LATEST ADDITIONS

MBL had some great sound in their room. Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" left me with goose bumps and Leonard Cohen's baritone vibrated through my being. While a playing of the "1812 Overture" was meant to highlight the dynamic abilities of the system (the demonstration only partially succeeded in this), I still find that these big speakers are at their best with more minimalist music, imparting the human voice, that violin of the gods, with a sweetness and believability that is rarely captured.

The system, composed of the MBL Reference line speakers mbl 101E ($46,900 / pr) and monoblock mbls 9011 amps ($73,200 / pr), mbl 6010 preamp ($19,000), mbl 1621 transport ($19,000) and mbl 1611 dac ($21,000), all run with Tara Omega speaker cables ($10K/pr) and Tara Zero digital cable ($6,000) and Zero interconnects ($14,000 / pair). And you need a couple of pair of interconnects too, so this stuff starts to add up big time. You do the math. If I had this kind of money, I'd pay off my mortgage first.

Late Thursday I made it over to Sony's Blu-ray demo theater display, where I was treated to the most extensive Blu-ray demo I've yet seen. Sony had a demo BD that was put together to show off not only clips from many popular films (<I>Spider-Man 2</I>, <I>Chronicles of Narnia</I> and the digitally animated <I>Chicken Little</I> among others) but also the first look at BD's dynamic interactivity.

Every show we're fated to be teased with a product that isn't sold here in the U.S. These Onkyo D-312E two way stand-mounted speakers, auditioned with the new Onkyo amp and CD player discussed below, impressed me with their lively but not technicolored presentation, at least as heard from a location in the back of a crowed press conference. I hope to get another listen. But they are, as of now, available only in Japan and Europe. Rated at 200W power handling courtesy of a 65mm voice coil on its woofer. The ring tweeter appears to be the same unit used inb the D-TK10, below.