Von Schweikert Audio News

Visit Von Schweikert Audio at Stereophile's HE show, Hilton Hotel, NYC May 30 - June 2, Room #725.

VSA will be demonstrating a state-of-the-art five-channel music demo featuring a live master recording of the Count Basie Orchestra, recorded by Mike Pappas with the Sony DSD Professional Master Recording System. This is the same system we used at the recent CES to win "Best Sound Of The Show, awarded by Stereotimes.com, The Absolute Sound, and Jazz Times magazine.

Featured will be five - VR-5 HSE & two- VR-S/3 powered subs, driven by 400 w.p.c. Spectron digital amps.

Albert Von Schweikert, Assistant Designer Kevin Malmgren, and National Sales Manager Paul Garner will be joined by Mr. John Ulrich of Spectron in Room 725. Mr. Ulrich was the co-founder of Infinity in the 1960's and has been developing his digital amplifier technology for several decades. His personal reference speaker system is the VR-4 Gen III and used the VR-5 HSE model to great acclaim at the recent CES. He will be giving a few seminars on digital amplifier technology, so visit our room to find out more about the future of amplifier design!

Paul Garner has been developing cables and interconnects for several years, and in collaboration with Albert Von Schweikert, has designed a line of VSA Signature Ribbon Foil speaker conductors and interconnects. These new cables redefine what is possible to achieve in the art of signal transmission and must be considered groundbreaking products. With a new design theory based on the elimination of reactances caused by capacitance and inductance, the new ribbon foil cables and I/C's have transparency and neutrality not found in competing products. These new cables will be featured in Room 725 driving the VR-4 HSE speakers.

VSA is proud to announce that Albert Von Schweikert has been chosen Featured Guest Speaker at the Sony Pavilion (Stereophile Home Entertainment Show), sponsored by EgglestonWorks Audio. This one hour SACD Press Conference was arranged by Mike Saber, CEO of EgglestonWorks, and will be held at 5:00pm on Friday May 31. Sony will be using five - EgglestonWorks Andra II and the new EgglestonWorks powered subwoofer, all designed by Albert Von Schweikert, using the Sony Master Recording System and DSD master recordings of live jazz music recorded by Mike Pappas of station KUVO in Denver. Mr. Von Schweikert has arranged for Mike Pappas, John Ulrich, and Clement Perry, Editor In Chief of StereoTimes, to speak at this conference.

NEW VSA PRODUCTS

Due to the increasing popularity of S.E.T. tube amplifiers, VSA has developed two new high sensitivity speaker systems, the DB-99 and the larger DB-100. Rated at 99dB and 100dB respectively, these two new designs offer sound and technology not found in competing systems at any price. According to Wayne Donnelly of EnjoyTheMusic.com and formerly of The Absolute Sound, Fi, and Ultimate Audio, the DB-100 is one of the best speakers in the world! See his November 2001 review on the Internet at www.enjoythemusic.com.


Instead of the traditional horn loaded enclosure, the DB series uses conventional drivers to eliminate coloration and allow 3-D imaging. However, these are not common drivers but have been developed with very high sensitivity in mind. The custom Audax 6" midrange cone is made of an aerospace material called Aerogel and is extremely light yet very stiff and well damped. With a 4lb magnet and edge-wound ribbon voice coil, the driver is rated at 100dB at one watt/one meter, but specs alone don't tell the story: its speed and dynamic range is positively breathtaking and extremely natural (unlike horn midranges which often sound colored).

The treble range is reproduced sweetly by a 1" European soft dome tweeter using Ferrofluid and a short 2" horn for wave guiding. However, it is the bass range that is revolutionary. The woofers of both models are driven by a solid state "booster" amp that takes it's signal from the S.E.T. amp and amplifies the signal with 100% of the tube amp's characteristics. Mr. Donnelly stated that the bass of the DB-100 was not only extremely fast and punchy, but was completely integrated with the rest of the frequency range.

New Eggleston Andra II and FPS F1

Over the past year, VSA Consulting has been developing exciting new speaker systems for sister companies EgglestonWorks Audio of Memphis and FPS of Japan.

The Andra speaker system won Product Of The Year in 1997; Wes Phillips, formerly of Stereophile, loved the great Dynaudio drivers and cabinet design. However, the lack of a proper crossover did not allow the original model to develop its full sonic potential. Mr. Von Schweikert re-engineered the internal air- flow baffles and acoustic loading to extend the bass response almost an octave. To eliminate the former 15dB dip between 2kHz and 5kHz caused by the inter-driver phase interference, a 24dB acoustic crossover was designed to fully integrate the Morel poly mids and the exotic Esotar tweeter. Using expensive parts by Hovland, Solen, and Transparent Audio, the new Andra II is far more accurate sonically than the original, with 2dB better efficiency and far better image focus. Hear the new Andra II at the Sony Pavilion at the Stereophile Home Entertainment Show.

FPS of Japan has invented a new type of flat panel transducer with several innovations certain to cause an uproar in the Martin-Logan and Magnepan camps. Specifically, the FPS transducer has 12 motors and a rubber edge, allowing a very high dynamic range due to large excursion potential. By contrast, all other panel speakers suffer from dynamic range constriction due to clamped edges and a lack of mechanical damping at the diaphragm edges. Mr. Von Schweikert was invited to design a complete system using these new drivers, and the F1 was born. Using a new bass loading technique to acoustically amplify the bass range and a new servo-controlled semi-active crossover circuit, the F1 promises to redefine what a flat panel speaker system can offer the audiophile. See the F1 in Room #625 at the Hilton Hotel.