not actually held in Newport Beach. It's actually held at the Hilton and Atrium hotels near John Wayne Airport, whioh means they're actually in Costa Mesa...or Santa Ana, or Irvine. You know, the place where all those cities congeal. I was born and raised in Orange County, so I know the Newport Beach show isn't actually in Newport Beach, but nevertheless many show attendees and exhibitors seemed a bit distressed when they looked out the windows of their show rooms and saw no ocean, no port and no beach.

This was the third annual T.H.E. Show in Newport. Colleen and I missed the first two--we just couldn't fit the show into our schedules in 2011 and 2012. We were told repeatedly that we had made a horrible mistake because the first two shows were reportedly well-attended and lots of fun. Maybe the bloom has come off the rose this year, but the show was merely good--no different than any other show we've attended this year (and we've done five in the first five months of 2013).

The pros of the show were great weather, of course, and well-mannered and well-informed attendees. (On that note, I don't think I've seen so many German cars or Reyn Spooner shirts in one place in all my life.) I also enjoyed the cigar booth in the lobby, and the fact that I could enjoy one of those cigars out by the swimming pool.



The cons, however, centered around the exhibit rooms at the Hilton, where CCI was located. There were no power outlets near the front of the room, where the system needed to be set-up--hence the strange equipment rack configuration you see in these photos. In addition, the floors of the room tended to be either concave or convex, which meant that even when my bird's-eye level said my speakers were sitting flat, my eye-crometer told me that they were actually tilting toward each other. Finally, the rooms were NOISY. The halls were NOISY. The AC unit in the room was NOISY. The walls between the rooms were obviously thin, which meant it was very difficult to audition our equipment in a reasonably quiet environment. We spent most of the show competing with the PBN room across the hall, and those speakers were almost seven feet tall. In other words, we lost that battle.

In the Atrium, where our partner Dan Muzquiz of Blackbird Audio Gallery and our friend Bob Clarke of Profundo were exhibiting new products from Heed, Trenner & Friedl, Viva, Transfiguration, Basis and Cardas Audio, they fared a bit better. The power outlets were located all over the room, the proportions of the room were more complementary to a sound system--despite floors that were far more lumpy and uneven. If we come back next year, I want to be at the Atrium.



Here's a shot of our basic system. We used the Unison Research Giro turntable with arm and UN1 cartridge ($3995 complete), PureAudio Vinyl phono preamplifier ($4500), Unison Research Unico CDE CD player ($4120), Unison Research Sinfonia integrated amplifier ($6495) and the Opera Seconda loudspeakers ($3995/pair). All cabling and power management was from Furutech of Japan. Those of you who read this blog regularly or know me from Facebook have probably already recognized this system as my own. Yup, that's right--that's pretty much what I've had in my listening room over the last year. I do rotate the Trenner & Friedl ART monitors and the My Audio Design Grand MS speakers whenever I can, and the PureAudio Vinyl preamplifiers tend to get sold as soon as they arrive which means I have to use my back-up Lehmann Audio Black Cube SE more than I'd like (it's a wonderful $1000 phono pre but it's NOT the PureAudio). But when it comes to the turntable, arm, cartridge, CD player and amp, those are my daily drivers. And they sounded very nice at the show.



Here's a shot of the Secondas. People at the show dug them in white. Of the four finishes Opera provides (black, white, cherry and mahogany), white used to be ranked choice #4. In the last couple of years, it's now #2. White audio components are HUGE in Europe right now, and getting bigger in Asia. It's getting more and more popular in the USA lately as well.



Here's a pic of the system I stole from Dan Muzquiz. Here you can see the strange set-up, which did prompt some queries from the attendies. We tried to put everything along the side wall, where the power outlets were located, but it sounded terrible. So what you're seeing is the result of power cords being stretched out as far as they would reach so the speakers could fire out from the front wall. I was typically unhappy with the sound on set-up day, but by the time the first attendee walked through our door, the sound was much closer to what I experience every day in my listening room.



Here's a close-up of the Furutech power filter and the power cords. Man, this is gorgeous stuff--beautifully constructed, classy looks and great sound. Most of it was hidden behind the rack in the corner, which was a shame--these cables deserve to be front and center. When Peter Breuninger of A/V Showrooms came into our room to shoot a video, I almost forgot to mention Furutech. When the video is posted, you can hear me scrambling to mention Furutech before he leaves the room.



