Were you at the Munich Hi End 2007 Show? No? But wanted to?
Us too. We had it on the calendar, flights were booked, but in the end it didn't work out this year.
Paul McGowan, however did make it. And after watching his tantalizing video of the German beer, sights, sounds, and . . . uh, beer, it's all the more painful it didn't work out.
There's always next year, care to join us?
Watch the video here.
-Jeff
Here's the video of Virtual Dynamics' presence at the Son and Image Festival in Montreal. Exactly the same as the last video we posted, sans the 14 minute presentation by Rick. For the people who appreciate less "Blah blahblah blah" in their streaming videos.
-jaems
Enjoy the Music has posted its report of the Montreal Festival Son et Image here.
Here's what they had to say about the Uniko Electronics room, demonstrating the Grand Accentus loudspeakers cabled up with Virtual Dynamics Genesis Series:
"Accentus Audio is showing their new four-way Grand Accentus SE speakers which start at $32,000 Cdn. They feature not one but two aluminum ribbons - one a tweeter and one a supertweeter, plus two 6.5" sandwich construction midrange drivers and similarly constructed 12" subwoofers. Pictured with the Grand Accentus are Ban Hoang (left) of Uniko Electronics in Edmonton and Simon Au (right) of Toronto's Audiyo. Feeding the speakers are electronics from EMM Labs and Antique Sound Labs, contributing to a powerful spacious sound in one of the largest rooms in the show."
Once again, you'll notice an obvious neglect of cabling
in show report journalism . . . but our hard work was unintentionally
rewarded with a Virtual Dynamics sign in the background!
-Jeff
Here's a taste of what show-goers got out of the Virtual Dynamics room at the Son & Image Festival in Montreal this year!
Wish you were there! (Editor's Tip: Watch Rick Schultz dancing around 12:46-53.)
-jaems
or,
b) The Laws of Physics Trump the Almighty Dollar Once Again
or,
c) A Quarter Million $$ System heard thru Jeff's Novice Ears
or,
d) Montreal Show Report Part X
Choose your own adventure! Here's one of the adventures we faced in Montreal at the audio show:
Yes, you read this right. We paired up a full harness of Virtual Dynamics Genesis Series, 1 prototype Judge Digital Interconnect, Wadia 9 Series, custom racking, and Rick Schultz'ed Luminance KST-150 amplifiers . . . with $5000 Accentus A-104SE speakers.
It gets even more interesting when you find out that we started out with the more expensive Accentus A-101SE speakers. After a day of listening we downgraded the speakers to improve the sound . . .
Here's the context. We couldn't understand why a room in such a high traffic location was still available to rent from the show. When we arrived, it made perfect sense. It's an awkward L-shape, and in one leg of the room there are 4 steps onto a stage. The electrical outlets made this stage our only option for a listening area. What started out as a good sized room, was halved by the L-shape, then restricted again by a stage. The ceiling of the stage area featured a drop-down shelf around the perimeter. You can imagine trying to deal with the acoustics (the isolated stage area trapped bass like you wouldn't believe). Fortunately, we were armed with a suitcase full of resonators. You can check out pictures of the room in our Montreal photo album to see what I'm talking about.
The more expensive A-101's were simply too large for this size and shape of room. Switching to the smaller, cheaper, A-104's brought our already great sound to a new level. In my opinion, if we could have switched to even smaller speakers, eg: monitors, or something this size, we would have experienced even more detail, micro-dynamics, and pin-point imaging. These ears always pick these attributes before room-rattling bass, 40ft sound-staging, etc.
What I learned in Montreal:
- bigger and more expensive does not equal better.
- smarts (and listening) gets you farther than $$.
- Vegetarians living at the Montreal Sheraton for a week must alternate their meals between a brie cheese sandwich and veggie pizza. Every day. For 3 meals per day.
-Jeff
First, I want to apologize for being absolutely so unavailable. Many of you I consider dear friends, and I know it may seem like I have been neglecting or ignoring you. I can say though, I have been busy with some projects that have been really exciting and I am back in to my creative groove. After the launch of our entire new cable series I felt a little overwhelmed. As a company we've worked hard on trying to educate and market the new wares, so on that subject, I want to inform you that the new series of products are not like the old. I encourage you, if you get an opportunity, try some of your old favorites again; like Master 3.0, or Revelation 2.0, you'll be delighted and I think agree, that the improvements are a little more than substantial. But that's not what I've been working on.
Lately I have been putting my efforts towards Luminance Audio and the KST-150. For those of you who don't know the history, Luminance is built upon a merging of 3 individuals. Mike Tseng is really the head of it all. Mike is one of my first Virtual Dynamics customers, and one of the most wonderful, loving people I have ever met. His generosity and his heart towards other people constantly remind me of who I want to be, and what I want to accomplish. I am proud to work under Mike. Mike had asked if I knew of an investment that might make sense in high-end audio. He was interested in getting into the business and trusted that I might know something that was worth investing in. At the time, I thought I wanted the help here at Virtual Dynamics but Mike insisted I had built it on my own, and needed to keep it to myself. He simply didn't want to have a piece of something I had deserved and had worked for. Shows the character of Mike.
However, he was interested in investing in something else, and I just happened to know of something else. A designer of amplifiers who I had come into contact with through a mutual friend, who was interested in getting back into the audio game. This gentleman, Steve Keiser, had been one of the legends of audio designing one of the most famous amplifiers to ever hit the planet, the B&K ST-140.
