A Hornicopia of Listening PleasureA great audio system is prepared like
a great meal: complementary ingredients enhance one another to create a
synergistic taste—or musical—experience. Listeners hungry for the sound of real
instruments and voices can delight in this system, which is guaranteed to
satisfy the most discriminating audio palate.
The Hyperspace turntable makes a serious commitment to vinyl.
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For an appetizer, we begin with
vinyl, or rather, the means by which to spin it: the Nottingham Hyperspace
turntable. These British-made turntables have achieved cult status among purist
audiophiles. The Hyperspace is the culmination of Nottingham designer Tom
Fletcher’s decades of turntable design efforts. It is an exercise in intelligent
engineering with tremendous attention to detail and craftsmanship. Looking like
NASA-commissioned equipment, the slightly Darth Vaderesque design lets you know
that this turntable means business. The music it renders is vivid and
dimensional, emanating from the blackest background.
Emotive Audio is all about tubes; the Sira-LE preamplifier boasts
silken controls and sound.
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Mounted to the
Hyperspace turntable is the RS-A1 Tonearm from Japan. It is a
quirky-looking—yet ingenious—unipivot design. Its unique feature is the
headshell, an independent, rotating design that reduces tracing error and
alleviates unwanted forces on the cartridge cantilever imposed by the record
groove’s opposing side walls, which vary in thickness. The sound is fast, clean,
and extremely resolved, presenting a soundstage with great depth and correct
scale.
Mounted to the tonearm is the ZYX R 1000 Airy-S Moving-Coil Cartridge,
the ultimate expression of current phono cartridge technology. A sophisticated
generating system is employed in this design, which is cryogenically treated
before the boron cantilever and custom solid-diamond stylus assembly are
attached. ZYX construction techniques are beyond meticulous. This
supremely musical component is the grand cru of cartridges.
With the musical signal
lusciously served, the listener can indulge in the amplification entrée from
Emotive Audio. The Emotive Audio Sira-LE Preamplifier and Caeli-LE Mono Power
Amplifiers are among a small handful of the finest-sounding amplifiers on the
planet. In the words of Emotive’s creators Fred and Carl Volz: “A good stereo
system should do more than just play music; it should transport you to the
musical event.” Their designs accomplish this brilliantly.
The Caeli-LE amplifier features the king of
tubes—Western Electric’s 300B.
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The all-vacuum
tube Sira-LE Preamplifier is a purist’s pleasure. Like all Emotive Audio
components, it is hand-assembled and exudes quality with superb build and
parts. Emotive Audio has achieved the daunting task of designing a circuit that
provides an optimum operating environment for the amplification stage
tubes. The signal from this 18-tube preamp is transparent and effortless. Simply
put, much more of the music passes through the Sira-LE.
Producing 10
glorious watts of power, the Caeli-LE Mono Power Amplifiers are a single-ended
triode design using the Western Electric 300B output tube. The unusually stout
power supply of the Caeli-LE employs three separate power transformers and
filter chokes, and ultrahigh-quality capacitors and resistors, making the sound
of the Caeli-LE amps tremendously robust. Voices or instruments like the
saxophone are organic and eerily real. The most desirable sonic attributes are
present in spades: dynamics, warmth, resolution, speed, openness, and
well-defined space around each individual instrument. Perhaps most notably,
music is presented with remarkable balance, producing a sound that is almost
impossible to fault.
Any preamplifier or pair of mono amplifiers priced in
the upper stratosphere had better look the part, and the appearance of the
Emotive Audio gear is tasteful but dazzling. Framed in gorgeous granadilla wood,
the nickel-plated chassis are artfully etched with intricate geometric patterns
by Evy Rogers of Jacob-Rogers art furniture. Each chassis is unique and signed
by the artist. This trio of components makes a visual statement as mouthwatering
as its sound.
Dessert is in the dynamics, served up by the Maya Horn speaker.
The more efficient a speaker, the wider its dynamic range. A wide dynamic range
allows for the reproduction of an orchestral crescendo with all of its explosive
energy, while maintaining the subtle inner detail of the softest passages.
Nothing in music can accelerate the heart rate like realistic dynamics, and horn
loudspeakers are unsurpassed at accomplishing the task. The first sight of the
Maya Horn with its future/past styling is likely to raise the eyebrows of
listeners new to the breed.
The two-way speaker sports an impressive 30.7-inch
diameter front horn, which employs the legendary Lowther full-range driver for
the mid and high frequencies. This huge front horn rests on a handsomely
veneered wooden bass horn cabinet, which is loaded with an 18-inch McCauley
woofer. The crossover-less design offers seamless frequency response and a
mid-range with goose bump–raising immediacy. The Maya floats music into the
listening space with holographic dimensionality, and with 106dB efficiency, the
Maya can almost peel the paint off the walls with only a couple of watts of
power. Like Emotive Audio electronics, it benefits from amplification of great
purity and relatively modest power.
Maya’s horn-o-plenty makes exquisite sound
with effortless efficiency.
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Descriptions of high-end audio are often
humorously close to those of food, but with this audio purist’s system,
gustatory analogies are appropriate. The utterly lifelike musicality of these
components is, in a word, delicious. Pull up a chair, tuck in your napkin, and
enjoy the feast.
All components for this audio feast are available through
Foss Audio
416.465.7649
www.fossaudio.com
Nottingham
Hyperspace Turntable, $4,299
www.aslgroup.com/nottingham
RS-A1 Tonearm, $980
www.sakurasystems.com
ZYX R 1000
Airy-S Moving-Coil Cartridge, $2,895
Emotive
Sira-LE Preamplifier, $9,995
Caeli-LE Mono Amplifiers, $20,995/pair
www.emotiveaudio.com
Maya Horn
Loudspeaker
$16,000/pair
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