Colleen and I were trapped in the room for almost all three days. Dan Muzquiz did relieve us for an hour or two, but for the most part I saw very little in other rooms. Fortunately, everyone seemed to come and visit us--including Mat Weisfield of VPI. He was carrying around the revolutionary new VPI 3D tonearm which has been created out of epoxy by a 3D printer. The photo above is of Colleen and Mat, sharing the 3D love. I talked to Mat briefly about a future interview for my Vinyl Anachronist column in Perfect Sound Forever, and he's up for it!



At every trade show, John Atkinson from Stereophile always stops by on the last day about 15 minutes before the show ends. This year he came about three hours early, catching us off-guard. On the first day of the show Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds dropped off some test pressings of new releases, and I spent a big chunk of the show playing Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Tin Pan Alley." That's what we played for JA, and I'm pretty sure he dug it--his head and body were swaying from side to side. JA currently has the PureAudio Control preamp and Reference monoblock power amps for review, so he enjoyed a chance to listen to the matching Vinyl phono preamp.

By the way, that's Dave Neilson to JA's left. Dave was one of the two guys who started Splintr Designs, makers of the wonderful Trellis equipment racks we've used at the last few shows. Dave has started a new audio furniture company, Audio Strata, and we hope to use his beautiful new products at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Audio Show and at CES 2014. The new racks are quite a bit more advanced than the Trellis racks, using new composite materials.



Finally, I'll wrap it all up with a photo of the PBN Groovemaster turntable from across the hall. These guys offered amazing sound all during the show--even from across the hall. We kidded them a lot about their volume levels, but they had a huge system and they needed to show it off. I spoke with PBN's founder and designer, Peter B. Noerbaek, and he's designed one hell of a beautiful turntable--which sounds great as well.

I'll have a part two to this report in a day or two, where I'll cover the happenings at the Blackbird Audio/Profundo rooms. Lots of good stuff over there, including an amazing new speaker from Trenner & Friedl!

Tweak Studio Grand Opening in the Hyatt Regency Chicago

CCI will be attending the grand opening for the Tweak Studio's brand new showroom, located in the lobby of the beautiful Hyatt Regency Chicago. The Tweak Studio, along with proprietor Arnold Martinez, is our exclusive Chicago dealer for both Unison Research and My Audio Design and we will be showing off some amazing products as well as providing some interesting door prizes. The grand opening will take place on Thursday, March 7, 2013 from 9pm until midnight at 151 East Wacker Drive, Chicago--in Suite 1 on the Concourse Level. This event is by invitation, and an RSVP is required. Please contact Tweak Studio at (312) 235-6561 or send an email to sales@myavstudio.com for more information.

Transfiguration Phoenix--First Impressions

I mounted and aligned the Transfiguration Phoenix earlier today, and I've been listening for the last few hours. It was a bit more difficult to mount this cartridge for two reasons. First, it has sort of a large body and a rather small cantilever, so it was harder to see where the tip of the stylus was landing on my alignment protractor. Second, it's a $4250 cartridge, and I get a little nervous when mounting the big-dollar carts. I'm reminded of my Koetsu days, where I nearly had a heart attack every time I swapped cartridges. I busted a cantilever once due to carelessness, and I still have nightmares about having to write the $880 check for a re-tip.

That said, all went well today. My only real obstacle came when I tried to remove the stylus guard from the Phoenix. It's a stubborn little mofo. I wound up calling Colleen into the room; she has longer fingernails.

Once installed, the Transfiguration Phoenix immediately impressed me. The first thing I noticed was that surface noise was significantly reduced. That's one of the magical things about the nicer low-output moving coils, they tend to relegate surface noise deeper into the background so it's less noticeable. My Koetsus did that, and so does the Phoenix.

So what was the first LP I played? My Nautilus Half-Speed version of Ghost in the Machine by The Police. It was the last LP I'd listened to with the Unison Research UN1...just last night. While the Phoenix is going to need about 100 hours of break-in--which is why I have it in the first place--it still had an open, relaxed and effortless feel to it. This is an album notable for the black, velevety silences between the notes (I talk about this further in my next Vinyl Anachronist column for Perfect Sound Forever), and the Phoenix's low noise floor really brought these qualities to the forefront. There's still a little harshness in the upper treble, but this will go away after a few more LPs.

