Hi-Fi Road Trip: George's Place

It's always a lot of fun to gather together with friends for a little Hi-Fi listening, and Leo, Ron, and myself had a blast visiting George's Place for a little Hi-Fi fun and games. That's George's system below, with Leo, George, and Ron, left to right.

Here's a description of George's system starting with the source: For a digital front end George is using a MAC Mini with a Mach 2 Audio upgrade, an Empirical Off Ramp 4 USB converter, and an Octave Metrum NOS DAC. For volume control, George is using an Allan Flores Warpspeed Optocoupler passive volume control, and a very highly modded pair of Sophia Electric 91-01 300B mono amplifiers providing the juice to the rather amazing Hawthorne Audio Rainier loudspeakers (which I'll talk more about in a moment).

George is using a Crown XLS1000 to power the six15-inch bass augmentation drivers (called Augies). For an analog front George is using a Linn Sondek LP12 with an SME Series 3.

Look what I found in the corner! A beautiful pair of vintage McIntosh MC30 mono amplifiers! Now Leo, George, and myself all have pairs of vintage McIntosh MC30 amplifiers from Yves at Vintage Vacuum Audio (which are seriously good vintage amplifiers).

Check this amplifier out - an amp that was hand made by Dennis Had, formerly of Cary Audio.

It is even autographed!

We had a blast listening to music, and George has a record that is an absolute treasure to listen to (jazz!) called Bongos. Yes, Bongos!

Bongos comes from George's Dad's music collection, and it is a family treasure. If you are out hitting the used record stores keep an eye out for this album, if you find one you've struck the gold mine!

George's Hi-Fi sounded absolutely fantastic, and I was very impressed by his Hawthorne Audio Rainier loudspeakers (inside pair), supplemented with the Augie Tower subs (located on each side).

Look closely at those speakers - there are ten 15-inch drivers that handle the low frequencies! That's amazing! (for perspective consider that my Westminster Royal SEs have one 15-inch coaxial driver per side)

If you're looking at loudspeakers in the $50-$60K range you should check these out, as they are phenomenally good loudspeakers. If you're looking for loudspeakers in the $15K range you should also check these out, because that's about what the Rainier's sell for (not counting the Augie Tower subs).

The Rainier's and Augie's are open baffle designs that give a huge sense of space and ambience. They are crafted to an extremely high level of quality, and are a bargain at their selling price. Normally you'd pay at least $50K USD (and up) for this level of performance and quality, so they're a steal at the selling price.

In between the two 15-inch drivers on the Rainier is the mid-range/high-frequency driver, which is similar to the original Heil AMT ribbon drivers - it's impressive! The ten 15-inch drivers and the mid-range/high-frequency drivers integrate beautifully for a balanced, detailed, and incredibly spacious sound that you can only get when a system can move a lot of air.

Rear view of the the mid-range/high-frequency driver:

Here's a little blurb from the manufacturer's literature about the driver:

"This ribbon is an AMT style driver which succeeded the original Heil AMT drivers. The originator of our driver actually worked with Mr. Heil for about 7 years prior to his death in 94. Our driver has been highly refined, redesigned to work with the horn and has response down to 500 Hz in our design. This is a patented driver and is not a rebadge of any existing driver. The only thing it still shares in common with the original Heil AMT is that they both use thin film elements and arrange them in an AMT style configuration. The original Heil is basically unchanged in the last 30 years where as this driver has been updated and advanced in performance considerably relative where it started out, which for those of you that are familiar with Heil drivers ... is not too shabby a place to have come from."

Here's a closeup of the Rainier's crossover: