“In the deep budget speaker category it has become a common practice to design them here (Canada, eh!), including drivers, but have all manufacturing done in the Orient in order to meet price points. These new Intro models from PSB are made in China, with drivers personally designed by Paul Barton. It’s still not often that you find an aluminum dome tweeter at this price, and here it’s mated with either one (LR) or two (CLR) 3 1/2″ poly-coned woofer/midrange(s)….”

“It’s been some years since the first Energy Veritas models appeared, the v1.8 and the larger v2.8. At the time these represented what designer John Tchilinguirian knew about loudspeakers, and were widely hailed for their accuracy and musicality. The former have been my reference since then, so it was of considerable interest to have the first of a new Veritas series come into my listening room…”

“An equally important contributor to the excellent sound in the new room has been the Anthem Amp 2 power amplifier. A hybrid design the Amp 2 is an attempt to combine “the musicality and finesse of vacuum tubes, with the solidity and control of solid state.” It may sound like brochure copy (probably because it is) but, based on what I’ve been hearing over the past couple of months, it rings amazingly true…”

“There’s been both misunderstanding and skepticism about the process of upsampling digital data. In recent months several DACs have appeared which do this data interpolation and bit creation, which is said to provide better sound by creating a 96-kHz/24- bit signal from a 44.1-kHz/16-bit source…”

“It seems everybody’s making very compact home theater speakers these days, and in looking at and measuring these from Paradigm, not to mention listening to them, I saw many possible configurations. Now, not many people would want to have an outdoor home theater system, especially those with neighbours, though over the years there’ve been a few people living next door…Ah, let’s not pursue that one….”

“What is Omnipolar you ask? Here’s how the Mirage design team (Ian Paisley, Andrew Welker, and Stefan Hlibowicki) put it: “Mirage research and development centers on how the ear/brain processes sound. To realistically portray a recorded sound, a loudspeaker must control both direct and reflected sound within the listening space. The reflected sound must be optimally shaped by the off axis dispersion qualities of the drivers and the form of the enclosure….”

“Passive preamplifier is a kind of oxymoron, passive devices not being able to amplify, which is perhaps why this device is described by its makers as a “passive controller”. The FT Audio LW1 switches 5 inputs, marked CD, Tuner, Video, Aux, and Tape, providing 2 output paths, with an additional switched tape out…”

“PSB has just introduced its Image series of speakers that promise “high-impact performance with a low impact on your lifestyle and on your budget”, according to their brochure. There are 10 models in the group, including a subwoofer and two centre channels. The 4T is pretty close to the middle of the group, a tower model that uses a pair of polypropylene coned 5″ woofer/mid drivers and a 1 1/2″ aluminum dome tweeter that is ferrofluid damped in a front-ported reflex enclosure…”

“The Waveform Mach Solo is a smaller version of the mighty Mach 17, with only one woofer, and a passive crossover. The 17 comes with an electronic crossover made for Waveform by Bryston, and costs $12,000. The egg midrange/tweeter module is the same in all models, though a different woofer/midrange driver is used in the MC. The Solo woofer is a 10″ treated paper cone driver with a rolled rubber surround. The crossover is a 4th order Linkwitz- Riley type (14-dB/Octave) at 575 and 1850 Hz. Low end response is said to extend to 35 Hz in a normal room…”

“The thing that sets the BC22 apart from the numerous amps at this price point is a product of its very nature. The BC22 is a broad appeal product built by a niche market company in a category where the inverse is generally the rule; a dressed down exotic rather than a gussied up generic. Whether this is better as a rule is impossible to say, but it certainly has some advantages in this case…”

“It’s almost a year since we reviewed the Reference Active/40 (Wtr 99), and I thought it would make some sense to follow up with a look at its unpowered sibling, the Studio/40. This speaker uses the same drivers, but with a passive crossover, and it doesn’t have the flexibility of level and frequency contour adjustments. However, it does have the potential of sounding better when driven by a superior amplifier to that provided in the Active/40… “

“A veteran internet merchandiser, Newform Research’s John Meyer (pronounced Mayer; he’s of Norwegian background) has been selling his speakers without any dealer network for years. He has weathered the drop-step slam dunks of the courier known as “Oops!” to sell his ribbon loudspeakers all over the world; recently the first order came in from Australia…”

“Sound Designer is the credit Steve receives on this film, and it is a technical and artistic activity, one that has interested AM since he first started making voice recordings on a Philips mono recorder in the late 50s. In the production of a film Steve Munro both makes original recordings (usually 6-track) and takes those already done and creates a context and meaning for them in the film…”

“Definitely designed to be a full range reproducer with very high dynamic capability, the Studio 100 uses a pair of 8″ polypropylene woofers with very large cast baskets, a 6 1/2″ woven Kevlar midrange, and for this second iteration of the Studio 100, a new aluminum dome tweeter identical to that used in the Active 40. All drivers are designed and made in-house, Paradigm, like API, a very vertically integrated company…”

“Perhaps it’s unfair to characterize the Totem Arro as the Kate Moss of speakers, but it is a thin little waif of a thing, with a 4 1/2″ woofer/midrange and a 1/2″ dome midrange. It’s also cute, nicely finished in rosewood, with just about the smallest footprint I’ve seen. It sits on a 7 3/4″ by 8 5/8″ base that fits spikes, and is rather tippy; I’m inclined to want to use some Bluetac to secure it to the base. The Arro should not go into houses with rambunctious children or dogs, not to forget exploratory cats…”

“Verity Audio is a Quebec City manufacturer that bases its claims to high quality loudspeakers on very fast, accurate drivers and extremely inert and solid cabinets. The Fidelio is quite heavy at close to 60 pounds. Though a single unit structure, the cabinet is in two parts joined by alternating layers of rigid and absorptive materials to keep bass energy away from the mid/treble unit on top…”

“This small monitor has been an unusual project for Mirage in that most of their flagship products are large, like the M-1si. But chief designer Ian Paisley took it upon himself to design and build a small monitor that was neither bipolar nor Omnipolar, and recruited young engineer Andrew Welker to work with him to complete the project. Both of their names are on the gold-plated plaque underneath the binding posts on the rear of each speaker…..”

“If this film stops people talking about Mon Oncle Antoine and Goin’ Down The Road as great Canadian films, then it will have served a good purpose, as far as I’m concerned. The Sweet Hereafter is probably the best Canadian film ever, and so far the highest grossing one at the box office. Atom Egoyan has woven a complex web of recollections of a school bus crash by those who survived and those whose children didn’t, as they talk to a lawyer, played by Ian Holm, who is trying to get a class action lawsuit going against the bus company. Almost entirely composed of flashbacks…”

AIG Music Reviewer Marshall Butler digs deep into the ties that bind Canada, its politics, its marketing trends, and its rock and roll darlings, The Tragically Hip.

“An infinite number of marketing consultants working on an infinite number of advertising campaigns may eventually discover all that is Canada but, they would have been better off simply asking the Tragically Hip…”

“Now something of a pioneer in consumer active speakers, Paradigm is becoming very good at it, as the listening tests showed. Engineering a speaker from a line-level input onward gives the designers control of much more of the ultimate performance than when designing a speaker to work from an amplifier output. Of course, the amplifier(s) employed must be very good, or the design will be compromised…”