Together with the PureAudio Vinyl preamplifier and the Giro turntable, this is probably the best analog rig I've used for a long time--maybe even ever. As great as my old Michell Gyro SE, SME V and Koetsu Rosewood were, mated to whatever phono stage I was using at the time, this rig is less fiddly and much more solid in both sound and in build quality. Colleen sat down for a while and listened to one of our favorite reference tracks, "Yulunga" from my MoFi pressing of Into the Labyrinth from Dead Can Dance, and she said, "This is the best our system has ever sounded." I agree wholeheartedly.

Colleen Cardas Imports article in Soundstage!

Garrett Hongo, audio reviewer and distinguished professor at the University of Oregon, visited Colleen and me a few months ago at our home here in Texas, and the resulting article is now online here. Garrett is quite the Renaissance Man, and we listened to a variety of great music while indulging in my other favorite pasttime--smoking cigars. (If I remember correctly, I had a wonderful Padron No. 35 while he tried--based on my recommendation--an Ashton VSG Enchantment.)

Garrett is a fan of Opera and Unison Research, and he's even visited the factory in Italy...something I have yet to do. It was a genuine pleasure to visit with him and hear his comments on the latest gear.

Thanks, Garrett! Feel free to stop by the CCI headquarters any time!

The Vinyl Anachronist's Official 2012 CES Report

Since this was my first year at CES as an exhibitor, my coverage of the show is somewhat limited by the fact that I spent four days inside room 29-117 showing off gear from Unison Research and Opera Loudspeakers. I did venture out occasionally, but for the most part I was working--and having the time of my life--all through the show. You can read the Positive Feedback Online article for more on that.

My CES adventure actually lasted ten days since Colleen and I were responsible for driving--not shipping--all of our equipment to the show. As you can see above, we barely had enough room for our own luggage. Schlepping two pairs of floorstanding loudspeakers in your SUV definitely sucks up cargo space.

It's about 1300 miles from my front door to Vegas. So Day 1 got us to Tucson, Arizona, where we able to procure our second In-N-Out Double Double in as many weeks--not bad for two displaced native Southern Californians who ordinarily have to drive 200 miles to reach In-N-Out Land (i.e. Dallas). On Day 2 we hit Vegas just after noon since we had a very early start, and we picked up our Italian manufacturer, Bartolomeo Nasta, at McCarran at 3. We all checked into our vacation condo at the Wyndham, which was much bigger and cheaper than a room at the Venetian, and relaxed. Day 3 was set-up day, days 4 through 7 were show days, day 8 was breaking-down-the-room-and-then-going-shopping-day, and days 9 and 10 were spent driving back. We took a more northernly route on the way back home because we probably would have stopped overnight in El Paso, and if you've ever driven through El Paso on I-10 you'll know why we didn't want to leave $30,000 worth of audio gear in our SUV in a hotel parking lot overnight.

On set-up day I was amazed at the amount of product boxed up in the hallways of the Venetian. I saw a couple of pallets stacked with crates of Magico speakers, and I wondered how much the retail was on those two skids--a quarter million? More? It's one thing to see a ton of expensive gear at a trade show, it's quite another to see it all boxed up and ready to go.

As I mentioned, we brought two pairs of floorstanding speakers and they consumed most of our set-up time. I've gotten to the point where I can unpack an amp of a CD player and have it running in three or four minutes; 110 lb. speakers, on the other hand, require a bit more planning and a little more tenacity to retrieve the tiny yet important bits stuck to the bottom of the carton.

Seriously...I'm going to have to buy one of those poles with a "claw" on the end of it--you know, the ones short people buy to reach things on the top shelf. Those boxes are deep. (That's Bartolomeo, by the way, and not me. Everyone seems to love this pic.)

Surprisingly, it only took us about two hours to set-up the room and get everything dialed in. There were three of us, of course, and the other two have been doing this kind of work for decades. We were a finely-tuned audio machine. In other words, we were done by noon and had the rest of the day to ourselves. We did have one concern: the two speakers we demonstrated, the Opera Quinta and the Opera Seconda, were brand spanking new right out of the box. In fact, they are the first two pairs in the US ever. We had to get those puppies broken in as quickly as possible. Fortunately our room partners at Audience, who supplied the cables and power conditioner, had an XLO Sweep CD that worked wonders overnight.

