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Back on the limited home theater front, Meridian/Faroudja had a small room with both audio and video, the latter a modest flat panel display. The heart of the audio system was the new Meridian G95 ($8495), a complete processor/amp/DVD player all in one case; in other words, it's a high-end DVD AV receiver, offering five channels of 100Wpc amplification. But it does have limitations, which are rather surprising for such an expensive device. There is no DVD-Audio playback (Meridian has long been a champion of that format), and no way to get an external multichannel source into the receiver (there is no multichannel analog input and no HDMI switching to provide multichannel audio on HDMI). The only HDMI connection is the HDMI output for the internal DVD player.

The DCS Scarlatti CD player and Brinkman Balance turntable, arm and cartridge were a formidable front end in one of the Singer rooms. VTL's TL-6.5 tube preamp and TP-6.5 phonostage gently handed off the signal to a VTL Reference S-400 stereo tube amp. The big surprise for me was the speaker system at the end of this audio reproduction chain. Escalante Design's Fremont speaker had an unusual two toned finish that made me think palomino pony. The speaker was very boxy, very unconventional by modern aesthetics, but boy, this speaker was blessed with a beautiful tonal range with powerful but controlled bass. Big well designed tubes amps like the VTLs will do that.

The TAD room was definitely one of the three busiest rooms that I've seen so far during HE2007. Inside the room, TAD's director of engineering, Andrew Jones, energetically explained the inner workings of the brand new TAD R-1 speakers with concentric beryllium dome tweeters and midranges. Make sure your Visa card has around a $26,000 limit, though, before you start moving the furniture around in your room to make space for a pair.

I spent some time in the Lipinski / JVC room. Lukas Lipinski showed us a more stylized version of the L-707 speakers on custom stands that include stereo amps (either bridged and biwired or not-bridged and biamped – we're still a little confused). Tom Norton goes into more detail in his coverage below, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say, the sound from these speakers was, once again, very good, if a bit too loud.