This is our newest addition to our affordable family of products…

The  Bellari VP130 is a nicely designed phono preamplifier made to equalize phono signal to a line-level signal. In other words it will enable you to hook up your turntable to your system if doesn’t have a built in phono input. Or if you are not happy with the quality of your existing phono sound it can vastly improve it.

It utilizes tube circuitry resulting in a nice warm and musical presentation. We feel it is a very impressive blend of price and performance. It also doubles as a nice headphone preamp with a 1/4 inch jack on the rear panel.

Stop in a give her a test drive.

What is most important about your Home Movie system? I think if you were to ask most people they would tell you it is being able to understand what the actors on the screen
are saying.

Focal recently introduced their new Aria line of loudspeakers with their Innovative flax midrange and woofer technology. We were immediately impressed with their ability to articulate the smallest details in music reproduction. What we have found equally amazing with their new CC900 center channel speaker, is it’s ability to allow even the quietest whisper to easily be heard. So if you are experiencing the common problem of having to crank up the volume to hear the dialog only to be blasted out during an action sequence, stop in and allow us to audition this wonderful accomplishment.

We are very pleased to add to our family of products what may be the best sounding affordable loud speakers we have yet to offer, the new Cambridge Audio Aero 6.

This speaker along with others in this series were designed by an old friend of ours, Dominic Baker,  formally of Focal.  After helping to design what are now considered by many to be the best overall loudspeakers in the world, Dominic left Focal to return home to his native England. For the the past few years he has been engaged by Cambridge Audio to create a line of speakers that truly sing yet fall well within almost any serious music lover’s budget.

Cambridge Audio is also offering a bookshelf version of these along with companion center and rear channel speakers for movie sound track enthusiasts.

We invite you to audition these in our showroom and hear what a wonderful accomplishment in value and presentation they are.

As promised, here is an update on the new Focal Aria 900 series speakers I talked about in an earlier post. We have had them in our showroom for just over two weeks now. We already have had several pair go out the door to our music loving customers.

I asked one of our good clients, Jim A., from Port Angeles to write us a a short blurb about his listening experience so far. Jim is clearly an excellent audiophile and cares deeply about his sound system. Here is what he had to say:

Transcription:

I have had the Focal Diablo. Was going to upgrade to the 1038 speakers.Then Focal came out with the new Aria 948. Glad I went to the 948. This speaker makes it sound (like) the veil of the speaker is no longer there, and makes you think the music is not coming from the speaker, so you can hear deeper into the music. It doesn’t force the music on you, it is just there. The clarity and image is impressive. The organ from Wilson Audio Magnum Opus is authentic sound, with the low bass and the details of the organ playing. On “Telegraph” from Dire Straits, Mark clears his voice at 3:31 and it sounds like a true clearing. Listening to Jane Monheit on the XRCD2 CD singing “Over the Rainbow” gets you to listen from the first note to the last note. “Deacon Blues” from Steely Dan makes you listen to the cymbals that come and go in the background, detail. Had to lower my bass on the subwoofer, otherwise I had too much bass from the 948. It is a very enjoyable speaker for its price, it out does itself.

Yesterday we received the latest generation of “affordable” FOCAL speakers called the Aria 900. Focal is a French company who always pushes the envelope to find even better ways of making their speakers. France just happens to be Europe’s main supplier of flax. Flax is used to make top-quality linen fabric which is prized by the clothing industry worldwide. For the last ten years, Focal has been working to develop high-quality drive units to fit between their Polyglass drivers and the expensive ‘W’ sandwich cones used in their high-end utopia speakers. Flax has provided the solution Focal has long been seeking, giving low mass, rigidity and self-damping properties.

Here is a little video filmed at october’s CEDIA show explaining why flax is such a perfect material for this purpose:

They are also using a redesigned tweeter in this series which is supposed to maintain an even more linear response than their previous models.

The cabinets are truly beautiful with hand rubbed lacquer or wood finishes. And the leather wrapped baffle plate is a nice touch. The new magnetic grill, which covers all the speaker components, gives it a very subtle and sleek appearance. As Adam and I were un-crating a pair in our showroom one of our favorite customers remarked that these will definitely be her next speakers.

So how do they sound? We are in the process of breaking them in and we plan to put them through their paces this weekend. Anyone interested in a new pair of speakers are welcome to join us.