We brought two systems' worth of gear, but only one would be actually playing in our room. What you see here is our $4495 Unison Research Unico 50 integrated amplifier (also brand new for the US), the $3895 Unison Research Unico CDE CD player (that one's my personal player, so it had plenty of hours on it) and the $5495 per pair Opera Quinta loudspeakers. Speaker cables, interconnects and power cords were all Audience Au24, and the power conditioner was the $5000 Audience aR6-TS. For about $20K, less than the equipment racks in some rooms, this system sounded fantastic.

The other equipment in the room, which could have formed another whole system and a half, included (from left to right) the $2150 Unico Primo integrated, the $2295 Unico CD Primo and the $2450 Simply Italy integrated--the latter which was also all-new for CES and the US. The other speakers, the $3995 per pair Secondas, were finished in a beautiful white veneer...and everyone forgot to photograph them because they were tucked in a corner. I'll see if someone else has a pic so I can post it. They're sitting in my dining room right now all packed up and ready to head out to a dealer, so I can't set them up real fast and fake it. You'd know.

The Audience guys--President John McDonald, National Sales Mananger Richard Colburn and design engineer Roger Sheker--also had their gear displays set-up in the room. It was funny how visitors to our room were split up between the Unison faithful and the Audience faithful. Nevertheless, the Audience cabling and power conditioning worked extremely well with our gear, and we've decided to share once again at the Jacksonville AXPONA show in March. They were absolutely great room partners and were enormously helpful. And Richard has great taste in music.

I know what you're thinking...no vinyl in the room? Aren't you the Vinyl Anachronist? WTF, Marc? Hold on there...we did bring our Giro turntable to the show. You just had to head down the hall to the Joseph Audio room to hear it. Most of you know I'm a huge fan of Jeff Joseph's loudspeakers, and I looked forward to hearing how the Giro would do in a non-Unison/Opera system. As usual, Jeff used Bel Canto electronics and digital sources, mated to his flagship Pearl2 speakers with Cardas Audio Clear Beyond cables.

But what's that cartridge on the Giro? Could it be...why yes, it is...the Hyperion cartridge from Soundsmith! That's the cartridge I've raved about, the one with the cactus needle cantilever. I've been thinking about buying another cartridge for my Giro (the Transfiguration Axia is probably leading the field right now), but I'm glad I got to hear this exquisite cartridge, one of my absolute faves right now, taking the Giro to the limit.

Most people wouldn't put a $7000 cartridge on a $3995 turntable/arm combo, but the Giro received a lot of love and respect in the Joseph room. I spoke with Soundsmith's Peter Ledermann again, and he's a warm, friendly yet brilliant man who makes a killer product. While I set up the turntable for Jeff, Peter came in afterward and mounted the Hyperion. I'm glad I didn't have to do it--I get a little nervous when I'm dealing with super-expensive cartridges. I'd hate to screw it all up with all those people watching me.

Once the show was underway, I did my best (along with Bart and Colleen) to show off our system. Feedback was uniformly positive, with many visitors remarking how great are system sounded for a relatively reasonable price. CES is different from most trade shows since the general public can't attend, so fewer people were coming in, sitting down and listening to music. Most of the time we were talking to prospective dealers, supplying product information to journalists and just hanging out with our industry friends. But nearly every visitor stopped at some point, looked at the system, and said something like "Wow, that's really nice!"

When the show was over, Colleen and I had several new dealers, some very productive meetings and quite a deal of coverage from the audio press. Bart was very happy at the end of Day 4, and told his father back in Italy that it was one of the best CES shows ever. For Colleen and I, it's on to New Jersey at the beginning of March for a dealer event at Audio Doctor, then straight to Jacksonville for AXPONA. This time, however, we're flying.

I'll have a few more blog entries concerning some of the things I saw at the 2012, so check back.

All ready for CES 2012!

Our room at CES is set up and ready to go! In this pic we have the Unison Research Unico 50 integrated, Unico CDE CD player, Opera Loudspeakers Quinta, Audience adeptResponse power conditioner, Quadraspire rack and cabling by Audience.

