vandersteen

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2010, held last weekend at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel, showcased the best and brightest high-end audio designs.

Hundreds of high-end manufacturers from North America, Europe, and Asia, from tiny one-person operations all the way up to industry giants like JBL were on hand. RMAF has a very different vibe than the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January--RMAF is a more grassroots affair.

Vandersteen Audio's incredible Model 7 ($45,000 per pair) features balsa wood/carbon-fiber woofer, midrange, and tweeter drivers individually hand-crafted by Richard Vandersteen himself. Each driver can take up to one day to build. The sound is more believably natural and realistic than that of any other speaker at the show. Stereo imaging was full-bodied and dimensionally convincing in ways no other speaker can match. Vandersteen speaker prices start under $1,000, and they're all made in Hanford, CA.

Vandersteen's sound just nudged past Kaiser Acoustics' stunning Kawero speakers. These slender towers are priced about the same as the Model 7, but were even more transparent and pure sounding. The made in Germany speaker's transient speed and dynamic punch were spectacular. The design is said to produce excellent sound quality in real rooms, without any acoustic treatment. Kaiser invested seven years into research and development of the Kawero speakers.

Entry-level audiophile gear from Napa Acoustic made an immediate strong impression. Their NA-208S ($199 a pair) speakers, mated with their NA-208A ($399) tube integrated, 25-watt amplifier sounded rich, with lots of detail. Napa's build quality is the best I've seen for budget-priced gear.

The best headphone sound came from the Audeze LCD-2 ($945). These full-size headphones had a huge, open sound, with effortless clarity. Audeze has a hit on its hands, and its customer waiting list is currently running to four weeks! I hope to get a pair for review soon. The LCD-2 was plugged into Red Wine's Isabellina HPA headphone amplifier, but the headphone can also work with iPods.

I had a great chat with headphone guru and Head-Fi founder Jude Mansilla about the future of high-end audio. Our conclusion: today's younger headphone audiophiles will be tomorrow's high-end audiophiles. That is, headphones are a great way to discover what high-end sound is all about, for a fraction of what a speaker-based high-end system would cost. Mansilla promised to introduce me to a bunch of young Head-Fi-ers, who are just starting to get into speakers. The next-generation audiophiles are an intensely passionate group of people! I'll report back soon about what they have to say. … Read more

I've been an audiophile for more than 30 years, and from where I stand there's never been a more exciting crop of high-end speakers to choose from. The goal--to make as lifelike a sounding speaker as possible--is exceedingly difficult, but that hasn't stopped a slew of very talented designers from trying. This top-10 list was created without price constraints and is presented in no particular order; the speakers are all exceptional performers (prices listed are for pairs of speakers). They are all currently available models, but I will soon do another top-10 list of the best speakers of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.

I did the first "Top 10 greatest audiophile speakers" blog post last year, with a self-imposed price limit of $3,500 per pair (two were under $1,000). Most models are still available, so if you're looking for affordable options, please refer to that list. All of the companies on today's list offer less expensive models.

Hansen Audio Prince V2. This speaker's handsome curves and strong physical presence demands respect--it all but shouts "this is very serious audiophilia"--it's made for those rare souls who would appreciate a world-class speaker small enough to fit in an apartment, with floors strong enough to support the 540-pound weight of a pair of these $39,000 beauties. For my money it's better than Wilson Audio's highly regarded Watt/Puppy speaker.

Naim Ovator S-600. Britain's Naim Audio Ltd. is best known for its amplifiers and CD players, but this new speaker breaks a lot of rules and sounds less like a box speaker than anything on the planet. With super-tight bass, uninhibited dynamic punch, superlative midrange tone, and pure treble, the S-600 is a strong contender on a number of fronts. At $10,450 it's priced near the low-end for today's state-of-the-art speakers. Review to come.

Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference 3.5. A radical update of the Gallo Reference 3.1, with new drivers; the small, 35-inch tall floor-standing speaker projects a huge soundstage. The cast aluminum and stainless steel design feels remarkably solid. Sonically, the Reference 3.5 has the ease and poise of a much larger and more expensive speaker. At $6,000 the Reference 3.5 is the most affordable speaker on this list and offers more than a glimpse of state-of-the-art audio. Sounds great with low-power amplifiers; review to come.

B & W 802 D. Another English contender, and this one's loaded with interesting design tricks, including a synthetic diamond tweeter. The form-follows-function design is drop-dead gorgeous. B & W's top models are favored by audiophiles and recording studios. $15,000.

