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The July Stereophile<\/I> will include my Follow-Up report on the Joseph Audio Pulsar loudspeakers; the same Pulsars Michael Fremer raved about in his full review. Before I submitted the review, Jana Dagdagan and I made a live binaural recording\/video to accompany my written report so you, the reader at home, could experience the exact same recordings in the exact same system in the same room I used to evaluate the Pulsars. Today, therefore, I will only tell you that Jeff Joseph’s floor-standing, gloss-white Perspective loudspeakers (15,990 Euros\/pair) sounded fuller, deeper, bigger, and richer<\/I>, than the stand-mounted Pulsars I reviewed.
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\nLike all Joseph show systems, this one specialized in finesse. Unfortunately, my impressions were surely and positively influenced by the high quality of sources Jeff chose for his Munich demonstrations: a Technics RS1500 open-reel tape transport feeding a custom Doshi tape-head preamplifier and a Alluxity Media One Media Server\/DAC (9500 Euros). These premium sources fed a 200Wpc Alluxity Int One integrated amplifier (7500 Euros), which sat in all its red-orange glory on some fine Danish cabinetry by Clic Furniture.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Kondo-600.jpg\")
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\nOnce upon a time . . . I represented Hiroyaso Kondo and imported to America his exquisitely handcrafted (and expensive) Audio Note amplifiers, preamplifiers, silver cables, and IO cartridges. Kondo was a metallurgist by training, and every thin wire, transformer winding, and foil-and-paper-in-oil capacitor, was made from cold-drawn, pure Italian silver. When Kondo died, I moved on, and restarted my career as a fine artist. Like I say, that was long ago.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Kondo2-600.jpg\")
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\nBut the spirit of Kondo lives on via the Zen-like diligence of his well-tutored successor: Masaki Ashizawa. The company name has changed from Audio Note (Japan) to simply Kondo, but the products are still dripping with pure silver, pure copper, and directly heated triodes. And . . . they have added a new, amazing-looking Kondo—a turntable. (Sorry, but there were no prices or component lists at the time of my visit.) What I heard from the system in the photo was the same transparent, liquid, ribbon-microphone tonality I loved and lived with for many years. Kondo may have passed but his love of music and the audio arts is still—very much alive.
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\nArt Dudley stalked the four MOC halls more than I, but somehow he missed the coolest, best-sounding open display of all: the Sombetzki ESL Home.
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\nThe Sombetzki brochure asks its readers to, “Experience your music in an immediacy and intensity rarely heard.” What that means is: Sombetzki’s ESL Home speaker is designed for music listening from a solitary comfortable chair within 2–3′ of their attractive, active, pole-mounted electrostatic speaker (7500 Euros\/pair). I sat, I closed my eyes, and I listened carefully and enjoyably to what seemed like exquisite sounds. But the MOC hall was very noisy. I kept wishing for a quiet dark room, and some ambient nature recordings, featuring, birds, bees, and the voice of Bridget Bardot.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Voxitive-600.jpg\")
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\nEarlier in my coverage, I mentioned that when I die, I’d be happy if I could just take my Falcon LS3\/5a speakers to wherever I’m going on the other side. But while I still live, I believe I could visit heaven if only I could listen, late at night, in my own candle lit room, to the Voxativ Arpeggio X loudspeakers with Voxativ’s full range 8″ AC-XP field-coil drivers, which feature: leather surrounds, wooden cones, and N1 power supply. Total cost: around 76,000 Euros\/pair.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Voxitive4-600.jpg\")
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\nLet me clarify what heaven on earth must look like: super-sensitive, full-range wooden-cone drivers, with natural leather surrounds, and electro-dynamic (field-coil) magnets. Why wood and leather pistons? Because they don’t sound like, plastic, Kevlar, ceramic, or aluminum. Why electro-dynamic magnets? Because ferrite magnets sound brittle and grainy like cinders.
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\nI am not joking. The Voxativ audio aesthetic perfectly suits my taste in home music reproduction. If I had the space in my bunker, and I had any<\/I> cash in my bank (I am broke and overdrawn as I type this), I would hunker down nightly and let Voxativ’s fast, rich, transparent sound take me to them Pearly Gates.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Voxitive2-600.jpg\")
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\nAnd guess what I discovered? Those pearly gates are illuminated by the bright 211 triode-tube emitters of Voxitiv’s T-211 integrated amplifier (16,600 Euros). I am ready Father—take me now!
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\nRaidho loudspeakers are way more Apollonian (left brain) than the mostly Dionysian (right brain) hornspeakers I’ve been describing. In fact Raidho’s super-tall, super-slender, nine-driver TD-4.8s sounded more precisely drawn tantalum-ceramic-diamond–drivered than ever. These speakers image like laser-guided weapons and move like sub-atomic particles. A few times the TD-4.8s’ transient speed made me jump in my seat. Therefore, if your brain favors its left side, and you have the high-resolution music files to prove it, then Raidho’s diamond drivers and slender towers are waiting for your admiration.
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\n![](\"\/images\/051218-Engstrom_Arne-600.jpg\")
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\nI described the sound in one of Living Voice’s rooms in an earlier report. Their second room featured the less expensive (450,000Euros\/pair vs<\/I> 750,000 Euros\/pair) Vox Palladian & Palladian Basso loudspeakers (in European Walnut laid to a sunburst motif). Integrated amps are big and fashionable this year and the Vox Palladians played extra-smooth and extra-effortlessly, powered by the Engstrom’s new 300B Arne integrated amplifier (30,000 Euros). Both Living Voice rooms employed the hyper-musical canary LV CD300 player (6525 Euros) and a Living Voice G2 equipment table (12,528 Euros).
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\nHow did the sound in the two Living Voice rooms compare? Of course the Vox Olympian room was a bit more lusty and sensuous. It played big orchestral music with a fuller, more-developed set of harmonics. Vocals came from more real flesh-and-blood humans. But! Both rooms were at the top-of-the-top of what’s possible in hi-fi today. Coupled to the Vox Palladians, the Engstrom Arne 300B tube integrated proved itself to be a generous sensuous animating force. <\/p>\n
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