Here's another pic of our room with the Unison Research Unico Primo integrated, Unison Research Unico Primo CD player and the Unison Research Simply Italy integrated.

If you're attending CES, please stop by and visit us at room 29-117 at the Venetian. You can also meet Colleen Cardas, my partner at CCI, and Bartolomeo Nasta or Unison and Opera.

Getting Ready for CES

Now that the holidays are pretty much over, it's time to get ready for the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Professionals in the audio industry are usually quite stressed out this time of year--even more than reg'lar folk--because we have to follow up Christmas with the biggest trade show of the year. I know people in the industry who don't even celebrate the holidays anymore because it just gets in the way of CES preparations. Bah humbug.

Colleen Cardas and I will be there, of course, along with Bartolomeo Nasta of Unison Research. We'll be running the Unison Research Room--it's room 29-117 at The Venetian--so stop on by and say hello. We'll be featuring two systems in the room (one active, one static) that will debut no fewer than four new products from Unison and Opera Loudspeakers: the Unico 50 integrated amplifier, the Simply Italy integrated amplifier, the Opera Quinta loudspeaker and the Opera Seconda loudspeaker. We'll also be featuring such established products as the S6 integrated amplifier, the Unico CDE CD player and the affordable CD Primo CD player.

We'll be sharing the room with Audience, who have supplied us with their premium Au24 line of loudspeaker cables, interconnects and power cords. Everything will be plugged into one of their adeptResponse line conditioners. In fact, I have all the Audience gear here at the house and I've been playing with it over the last couple of weeks. It's truly fine gear, and we're proud to feature it in our room.

You might be asking yourself, "What, no turntable?" While we decided not to feature the Giro turntable in our room, it will be making an appearance in the Joseph Audio room. Jeff Joseph, a good friend of ours, requested to use the Giro in his room (at Room 29-140 at the Venetian), and we didn't hesitate to say yes. Rumor is that he's going to mount one of the fine cartridges from Soundsmith (remember the company that makes cantilevers out of cactus needles?) on the Giro.

The 2012 CES will take place in Las Vegas on January 10-13. Feel free to stop by and say hello to Colleen, Bart and me!

Our Hootenanny gets written up by Stereophile!

Our upcoming Hootenanny at Whetstone Audio on December 2 just got a little press coverage on the Stereophile website. As someone who has subscribed to the magazine since 1985, I find this very exciting--even more so than when they started publishing my letters to the editor back in 1990 or so!

As I write this, we're gearing up for the event. It looks like we'll have two separate systems on display at Whetstone. Bob Clarke will have a system showing off the new Trenner & Friedl Pharoahs (pictured above) backed up by a full system of Heed Audio components. For those of you who follow my blog, you'll know how much I love Heed and how well they match up with Trenner & Friedl loudspeakers.

Colleen and I are still planning out our system. Although we intended on featuring the brand new Unico 50 integrated amplifier, the truth is that we're selling almost every unit we can import. We also have one of the first Unico 50s in the US making the rounds with several reviewers. In other words, we may not have one available, but we will have the extraordinary S6 all-tubed integrated instead. This is one of my absolute favorites in the Unico line (I haven't heard the 50 yet), and I think it's really going to be a huge hit at the event.

We're also going to try to bring my Unison Research Giro turntable to the event. It's the only one currently in the US, and right now it's being reviewed by TONEAudio, so I'm hoping to get it back in time.

The Hootenany will be held at Whetstone Audio here in Austin from 6 to 9pm on December 2. Whetstone is located at 2401 East 6th Street #1001, Austin, TX. The phone number is (512)477-8503. Please come out and meet with me, Colleen Cardas, Bob Clarke and Brian Di Frank. If this event is a success, we'll plan on future events at Whetstone on a regular basis.

Our System at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest

Here's our system at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. We shared Room 1102 with AudioEvo.org, Positive Feedback Online, SonicWeld, Locus Design, MIT and Blackbird Audio Gallery and although this was supposed to be a hospitality suite, it definitely turned into a genuine demo room.

The system consists of the new Funk Firm Saffire turntable, Funk Firm FXR-II tonearm and Transfiguration Axia cartridge (all from Blackbird Audio Gallery), the Unison Research CDE CD player and Unison Research Unico Nuovo integrated amplifier (from Colleen Cardas Imports), cabling from MIT and Locus Design and the magnificent Sonicweld system that includes the Pulserod speakers, Subpulse subwoofers, DEQX PDC digital controller and more.

