Originally Posted by
DavidF
Hi Dan. Good to know someone else among this group was there. I could not spend the enough time up there as I wanted to this year.
Linn’s company has been around for a while. The operations moved to Oakland CA sometime recently from the east coast. He favors high efficiency designs and compression driver top ends. His forte had been huge 7 foot dual woofer designs. This single woofer model was probably an attempt to get some sales in a smaller format market. Can be pricey.
The Burwell family are all really great audio enthusiasts. Fun to talk to and sincere folks. The systems are expensive at $60-80,000. They look around for vintage drivers and hand-craft their own horns and cabinets. Way out of my range for me to consider on price, plus, I just don’t care for the rolled off bass of the A-7 style configuration. I agree they are soft in the treble but they have some valid reasons for not trying to plug in a small ultra-high driver. Much smoother and balanced than any Altec I have heard.
Lot’s of special 2-way speaker systems on display for this show. From Fritz speakers on the low end to Wilson Duette II, Audio Note and YG Carmel at the upper end.
The Wilson actually got a WOW reaction out of me. The room was moderate sized conference room but what I first noticed was the up-against-the-wall position. Second was the punch, power and clarity from an 8 inch two-way playing Stevie Ray Vaughn at an appropriately high sound level. Wilson designed the system for near-wall positioning. Soundstage and imaging did not appear to suffer. Expensive at $20kor a little less but a first class choice for dynamic, clear sound in a small package that does not have to placed out in the actual living space of a living room.