I am pleased to announce Audio Crafters Guild has taken a room at the Lone Star Audio Fest for 2010.
With the event scheduled for May 14-16, 2010 we are admittedly late to announce our attendance. Obligations to one of our design clients took precedence, fortunately that design was completed in time allowing us to attend LSAF albeit as a Johnny-come-lately.
Considering what system to assemble for the show from my personal and R&D collection of sources, amps, and speakers I asked ‘what do attendees want to see and hear when attending a hi-fi show’? Of course the short answer is a system made up of components that ‘
sounds great and looks cool’. For those of us looking to push back the boundaries of what can be accomplished in music reproduction in the home hi-fi shows provide a great opportunity to explore alternative technologies and techniques at the present state-of-the-art. My experiences over several years are that the application of multi-amping, especially when combined with digital DSP based crossovers, is a largely overlooked path to break through the limits of conventional high-end audio system architectures. To allow Lone Star Audio Fest attendees to hear these improvements the ACG display will be actively tri-amped.
The Audio Crafters Guild LSAF demo system will feature our established line of amplifiers and the premiere of the ACG twoZ speaker and tenZ subwoofer. The twoZ is a high performance 2-way monitor specifically designed to take advantage of bi-amping. Optionally augmentation and extension of the twoZ bass will be provided by the tenZ push-pull subwoofers. Directly connected to the twoZ and tenZ drivers will be the Audio Crafters Guild 1000 series amplifiers including the 1000 Mono, 1000 Stereo, and 1000 Direct versions. Amplifier performance will be enhanced with the addition of the 1000 Energy Pack modules. The next component upstream will be the DEQX PDC-2.6P HD preamp/processor. The DSP processors in the PDC-2.6P provide 96 dB/octave crossovers with driver system specific phase correction and EQ all computed at 24 bit 96k resolutions. The DEQX’s ability to realize such a sharp cutoff yet phase correct crossover transfer function enabling the individual speaker drivers to be directly connected to the amplifiers is key to a new level of musical performance. At the front end of the system is the OPPO BDP-80 universal player allowing playback of Blu-Ray/SACD/DVD-A/CD sources.
High-end audio seems to constantly churn on controversy with proponents of various techniques at times adopting entrenched dogmatic belief systems that theirs is the one true way to musical bliss. My experience is there are several paths to high performance hi-fi each with unique trade-offs. The fun part of the laid back vibe of regional hi-fi shows like LSAF is the chance to hear and see for one’s self how each designer’s trade-offs meld together in the real world. The present ACG take on ‘sounds great and looks cool ’ uses enhanced ICEpower based amplifiers direct coupled to metal coned drivers controlled by high resolution DSP. In some quarters this represents the state-of-the-art, to others it is an affront against nature. I hope you can drop by with some of your favorite reference disks and hear for yourself!
Happy listening
Norman Tracy
Owner & Chief Designer
Audio Crafters Guild
www.audiocraftersguild.com
