Live Concerts
Live concerts are my favourite part of ISSE.
 |
| Joey - lovely voice with good control and emotion |
 |
 Astor Fong - Hong Kong's version of Karen Carpenter.  |
Thank you very much for taking time off from your holiday to sing for us.
Unfortunately, I did not have the time this year to catch the other singers.
The eagerness of audiophiles to get into the Steinway room hinted that something special was going on inside.
S$320,000 price tag for the Model D but guess what ? Buy it during the show and enjoy a 10 % discount and get the home theater speakers free. I reached for one of my pockets but only found some lint. I must admire the sales representative, he made the price tag sound like it was perfectly normal for the typical audiophile.
Open baffle design. Air Motion Transformer tweeter.
The control centre. Fully active system that has room correction processing. The speakers connect to the control centre using Ethernet cable. Don't you dig all that black gloss ? Not if you are the one dusting. Not shown was the small little rotating control that reminded me very much of the Devialet remote control.
The home theater setup.
A close up of the home theater speakers. Guests were invited to feel the chassis while the home theater demo was playing at full blast. Hardly any vibration was felt.
For the 2 channel setup, the classical, jazz and vocal performances were quite good with transparency, scale and dynamics. I was not so convinced by it's rendition of Michael Jackson though.
The home theater setup impressed many with its sheer bass output. For S$ 86,000 with two subwoofers, it had better.
Clarity Group
Wisdom LS4 speakers, Playback Design and Bricasti source, Mark Levinson amplification.
This was one of the more impressive big room setups. The tonality was a bit brighter than I would have liked, but otherwise, this system had a lot going for it.
Ong Radio
Focal Stella Utopia EM
Cool blue serenity from all those meters courtesy of old uncle Mac. I spent a bit too much time looking at all those hypnotic bouncing meters and I heard a distant voice calling, "Buy me ! Buy me !".
AV One
PMC MB2 SE speakers and Burmester electronics. Power conditioning by Isotek.
The bass output slightly overpowered the room. Otherwise, this was one of my favourite large rooms. Balance was on the slightly warm and smooth side, with shocking dynamics when required. Despite the full balance, the system was highly resolving.
High End Research
Goldmund active speakers and digital source provided by EMM Labs / Meitner. Active speakers seem to be the current audiophile fashion, together with computer music and AMT / ribbon tweeters.
Coaxial input - onboard D/A conversion.
The Mid and Small Rooms
It was nice to note that this year, many of the exhibitors were getting quite good sound in the mid to small sized rooms. What was more impressive is that quite a number of them were using relatively modestly priced electronics and speakers.
Audioline
Von Schweikert speakers. The Cary Audio amp was in use when I was there. Audioline also carries KR Audio electronics.
The very beautiful Triangle ART turntable. This mesmerised many a guest when they walked into the room. One particular gentleman took many pictures at every angle imaginable.
Yamaha
Yamaha speakers paired with Accuphase amplification. The system was not in use when I was there.
Sound Affairs
Yet another active setup. James Soh of Sound Affairs has gone the route of promoting active setups using Oppo players as a source, and Adam speakers.
Music By Design
Cheng Fai and Desmond posing for a photo.
Music by Design was one of the few exhibitors that were actually using their turntable when I visited. Here, a Brinkmann table is feeding Cary electronics and a Volent speaker. I have not heard of Volent before, but the Paragon VL-2 bookshelf speakers playing sounded very impressive for the price, with scale and dynamics that belied their petite size. Interestingly, apart from the Volent, there were a number of other speakers being exhibited that were using ribbon tweeters.
Horizon Acoustics
Nola speakers with JE Audio electronics. Digital decoding was handled by the Antelope Zodiac Gold.
Nola speakers, this time fronted by Modwright and Merrill Audio electronics
A closer look at the Merrill Audio Veritas monoblocks.
KM Poon, principal of Horizon Acoustics usually puts on a good showing, and this year was no different.
Sky Audio
Acoustic Insight FocalStage speakers, driven by DA&T electronics. Source was a Windows based notebook.
Cabling was the in-house brand of Sky Audio, ATS cables. The boxes behind are DA&T mains filters connected in series.
Steve Sai did well again, with good lively performance for not too much financial outlay. The setup was tuned to be a bit midrange centric, but was otherwise quite pleasing.
Raindrop Audio
Gradient speakers paired with SOTM source and Wyred4sound amplification.
Raindrop Audio's room was one of the most balanced and pleasing setups given its relatively modest cost. Despite the Gradient speakers being positioned quite low compared to listener ear height, staging, imaging and presence were impressive.
AVP Soundcraft
I have a soft spot for Nagra equipment. Paired with Verity Audio speakers, this was a very pleasing and musical setup.
AVP's second room. I was quite taken by the performance of the Canton speakers paired with Sim Audio electronics. Despite their very competitive pricing, the Canton had a lively balance with deep low end extension that was almost subwoofer like. Definitely worth further investigation.
AV Intelligence
This setup could be sold on looks alone. The very handome Penaudio Cenya was being paired by the all singing and dancing Devialet 110 (the beautiful mirrored tile hung on the wall !). For clutter-phobes, this system is a god-send. For the uninitiated, the Devialet can play wireless from your computer, or act as a digital decoder too. Did I mention that it can handle a phono source too ?
Digital amp detractors really should listen to this. Closing my eyes, this combination was sweet and liquid.
X Audio
BMC Audio's new Pure DAC
Brodmann Acoustic speakers paired with an Enigmacoustics supertweeter. Amplification was provided by Parasound, and power conditioning by Torus.
Swee Dong Chang of X Audio
X Audio's second room was displaying an even larger Brodmann speaker, with sources from Aurender and MSB Technology. Amplification was from Octave Audio.
The two setups were pleasing and musical. My previous listening sessions with Brodmann indicate that they can be very much dependent on your musical taste, but they are great performers on classical music and vocals.
Atlas Sound & Vision
Piega speakers with Accuphase electronics.
Accuphase's new A-65 power amp utilises a digital output meter (with peak hold). Not sure about you, but give me a traditional Accuphase needle meter anyday.
This was a very pleasant setup with sweet balance, authority and speed. The solid aluminium facade Piega certainly helped here.
Electrades Audio
Spendor speakers with Sugden Electronics.
Kondo S.E. Asia
Kondo everything with Proac speakers.
I wanted to make a run for it with the Ongaku under my arm. But I don't think I would get very far given my current state of fitness.
Parting Words
Apologies for missing out some of the rooms, which were closed by the time I had covered most of the rooms.
Some of my friends had bought 2 day passes and had given some feedback on the systems on the first day. When I visited on the 2nd day, many of the systems that were reportedly underwhelming, performed much better. Either the systems had settled in, or the dealers made overnight adjustments to fine tune their setups.
