Archive - Nuts About Hi-Fi Blog

Hello, Mimas!

About 3 years ago I had a lunch with my good friend, Jim White, owner and Chief
Design Engineer of Aesthetix. Jim asked me if I felt anything might be missing from their product line. We talked about music loving customers who are listening through home theater products instead of a real music setup with Preamps and Amps. And how many clients just want a simple, beautiful sounding, “just add speakers and source” listening system without spending a king’s ransom.

This week Jim called me with this very nice surprise. The Mimas integrated hybrid amplifier, intended for high performance audio and home cinema systems.

I feel that the Mimas amp should be a great answer to many of our customer’s desires. It will seamlessly adapt to any existing home theater system without musical compromise. And it will offer options to vinyl listeners and present an excellent value for serious music lovers.

We should be getting our prototype in our shop next week. Jim feels we should see the finished product soon. I will update as soon as we’ve had a chance to give the Mimas a listen.

Focal Kanta No. 2

We just received our first pair of Focal’s new speaker line called Kanta.
This is the first model released with more to follow later this year.
The word Kanta according to “Behind the Name” means “beauty
and desire.” According to “Wiktionary” it means “to sing.”
Immediately after unboxing these last night, it was evident that they
are indeed beautiful, and after just a short listening session (even without break in) we could tell they definitely know how to sing.

Focal is positioning the long awaited Kanta line just above their Aria line, and just below their Sopra and Utopia lines.
They share Aria’s flax or linen woofers and midrange speaker material, as well as
Sopra and Utopia’s pure beryllium tweeter and much of the internal cabinet structure technologies.

They are available in several finish combinations. Click here to check them out.

Listening Room Upgrades

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of helping two of our favorite customers dial in their listening system. We recently upgraded their speakers with a beautiful pair of Focal Sopra 3’s.

Because of the large room volume we also installed a stereo pair of JL Audio F113 subwoofers to fill up the low frequency to allow for a huge believable sound stage. We also replaced all their cabling with Nordost Heimdall 2 series.

What fun it was getting the speakers placed perfectly and then experimenting with dialing in the subwoofers. When we were done we all decided it sounded as if we were at a live concert. Thanks you two!

ListeningRoom2

A Work of Art – Our Rear Reflection Diffuser Panel

In our main listening room today, we installed a custom made rear reflection diffuser panel. The artist, Mr. Jim Armeni, has been a good friend and client of ours for several years. Jim is a true audiophile and has been experimenting with many forms of acoustic treatment. His personal listening room is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure to experience.

This sound-wave inspired panel literally transformed the rear reflections in our showroom. As many of you are aware, reflections off walls, ceilings and floors can dramatically affect the way a sound system performs.

Thank you Jim for a beautiful and well-executed addition to our room.

Kaleidescape – the Ultimate Home Movie & Concert Source

What is Kaleidescape?

Think of it as a totally uncompromised movie library which allows you to get the absolute best performance from your Home Audio/Video system.

When people purchase and stream movies off of Netflix or Amazon and others, there is no doubt they can look and sound pretty good.

Or so I thought.

We recently invited Danny from Kaleidescape to our showroom to demonstrate their new flagship line of products. He spent an hour explaining why their technology is better than anything else available today. The downfalls of streaming movies and concerts over the internet is that they require significant compression in both the sound and visuals. He made a very convincing case for why people who want the best will want to have Kaleidescape.

Later we moved to our home theater for his demo of the new Strato Player.

We watched a few minutes of a female action-movie called “Lucy” streaming on Amazon through our top of the line Roku player. Then we switched to the Kaleidescape Strato Player and cued up the same movie. It was immediately one of those “Oh my God” differences. Not just the amazing picture quality difference, but oh the sound too. I bought it on the spot and we should have it here in our showroom by Saturday for demo. I want to invite anyone who is interested in getting the very best quality from their Home Theater to please allow us to demonstrate this amazing accomplishment.

I have to warn you, you are going to want it too.