What do you do when you leave the business you helped create 30 years ago?
Dan D'Agostino, involved with Krell for three decades designing some of the most famous amplifiers, didn't take long to answer this question: he started to think of his next amplifier, the 300W mono amplifier he called the Momentum.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to listen to it as it was only on static display at the Show.
But allow me to quote Ken Kessler, in his review of the product in the July issue of HiFi News in his typical style:

"What occured was atypical. The gear arrives, I hook it up, I switch it on, I set the CD player to "repeat whole disc" and leave it to cook for a day or two. Yes, I usually have that kind of willpower. But as I was leaving the room,the bottom end of the first track on Keb' Mo's Peace (Back by Popular Demand) curled around my ankles and held me in place. With my back to the bloody system, no less, I knew, I just knew that I was in presence of something so rare, so special, that I had to stay, protracted warm-up be damned".

And this is coming from the most seasoned HiFi reviewer in the World. So go and get to your closest dealer for a listen, and if there is not one in your vicinity, then move!

Canor is not very well know in Western Europe, so it was an interesting surprise to find out that they have been developing and manufacturing high-end audio products for more than fifteen years.
CANOR is a tube specialist, the prototype of yheir first serially produced TP101 integrated tube amplifier was presented at the exhibition in Brno (Czech Republic) in April 1995, as stated on their website.
They were feeding a pair of Neilos speakers from Pascal Louvet, and fed by either their own valve CD player, or the vintage Audioanalyse Lurne turntable, a private possession of Pascal Louvet.
It was certainly a very good combination, resulting in music being played, rather than being exposed to a HiFi system.

Cabasse was having almost a static display at the show, showing only their in-ceiling and small speakers offering for the Home Cinema market.
A shame, as I had the chance to listen to a pair of Ocean, demoed by the man himself, Christophe Cabasse in Melbourne on my return. Stay tuned, as I will share a video of this event on my Interviews page soon.
Trust me, that was a real  treat!

I am happy to report that I will be covering the show officially this year for the Australian Hifi Magazine,
I feel very honoured to be the chosen one!

Here are two links to the show's website for those of you that are keen to visit:
http://www.salonhifi.com/
http://www.hautefidelite.com/flash/main.swf

Dates are October 1st & 2nd at the Pullman Rive Gauche Hotel.

One scoop: Ken Kessler will launch his new book on the history of KEF,
who will be celebrating their 50 years of designing beautiful speakers and will introduce the "Blade"

Some of the French brands already registered to exhibit:
Atohm
BC Acoustique
Cabasse
Elipson
JMB Acoustique
Leedh
Micromega
Pierre Riffaud
Soledge
Vismes
Waterfall Audio

See you there!
Or stay tuned for more news on this blog...

Lucky boys and girls, you are getting another post from me this week!
Here is a copy of a press release from Cabasse:
International Dynamics Australasia (IDA) has been appointed the sole and exclusive distributor in Australia for Cabasse. ‘Cabasse has a rich history of innovation and excellence as a loudspeaker manufacturer, and a wide range of lifestyle, conventional and custom speaker products in multiple price categories,' said Michael Thornton-Smith, of International Dynamics. ‘We're both excited and proud about being appointed as the new Australasian distributor. Founded 1950 by George Cabasse, the brand has developed to represent great technological innovation and impressive acoustic performances as a result of extensive experimental research and the endless possibilities enabled by the fact that the company is one of the few that manufactures its own drivers, in-house.' Thornton-Smith told Australian Hi-Fi Magazine that International Dynamics will be distributing the entry-level Oceo, mid-level Idea and high-end Artis lines. Availability and pricing will be announced later this year. For further information, please contact Cabasse at International Dynamics Pictured in previous post: The Cabasse ‘La Sphere' is a four-way active design using a 25mm dome diaphragm to reproduce frequencies between 4–25kHz, a 127mm P2C ring radiator for the 800Hz–4kHz range, a 203mm ‘duocell ring' that handles 150–800Hz and a 558mm bass driver for low frequencies (20–150Hz). The crossover is a DSP type, using a Sharc Analog Devices 32-bit floating point processor. The crossover slopes are variable around the points at 24–70dB/octave.
NOTE from French Vintage HiFi:
And if you buy a pair of Spheres, George Cabasse own's son, Christophe will come to your place and do the tuning for your room.
Hopefully, he will bring a good bottle of French red wine or Champagne with him...
Can't wait to go to Melbourne for a listening session (that should happen mid-April...) Stay tuned!

