Why Audiotop Products should be your products of choice.

Each component, each cable or cord, each record or CD/DVD clearly performs better after it has been cleaned. Or in the words of an experienced trade editor after a test: "1. The purchase of many a component yields less in terms of sound improvement. 2. Often the purchase of new component even becomes unnecessary!"

Acapella Silvercable are the best available and state-of-the-art product on the NF-cable market. They are all carefully handcrafted. It is possible to produce cable according to customer's specifications with a maximum length of 5 m.

We need about one week for handcrafted production of a 1 m-cable. Acapella cable will always be optimized with a special burn-in-procedure. However, experienced and advanced listeners can even identify rises in qualitiy during the play-in time.

Confectioning of any kind of cable will be done according to customer's specifications. Normally we use WBT-plugs.

Attractive world class industrial design complements the finest interiors On-Wall Surround with DPC™

The Radia R-18i loudspeaker is a versatile on-wall loudspeaker that utilizes BG's patented planar ribbon technology in a completely unique way. A two-way design, this model features both a 4" woofer and a 4" passive radiator coupled with BG's patented NEO-8PDR wide band planar ribbon driver.

ANALYSIS AUDIO loudspeakers are built to extremely high standards and portray music with emotion in a way only Planar-Ribbon loudspeakers can. ANALYSIS AUDIO loudspeakers are visually stunning. Their visual impact is only surpassed by the accuracy of the music reproduction.

ANALYSIS AUDIO loudspeakers excel in tonal balance, detail retrieval, imaging and producing a sound stage of great depth, height, and width that extends well beyond the speakers. The superb tonal balance is maintained from very soft listening levels to very loud levels.

Many "box speaker" manufacturers try to emulate the outstanding virtues of Planar-Ribbon loudspeakers by using multi-driver line source arrays, narrow enclosures, tilting drivers in many different directions, and small bass drivers (less mass = more speed) only to add complexity and cost without ever achieving the coherent sound of Planar-Ribbon speaker.

ANALYSIS AUDIO loudspeaker ribbons are so transparent they disappear leaving only the music. The ultra-light bass panel membrane suspended in front of a very powerful magnet array is the only driver that can match the speed and accuracy of the ribbon driver.

New DK Designs Integrated AMP

This seems to be a very good time for less-than-wealthy audiophiles. The DK VS-1 MK 2 integrated amplifier is the third component I've encountered in the past few months that offers extraordinary value. Like the Mobile Fidelity OML-1 speakers and the Xindek integrated amp, the VS-1 MK 2 offers good looks and extremely high quality at a reasonable price.

When PFO Editor Dave Clark asked me to review the VS-1 MK 2, I had never heard of DK Design Group. I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised when I saw the amplifier. The workmanship is just fabulous, and I couldn't believe the price. My reference preamp alone cost that much! The VS-1 MK 2's dimensions are slightly odd, as it is only 9.25 inches tall, but 17 inches wide and 19 inches deep, but it looks great. The amp is fairly massive, and it weighs 82 pounds. It was a small struggle to get it into my car, and even more of a chore to get it upstairs into my listening room.

The VS-1 MK 2 looks cool, but how does it sound?

A few years back, I had the pleasure of reviewing the Gryphon Callisto 2100, and thought it was the best integrated ever. Its $5700 price was way out of my range, or it would have been on my shelf. The VS-1 MK 2 does everything the 2100 did, and more. In terms of dynamics, it positively threatens to jump off the rack. It immediately reminded me of the Callisto in this regard, but goes it one better, portraying more depth and musical dimension. This leads me to its second distinction—soundstage and imaging. The VS-1 MK 2 is the best amplifier I have heard in this regard. Ten minutes after spinning the first CD, Best of Sade, I realized my mouth was open.

My first exposure to CD sound had sent me running gratefully back to my LPs. Three or four years after that I reluctantly accepted CD as a necessary evil -- the only way to hear music that was no longer being released on vinyl. The "Perfect Sound Forever" tagline had been exposed as a joke, and designers were learning about the many factors that could affect CD sound. Many engineering types continued to assert that "bits is bits," but in listening rooms and design studios we were discovering that the mechanism that spun the disc and read those bits off the CD could make a big difference, as could the cable that carried the digital bits to the DAC, the decoding chip, etc. etc.

In this brave new millennium, digital audio/video technology has come a long way. Today's $300 CD player probably sounds better than did state-of-the-art digital components of ten years ago. And it's not just hardware; formats such as DVD and SACD that offer higher-resolution playback promise to make digital entertainment better and better. But for all that, digital sound and pictures still begin with a laser reading encoded digital information from a disc. I suspect that as long as that is the case, people will be looking for ways to improve that process, so that there will be a place for tweaks and gadgets such as the Audio Desk lathe.

Form and Function

The lathe is rectangular, approximately 10.5 x 7 x 6 (L x W x H in inches). On the front surface is a small rotary control for motor speed; on the rear panel are the IEC jack and an opening that appears to be for cooling. The hinged glass top opens to give access to a small belt-driven turntable equipped with a stabilizing disc a little smaller than a CD and a threaded bolt that screws down to hold the CD in place during operation. A pivoted lever holds the trimming blade; its handle protrudes from the front. In the left rear corner is an open compartment apparently intended to collect the polycarbonate trimmings.

Operation is straightforward. Place a disc on the turntable shiny side up. Place the stabilizer on the disc and very firmly screw down the bolt. Turn on the motor to maximum speed. Carefully move the lever until the cutting blade contacts the CD, and gradually continue moving the lever until the stop point is reached. Turn off the motor and collect and discard the trimmings. Set the motor at a moderate speed and blacken the newly trimmed edge with the supplied marker.

DAC1 Digital-to-Analog Converter

The Benchmark Media DAC1 doesn’t have the size, weight and pizzazz of a typical high-end component, but then again, the DAC1 is not a typical high-end component, even though it’s now being marketed as one. Its maker, located in Syracuse, NY, is a pro-audio company, the bulk of its products sold to studios and mastering labs.

Halcro is proud to unveil the world's only genuine high performance home theater products, Halcro Logic Super-Definition Sound & Vision range of products.

Born from a decade of high-performance two channel research & development that produced the world's finest Super-High-End amplification equipment, the Halcro Logic products have been designed for home theater connoisseurs with a genuine passion for home entertainment at the highest level possible.

Quincy Jones Becomes SLS Development Partner for Home Entertainment 'Q Line' Series
SLS International and Quincy Jones, world renowned producer, musician, arranger, composer, Grammy Award, Academy Award and Emmy Award winner, announced today that they have entered into an agreement to develop a new line of home theater products.

Mr. Jones, who's known in the music and film industry as 'Q", will co-develop a new line of high quality home theater and entertainment products for global markets under the name, "The Q Line."

* Amplitude: A speaker system used for reference monitoring must meet a +/- 1dB tolerance level;
* Phase: Consistent phase between drive units and slow rotation is desired; no out-of-phase drivers;
* Time: The drive units must be time coherent in the ear's sensitive 3ms range;
* Space: The speaker design must replicate a palpable three-dimensional sound stage with depth.