As time rolled on the three of us entered into an equal partnership. Steve designing a new circuit that was sure to be a modern day replica of the success story he had experienced with the 140. Out of this, the KST-150, which stands for Keiser, Schultz, and Tseng - 150 watts, was born.
So, what would cause us to want to get into a totally saturated audio amplifier market? Well, quite honestly, the same thing that caused me to launch Virtual Dynamics: the audio industry currently offers nothing like this amplifier, period. That's an unusual statement, but Steve is an unusual guy. The KST-150 is a simple, svelte pure black box. I hope that one day it will pick up that nickname; the black box. That's sort of what it is. It is an amplifier that is way ahead of its time, and completely out of its league. In the last year of having the KST-150, probably one of the simple, greatest challenges I have had, in marketing the KST-150, is that it is about $10,000 under priced for its sonic performance. People just do not expect an amplifier at $3000 to do what the KST-150 does sonically.
Why is the KST-150 so special? Well like anything else it has taken me a lot of work, and a lot of time, trying to understand the world of amplification, and I won't claim I know much. There is just too much to know. When times were simpler, I just looked at the "watts" and my buying decision could be easily made. Now I am being educated about things like slew rates, damping factors, square wave rise times, phase margins, bandwidths, dynamic headroom, and a host of other terminology used each integral in describing the actual working of an amplifier circuit. Down this road of discovery I have learned two things. Choosing an amplifier is far from easy. Actually understanding them is not simple, and they indeed are a relative to the computer.
I'm not sure what you're supposed to do on a blog, but I'm just here to communicate like I have from the beginning. I would like to save people from having to go through the incredibly difficult learning curve that I have had to go through in order to discover great audio for themselves. So am I trying to sell you a KST-150? Of course, that's the only kind thing to do! If you had a $3000 amplifier that was simply one of the best ever made, and you knew it, wouldn't you tell me?
Now, the last part of our investment in research and design has been committed to furthering the already stunning KST-150. In Montreal we will be showing a simple $3000 amplifier that has been modified into a 3 chassis beast. It has been taken from 54000 uF, to 1.2 Farad or as Jeff explained, 1.2 million microfarads. I believe this is about the largest amount of capacitance of any amplifier ever manufactured. Along with our own Speed of Light technology borrowed from the soon to be revealed Judge Series . . . our new, or soon to be, flagship audio cable for idiots like me - who want to break off connectors more than anything else in the whole wide world.
The KST-150 has had the mechanical damping face-lift that is seen in our cable technology. Using solid brass clamping foundations to solid brass feet draining every resonance we could get our hands on. This is something I've wanted to do for years, to any amplifier. Early on some of you may know through testimony I have shared before, that these are some of the first things that I started working on, and had used a Bryston 3B as one of my first projects to understand mechanical vibration in an amplifier. If you remember my testimony, I said it outplayed and out-powered the Bryston 7B's. Well this takes that mod and makes it look simple. I spent 2 days at our local machine shop hand-in-hand (maybe not exactly!) with a machinist whom I could have built me any part I wanted to stick inside the KST-150. So I did. I stuck all sorts of wonderful little gizmo's inside that amplifier. It included some audio points, but where they were not practical (and only 2 were), we devised our own method of grabbing vibration.
You will see here the circuit boards are mounted to brass columns, and the t-bar that goes through the middle pressurizes the circuit boards as stress, mechanical stress, is one of the ways to induce the movement of mechanical vibration. There's a study from Harvard that I will make available to anyone interested in how this works.
But anyway, back to the amps, we pressurized the circuit boards through this new mechanism that is directly coupled to the brass footer on the bottom of the amp. It takes the energy, vibrational energy, out of the circuit board and drains it instantly through this massive sync. The transformer is mounted directly via AVM to a second footer on the front right. Now to add twelve 1000 uF capacitors took us two chassis, in addition to the KST-150. 
These mammoth capacitors are 4" across and 8" long, and 4lbs in weight each. The caps are made by Nichicon, they are new/old stock caps that we were lucky enough to find. If you look closely, or maybe not that close, each capacitor has the logo of Wadia on the surface. Yes, this is the capacitor out of the famed power dac. However, they only used four.
Two 20 amp IEC umbilical cords feed the KST-150 from each one of these chassis. Each chassis contains Judge Series SOL for both (+) and (-) rail and the end result is something that I truly would love to share with you. We have crept our way up to an amplifier that will now sell for about $15,000 but . . . please, if you can, come to Montreal and take a listen. Partnered with the 9 Series Wadia computer, and our Genesis Series cabling, and a treat I was not supposed to publicly disclose yet, the very first Judge Series digital XLR.
Oh, cat's out of the bag! I won't say much, cause they're not much to talk about, just a 12 lb baby was born. It consists of 8 Judge Series Level 4 SOL modules, 4 gauge Linipur conductor, AVM from tip to tip, and a project that took as long and about as much money as the KST-150 mod. It is the proud creation from my head, and Daniel Jacobson's hands.
Dan is our top and most experienced builder. He is the only one who will be building a Judge Series cable for you, should you be insane enough to consider one. Come on . . . don't you want to come to Montreal??
In Denver, I sat with a room full of customers listening to one of my favorite tracks trying to hide the tears flowing down my face. Not only was the music connecting, but the sound was so obviously blessed - and I was so thankful. I feel the same way now, from the brief moment we had turning it one before we shipped it out, I personally cannot wait to show you what we have been blessed with to share with you.
