Introduction
Mark Schifter, President of AV123, hosted a small
conference outside of Denver, Colorado to show their new products. One
hundred invited
guests were present, including representatives of magazines such as
Secrets.
Mark demonstrated several new speakers, such as the RS1000 illustrated in
the photo below. The
RS1000 will be sold at $2,800/pair. They are tall floor-standers with one
tweeter, one upper midrange, four lower midrange, and a side-firing
subwoofer.
The complete system of seven speakers, which
includes the RS1000s for the mains, RSC-200 center, and other floor-standers
for the rear surrounds and side surrounds, is $4,500 (the subwoofers are
additional). The sound was quite spectacular. Smooth and involving rather
than drawing attention to the speakers.
Mark Schifter presented the new products, along with
his staff, to the group in a large main room. The hotel was not overjoyed
when a light bulb exploded because the sound was so intense. 200 watts x 7
can really shake things up.
One of the more exciting introductions was the Emotiva DMC-1 SSP and Emotiva MPS-1 7x200 watt power amplifier,
shown below.
You can purchase them separately, or as a package for $3,995.
The DMC-1 outputs 7.1 and will handle all modern
codecs. There are eight XLR outputs, including four subwoofer outputs.
The MPS-1 is modular, and each module has its own
individual power supply. Mark Schifter is seen below, holding one of the 17
pound modules. So, 7 x 17 = 119 pounds, plus the weight of the chassis, is
about 130 pounds of power amplifier at less than $2,000 for seven channels at
200 watts into 8 Ohms for each channel.
AV123 also introduced the R-DES, which is a digital
subwoofer EQ unit that goes between the sub-out on your SSP and the RCA input on
your powered subwoofer. The unit is very small and interfaces by USB to your laptop, where you can
set the four-band EQ parameters for frequency of each band, number of dB of gain or
reduction for each band, and Q (width of each band). Then you load the data into your
R-DES box via USB. The box has four memories for individual EQ settings that
you activate from buttons on the front. That way, you can have EQ for
different sitting positions in your home theater. Here is a screenshot of
the EQ page, with settings for a subwoofer in use at the show.
If you remember the room
peaks at 35 Hz, 60 Hz, and 80 Hz for the
subwoofer I reviewed recently, you
can lower those peaks with the R-DES. Below is a screenshot of the EQ page
with appropriate settings for that subwoofer.
MSRP of the unit will be $399. Shown
below is Dave Tremblay, of AV123, demonstrating the unit (aluminum box in
bottom right corner) to JJ.
A new CD player is about to be introduced, seen
below, sitting in between a Cinepro PowerLIGHT 2400 and PS Audio Power Conditioner.
The speaker in the photo below was custom designed by AV123
for a specific client. By taking the midrange and tweeter out of the main
enclosure, interactive resonance effects are minimized.
The Reference 3 floor-standing speakers were also
introduced, at an MSRP of $4,500/pair, shown below. The center and subs in
the photo were used to demonstrate the Ref 3s in a surround sound
configuration.
A close-up of the Ref 3 ribbon
super-tweeter and cone tweeter with its phase plug, can be seen below.
Here is a close-up of the center channel speaker.
Onix Rocket ELT speakers were shown in
a separate room.
The Onix SOCS system was demonstrated
in another room, shown below. SOCS is a system that corrects for a speaker's
frequency response and phase shift. The speaker is measured in an anechoic
chamber, and the data are put into software that can be downloaded to your
SOCS system. An AV123 staff member can be seen below, turning the SOCS on and
off for guests to hear the difference. The difference was very obvious, and
a definite improvement. At some point, the SOCS will include files for many
different speakers. You just download the file for your speaker model, and
away you go.
There were several nice restaurants
near the show, and below, Ron Stimpson of SVSubwoofers, along with Cindy
Johnson and JJ (taking the photo), enjoyed the local Colorado-Mex.
The last evening had a cocktail hour.
This was followed by a dinner, and JJ
got a chance to give some remarks about Mark and his new company to the
group.
- John E. Johnson, Jr. -