Hi-Fi In-A-Box Smoke and a pancake? Flapjack and a cigarette? No? Cigar and a waffle? No? Pipe and a crepe? Bong and a blintz? No? Amp and a DAC? The CEntrance Audiophile Desktop System combines the CEntrance DACmini™ PX DAC/Amplifier ($1,475) with their MasterClass 2504 speakers ($700) and throws in a USB cable, speaker cables and perhaps most surprising and unusual of all, a Pelican 1550 Carry Case with component-hugging padded inserts to keep your Audiophile Desktop put while in transit. This attention to practical portability kinda begs you to take the Audiophile Desktop on the road.
Paradigm Shift A2 Re-Viewed
If you read my initial review of the Paradigm Shift A2 speakers, you'd have read that I found they made too much noise on their own. Specifically, the tweeter hissed no matter what else was going on and the apparent reason for this noise level was they were run very hot—the gain level from the dedicated tweeter amp had them hissing at a level I found too distracting to enjoy. While other reviewers noted this as well, some felt it was OK. Livable. Well after my review and a few others, Paradigm decided to take another crack at this formula of gain v. noise level. And I sure am glad they did. If you liked the A2s before, you'll like them better now.
Packing 100 Watts into a desktop speaker with aluminum drivers strikes me as message in and of itself. The Paradigm Shift Atomic Atoms (A2) pack two 50W amplifiers into each cabinet so each driver gets its own dedicated power source. The A2s are sold as a single speaker but they can also be bought and played in stereo pairs which is mainly how I listened. Although I must say that the idea of a mono desktop setup did cross my mind.
I'll start by saying I've been a fan of 47 Labs designs from the first time I saw and heard the 4706 Gaincard and 4713 Flatfish. It helped that Herb Reichert wrote about the 47 Labs Gaincard (Listener, volume 5, number 2 Spring 1999) since he was a favorite writer on Hi-Fi and someone I felt I could relate to in ways that included non-Hi-Fi stuff (now that I've had an opportunity to meet Herb on a few occasions, I discovered I was righter than I knew). If a minimal design aesthetic appeals to you in a general sense, i.e. you enjoy the work of Ray and Charles Eames, Donald Judd, Ad Reinhardt, the Bauhaus, etc., then the design approach of Juni Kimura should tickle a similar fancy. Juni Kimura's quote, "Only the simplest can accomodate the most complex" adorns the 47 Labs US Distributor's home page.
I have to admit that prior to this review I didn’t know ADAM from Adam (I know you saw that coming but I couldn’t help myself). I received an email from Roger Fortier, V.P. ADAM Audio USA asking if I’d be interested in reviewing a speaker from their Multimedia line. I perused the line which includes the subject at hand, the ARTist 5 which is a larger monitor, the floor standing ARTist 6, a sub and a center channel. I selected the ARTist 3 mainly because my domain in terms of speaker reviews extends to the edges of my desk. That is until someone decides to put a USD DAC into a floorstander.
It's been rumored about for ages, played at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, but sometime in September Magnepan will begin shipping the Mini Maggie System ($1,495). It's a desktop speaker system, albeit one designed to satisfy the most demanding audiophile tastes.
Relative to the Harbeth HL-P3ES-2 speakers on my main computer rig, these things just don't compare. Well, duh! The Harbeths are powered by 150Watt class-D amps run from a serious pre-amp and DAC. The UCubes get both signal and power from the USB output of my laptop. The question is: what can you compare them to?
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