Kaiser’s Microperforated Tweeter Waveguide
Kaiser Acoustics’ familiar Minal flagship model (€150,000) sported a new and very clever tweeter. Built in-house, the AMT design is horn loaded by a deep and carefully sculpted, aluminium waveguide. But look closer and you’ll see that the surface of the waveguide is punctured by hundreds of tiny perforations. In a move drawn straight from the company’s experience in architectural acoustics, the precision drilled cavities are the result of five-axis CNC machining and act as tiny Helmholtz resonators, gripping the airflow, calming and controlling the dispersion. The results were certainly superb, the speaker demonstrating astonishing air and transparency, uninhibited dynamic response and remarkable yet utterly unforced presence. Kaiser are definitely onto something here and it will be fascinating to see whether it finds its way into more affordable models.
Acouplex ReFract damping plates for CH Precision components
The ever-inventive folks at Music Works, home of the intriguing Acouplex material, turned up at the show with a number of new products and accessories, including washers to fit under the locking collars/caps on the outrigger feet or cones on Peak, Vienna Acoustics and presumably other speaker brands. They also showed some new, as yet un-named but highly effective cable props (these aren’t lifters – you use only one or maybe two per cable). But by far the most interesting and impressive product was the ReFract, an hour-glass shaped panel whose four conical feet (shaped almost like the studs on a traditional football or soccer boot) engage with the tops of the wells that contain the levelling spikes on the CH components. The screw in cones can be precisely adjusted to ensure a stable, solid fit, so that the damping plate not only stops resonance in the unsupported vertical tubes, it couples via them, directly to the mechanical ground plane provided by the chassis bottom plate.
The results are as musically impressive as they are simple to demonstrate: listen, remove ReFracts, listen again, replace Refracts, listen again. The improvement demonstrated to us was as obvious as it was worthwhile. Playing Víkingur Ólafsson’s Debussy-Rameau, the ReFracts delivered weight, substance and sonority to the piano, focus and dimensionality, better dynamic steps, shadings and musical flow. It simply sounded like a better pianist playing a much better instrument. Subsequent discs played on the ReFract-equipped D1.5 CD/SACD player proved just as engaging and these look like a serious and simple upgrade for any CH owner.
Each ReFract costs £825 (inc tax) plus feet: you can choose between studs, pucks or the various Acouplex cones. Together, you should probably figure on a combined cost of around £1000 per CH box. Not cheap, but hard to forego once you’ve heard what they do…
KL Audio Turntable and Tonearm
KLAudio was playing its new magnetic bearing and direct drive turntable, a product that positively oozed engineering and technology from every crevice. As the name implies, the platter floats on permanent magnets, so there is no thrust bearing (with its associated noise), and is driven by a direct drive motor. Look through the glass topped platter and you see illuminated blue liquid that swirls as the table starts up and is claimed to provide speed stabilization – the ultimate in fluid damping? But the most impressive feature was the KLAudio arm that uses a pivoting headshell to provide tangential tracking, using laser sighting to ensure correct tangency. Built in Seattle, the table is available in two versions—an automatic clamping version that flattens the disc at both center and periphery, auto adjusting to precise disc diameter ($50,000); and a non-clamping version ($38,000). Given the fit, finish, engineering and sheer complexity of the ‘table and ‘arm, the price is surprisingly affordable, while at least half the fun was in watching the the arm pivot and glide on its bearings to maintain that laser regulated tangent.
