Home Entertainment 2004—Day Three

By Wes Phillips

 

May 22, 2004 — Saturday is always the crunch day at the Home Entertainment Show. There are more people in the halls, more bodies in the rooms, and more noise everywhere—and it's wonderful. People here really speak our language: audiogeek spoken here.

One of the things most frequently spoken about here is the absence of musical events during show hours, which dedicated attendees have always used to re-calibrate their ears, rest their aching feet, and reconnect with audio buddies who have wandered off on their own (footnote 1). Fortunately, the blues lunch featuring Honeyboy Edwards, courtesy of Acoustic Sounds, and the jazz lunch showcasing the Mario Rodriguez Group still serve the same function, and have been packed.

Another treat for showgoers' ears could be found in Glacier Audio's room, where Abraham Laboriel put on a master class in bass guitar technique. Laboriel is a quiet man with a gentle demeanor, but he's a monster on his instrument, caressing notes, plucking, slapping, sliding, and punctuating it all with strategic sections of rasgueado—heck, Mr. Laboriel does stuff on the bass they don't even have words for!

The kicker is that Mr. Laboriel and his accompanist, keyboard player Ron Feuer, play through Gilmore Audio Model 2 planar loudspeakers ($19,500/pair). With most loudspeakers, this would have disastrous results, especially with as percussive a player as Mr. Laboriel, but the Gilmores, with their four 12" woofers and 60" ribbon tweeter, handled the transients and overtones just fine. Actually, they threw out Mr. Laboriel's assault-rifle runs and staccato pops with unbelievable force.

We should also mention that the Gilmores sounded pretty good when playing prerecorded music, too. An MSB Technology Platinum CD player and Silver Audio cables completed the system for CD and DVD playback.

Lady luck was with us when we visited the room, because Vince Curasi was taking requests and two attendees came through with fantastic demo discs. The first was Stereophile's Record of the Month for February 1997, Theater of Voices' The Age of Cathedrals (Harmonia Mundi France HMC 907157), which floated the polyphonic vocals in the air of the large room like a cloud of warmth direct from the 13th century.

The second selection was from the Dave Holland Band's Extended Play: Live at Birdland (ECM 96702 CD), which featured Steve Nelson, the vibraphonist from Stereophile's Rendezvous CD (STPH013). The system did just as good a job of floating Nelson's vibes in the middle of a huge soundstage as it had the Theater of Voices, but it also captured the silvery flash of Nelson's note clusters as he stroked the sounds out of his metallophone. Overtone city—and it had the purity and impact of the real thing.

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