Let's start the year - late for sure - but with a bang!
If you had the chance to meet Georges Cabasse, the man would have left an indelebile impression on you.
First because he was a very big man physically, but also because you could not ignore his presence in the room, nor could you not not have an opinion on his designs.
The Sphere, launched 4 years ago, and its little sister the Ocean launched in October last year are the latest incarnations of Cabasse revolutionary ideas about speaker design. They have been at it for 60 years!
Somebody has tagged this latest incarnation of the "pulsating sphere" as the UFO of French HiFi.
They look more like "Big Brother" to me and I would have a difficult time living with them at home, but one has to admire the work and research behind these massive speakers.
These two speakers share the same medium and treble three-way coaxial assembly, the Sphere is equipped with a 55cm (yes, you read it properly...and that's 22" for the non metrics of you) woofer and the Ocean with only (!) a 38cm one.
The digital filter for the Ocean separates the signal in four bands with 175, 1830 and 4500Hz cut off frequencies and 150Hz, 800Hz, and 4kHz for the Sphere.
One thing to be noted though is that even if you take into consideration the 15 years of research behind these speakers, at 176K$ and 110K$, these are a lot cheaper than the Grand Utopia from Focal.
I missed out on listening to these speakers in Paris, as time was too short to get to the venue where they were presented during the Paris HiFi Show.
But I did hear the first incarnation of that technology, the Baltic, a number of years ago.
It used a simplified two-way the medium-treble unit and a DuoCell 21 cm for the bass.
Now, I am very familiar with this woofer, as I used a double coil version of it in my Triton subwoofer. It is probably the 21cm woofer you can find.
I used to pay 200$ for one of these wonders in 1985...Do the math with inflation and so on and you can see it is not for the faint hearted! (that's about 1000$ in today's money...).
One of the main quality of this arrangement is the time alignement and the pulse response, as well as spatial diffusion and image stability, due to the coaxial design and the spherical enclosure (we are back to Elipson, aren't we?).
If you want a good review of the Sphere, I recommend you read Stereophile: here is the link: http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/608cab/index.html
And finally, here is a photo of our Microphase Triton, a revival of the triphonic system introduced in 1985, which has been done to death by almost every single speaker manufacture ever since! (home theater, anyone???)
If anybody has one of these relatively rare systems, please get in touch via our comments link.

I will be in Paris next week-end to visit this Exhibition which is a staple on the calendar of French and some european HiFi freaks, and it has been going for over 25 years, still with the same organisers, SPAT and Jean-Marie Hubert, already at it when I was presenting our Microphase speakers in the mid-eighties!
Passion just doesn't go away that easily, and they say, you can't take the spots of a leopard!
If you happen to be there, I will love to meet with you and have a chat about the topics we discuss here and beyond.
I am also interested in buying back some Micrphase speakers, in particular the central subwoofer part of our Triton system (I will post on this product when in Paris, as I will have access to one at a friend's place...) and also, some of the active versions of the SATs, once very poular in Germany and Norway (The Norvegian Radio was a big fan!) and the quite rare black piano lacquer version.
I will be in Paris until the 22nd of October, so plenty of time to do a deal! 
I will also use some of my time to visit some of the best dealers in Paris or nearby (Denis Beau, Le Studio Hifi in Versailles, will be one of them) with the intention to report on the evolution of the most enduring French Hifi manufacturers, like Triangle, Jean-Marie Raynaud, Cabasse, Elipson, Davis, Supravox and more...
Your suggestions are welcome and I will try to fit them in.
See you in Paris!