February 2010 News & Ramblings

Between the holidays and a fairly busy December and January, things have seemed to quieted down some once again so I have the spare time to put some thought into a blog posting. I have nothing to report from 2010 CES in January because, well... I didn't go! First one I have not attended in well over 10 years, but I sure has heck did not miss the PITA of travelling and getting the usual Vegas crud (cold, sickness etc) while out there. I had a great time at RMAF (Rocky Mountain Audio Fest) last October and saw the gear and people I needed to see back then, so given the cost of going to CES (for both me and Merlin Music Systems who I go with and help with their exhibit) it made perfect sense not to go this year and save some extra cash. Friends in the trade tell me that quality of traffic was good, but attendance overall was down significantly at the 2010 CES this year. From reading about show reports and talking to friends as well, it looks like I did not miss much in regards of new/different stuff too see/hear.

Anyway, moving on to what is happening, here is a summary of current news, specials and promotional offers that are going on:

• Rega's "Cash for Digital Clunkers" program has been proven to be pretty successful and they are extending it until the end of March. If you have not heard about it, it is great trade in program that accepts old or new, cheap or fancy, working or not, old CD AND DVD players towards a substantial trade in credit towards a new Rega Apollo or Rega Saturn CD player (for details see our Rega Cash for digital Clunkers blog entry). Some folks have been asking me if this means the Rega Saturn or Apollo are about to be discontinued and/or replaced with new models. I keep asking this question of Rega and our US Rega Distributor and the answer is NO.
• We have some Sonos digital music system gear (demo - discontinued stuff), all in excellent condition with boxes, manuals, and warranty available. A great way to get into a really nice digital music system for a very reasonable price. See our Demo and Used Gear page for details.
• Dave Belles @ Power Modules, has a great new tube preamp, solid state power amp combo available. Dave has done some smart engineering using the old Belles 150A Reference amp and 21A & 28A Reference preamps as a baseline to come out with new products which provide equivalent/better performance for less! The new 22A Preamp and 150A Reference V2 Power Amplifier are both great sounding and hundreds of dollars less than the previous versions at $2,400 retail for each product. We have the preamp/power amp combo on display and have been enjoying it very much. Like all of David Belles's gear, it has really good tonality along with good resolution, dynamics etc which make his products such a wonderful value. Purchase both the 22A Ref and the 150A Ref V2 together, and receive a special package price! (please call or e-mail for details).
• We are now carrying and showing the Musical Surrounding Phono Preamplifier's (Phonomena II, Nova Phonomena, and SuperNova II). We are especially enamored with the Nova Phonomena which offers loads of gain and loading settings, and a battery based power supply design all for $1,000. Along with this is terrific sound quality and a very quiet phono preamp for only $1,000.

Some other thoughts about the current trends in Hi-End audio. While the trend to computer based digital audio systems continues and will continue to grow over the next decade, I'm excited that the sales of vinyl playback related products (tables, cartridges, phono preamps etc) has continued to see steady growth and shows no signs of slowing down! What appears to be happening is that many audiophiles who never sold off or gave away their vinyl and have had it stowed away, are at the point in their lives where the kids are gown up (or grown up enough) that they feel they are able to safely have and live with a turntable set-up. They are pulling out their old records and often buying good basic turntable set-ups (like Rega P2's or used Planar 3's etc) to start playing their old vinyl again. Often, this gets these folks excited about and enjoying their old LPs once again. Next thing you know they are often start buying new or used vinyl and also upgrading their good basic TT set-ups to gear that's better and wind up enjoying vinyl (LP) playback even more. Its pretty much to the point now where I sell more turntables each than CD players on a annual basis now.

Having said that, I do closely monitor and listen too what is happening in the computer based digital audio area. Thanks to good friends in the trade as well (like Gordon Rankin at Wavelength Audio), form time to time I get to try some the USB dac technology that is out there and hear how good this stuff is getting. I have about 1,000 CD's archived to hard disc, a couple of iPods (mostly used for listening to tunes in the car and while taking my walks), and have even bought a Wadia iTransport... all this in part of a effort to evaluate trends and keep abreast of what is happening here. There is loads of potential here and things or just starting to get about as simple to use as the one box high end CD player and the performance of some of the USB and Firewire DAC's I have heard is quite exceptional. The one concern I have is that the complexity factor still needs to come down some and designers are still learning things about certain aspects of PC based digital audio (i.e. effects of computing power, drivers, cables, upsampling SW, memory vs disk based playback, and even the sound of USB cables). This can make things a bit daunting for some folks (i.e. those who are not very computer savvy) who would get frustrated with some of the "tweaking" involved to get the best out of a PC based digital audio system. In my opinion, to a significant degree, many audiophiles are spoiled with the modern day high end audio CD player... plug it in and you are pretty much ready to go. About all the tweaks necessary to get the best out of it are limited to selecting a good power cord, maybe some cones/footers, and you are good to go. PC based digital audio systems offer some very cool benefits though which includes the ability to organize and playback your music however you like... I find being able to select and generate playlists of various types/kinds of music allows a certain enjoyment that you can't get with sticking a single disc in a player and playing one disc at a time (that is unless you like to create/burn your own "mix" discs!). The ability to have your whole music collection easily able to manipulate and play at your fingertips with a few clicks of a mouse makes these systems very attractive. Then there is also the potential of being able to acquire and play back high res music with these systems as well. Its going to be an interesting decade!