After a full day of RMAF, comments were extremely positive and the room was full at all times. You can watch a live feed of the room here.

The Vinyl Anachronist retires?

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm announcing that I've gone to the dark side. Yes, I've gone over to the business end of high-end audio by joining with Colleen Cardas and helping her with her new venture, Colleen Cardas Imports. We'll be the exclusive US distributors for the Italian audio company Unison Research, and we'll be representing both Unison and Opera Loudspeakers (which are also made by the Nasta family in Italy).

What this means for the Vinyl Anachronist is that I'm retiring from the business of reviewing most types of audio equipment. I'd be pretty sleazy if I told you that a certain amplifier, speaker or CD player (products that Unison carries) were nice, but not as nice as a Opera Grand Callas or a Unison Research S6 integrated. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm also not the kind of audio guy who bashes everything I don't carry.

That said, I'll quickly state that I chose to represent Unison, and not vice versa, because I'm a big fan of their gear. I'm proud to be a part of the Unison family. And I'll be sequestered in my home for the next few weeks listening to the gear you see in the pic above. And that's all I have to say about that.

Rather than letting the Vinyl Anachronist vanish into the ether, I will continue to cover the subjects appropriate for a vinyl anachronist--namely, vinyl. I will even continue to talk about turntables until I represent a line of analog rigs. (Unison does carry one turntable but we have to work on pricing for the US market first.) The minute people think that I'm too biased to continue writing about audio is the day I stop. But I don't want to do that because it's so much fun!

By the way, I still have a few reviews waiting in the wings, especially concerning the Heed gear I recently reviewed. Suffice it to say that these forthcoming reviews were written well in advance of my new status, and they will hopefully be unfettered by bias or other ulterior motives.

Anyway, I hope you will continue to read and support this blog, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me at marcphillips@unisonresearch.com.

Unison Research, Opera Loudspeakers and Cardas Audio at AXPONA NYC

Unison Research and Opera Loudspeakers, both made by the same Italian family just outside of Venice, have returned to the North American market after a two-year hiatus. AXPONA attendees were very enthusiastic about this announcement since many of them own the gear and love it. I've always enjoyed the hybrid Unico integrated amplifiers and came close to pulling the trigger on buying the original model--the only thing that stopped me was that I couldn't find a dealer nearby.

Unison and opera are now being distributed in Canada by Vince Scalzitti of Tri-Cell and by my good friend Colleen Cardas, who has just started CCI in order to be the US distributor. Here's a pic of Colleen and Bartolomeo Nasta of Unison/Opera in the CCI/Tri-Cell room.

Here's a look at the beautiful system they brought to AXPONA. The top component is the beautiful S6 integrated, which has 30 watts per channel of pure class A and is single-ended (parallel). Below that is the Unico Nuovo integrated, and at the bottom is the CDE CD player (which also has tubes--four of them!). The rack was from HRS and I was told it retails for $15,000, which is more than all the Unison components it shelved.

This gorgeous speaker is the Opera Grand Callas, and it sports four 5" magnesium cone woofers and no less than five tweeters--two on the front and three in the back. This unique arrangement gives a normally lush and warm speaker a lot of extension in the treble, making it sound very balanced overall. In other words, the Grand Callas were warm and romantic without sounding rolled off. I really loved their sound.

These are the original Opera Callas loudspeakers, the same ones that got a rave review from Sam Tellig a few years ago. You'll note that even though they're the bookshelf version of the Grand Callas, they still contain five tweeters each. When compared side by side, the smaller Callas sounded very similar to their larger sibling, with just a little less weight. Bartolomeo Nasta told me that in smaller rooms, he actually prefers the sound of the Callas to the Grand Callas.

This is the innards of the Unico Primo integrated, which is the direct descendant of the original Unico. Even though this is Unison's entry-level product (it will sell for around $2200), the layout and the parts quality is exceptional. It even has a nice thick faceplate.

Best of all, thanks to Colleen and Bartolomeo I'm going to get the whole system in for review. From the time I spent with it yesterday, I know I'm going to enjoy their visit.