Wilson Audio MAXX Series 3. More than any other company Wilson Audio dominates the upper-end speaker market. Its held that position for more than 25 years, and now with this 5-foot, 7-inch-tall, 425-pound bad boy, there's no sign that reign will end anytime soon. So sure, the MAXX 3 is brute-force powerful, capable of producing "live" sound volume, in the largest rooms or mansions. That said, the MAXX 3 also plays quiet music with beguiling refinement. It's what any demanding (and wealthy) audiophile would expect a $68,000 speaker to sound like. BTW, the MAXX 3 isn't Wilson's most expensive speaker, not by a long shot. … Read more

Last year's HDTVs are yesterday's news, but great audio designs, like Vandersteen's Model 1C floor-standing speaker ($995/pair) stick around for decades.

Richard Vandersteen designs speakers for buyers who care more about sound than fashion. His stuck-in-the-1980s styling isn't a calculated stab at retro. The handsome 1C tower speaker was originally introduced in 1981 as the Model 1, and the "C" iteration debuted in 1996. No matter, it still sounds better than any speaker I've heard near the 1C's price. It's as good as it gets for under a grand.

Change for the sake of change isn't an option at Vandersteen, and that extends to bucking the industry stampede to move production offshore. Vandersteen still builds all of his speakers in Hanford, California, and every speaker is tested and measured in the factory's anechoic chamber. That's commitment.

It's a two-way design featuring a 1-inch alloy dome tweeter mounted just above an 8-inch woofer. The speaker is 36 inches high and weighs 44 pounds. Build quality is absolutely superb.

As you can see from the picture, the 1C isn't a conventional "box" speaker; the baffles supporting the drivers were designed to be as small as possible to reduce the reflections that are (unfortunately) part of the sound of conventional speakers.

The audible differences between box speakers and the 1C aren't subtle, so the very first thing you'll notice about the Vandersteen sound is that it's remarkably "open" and dare I say it, it approaches the purity of some high-end panel speakers. It's simply more natural sounding than any box speaker near the 1C's price.

The Vandersteens' soundstage depth is positively addicting; the spacious image isn't just wide and deep, it's also taller than average, which adds to the believability of the sound. … Read more

Audiophiles are on a quest; we're always lusting after the perfect fill-in-the-blank (speaker, amplifier, turntable, CD player, etc).

Catch is, perfect gear wouldn't automatically make every recording sound life-like. At that point the gear wouldn't have a sound per-se; the recordings' sound would be laid bare.

I wrote "How high do you want your fi?" for the April 2009 issue of Stereophile magazine, and I'm still getting a wide range of feedback about that piece from readers and friends.

I'm defining a "perfect" hi-fi as one that's indistinguishable from the sound of live instruments. No hi-fi has ever fully recreated the sound of a symphony orchestra, jazz group, or rock 'n' roll band. Solo instruments fare better, i.e. guitars, flutes, and vocals; you can almost get a glimpse of their sounds over the best high-end systems. But a drum kit? Piano? No way!

Audio components are far from perfect, so it's no surprise their sounds aren't 100 percent convincing. As imperfect as the gear is, the recordings themselves are even further away from documenting the sound of vocals and instruments.

The age-old analog/digital divide is the least of it. The musicians do their thing, and then the microphones, their positions relative to the instruments, the skill and imagination of the engineer/producer/mastering team's use of equalization, compression, processing, etc., create the sound we hear.

Pop or rock music is rarely played by the complete band, with vocals, live in the studio. Out-of-tune singers and players are pitch-corrected, drummers' off-kilter rhythms are tweaked, there's not a lot of there there to reproduce. Most recordings are so heavily processed they could never sound real.… Read more

Over at Dvice, my buddy Michael Trei was floored by the sounds at the Vandersteen room at the Consumer Electronics show last week in Las Vegas. The company debuted its new Model Seven speakers in a $300,000 system while spinning LPs.

Richard Vandersteen told me about these new speakers last year, when he was still perfecting his balsa wood/carbon fiber "sandwich" material for tweeters and woofer drivers. It's super lightweight, which enables the driver to keep up with the music's ever changing signals better than more conventional materials, yet it's so strong, you can actually stand on a balsa/carbon cone without damaging it.

Building each driver is, at least for now, a labor-intensive process, so the Model Seven is considerably more expensive than Vandersteen's bread-and-butter models (prices start around $785 a pair. The Model Seven will sell for $45,000 a pair. Vandersteen speakers are manufactured in Hanford, Calif. … Read more