RMAF 2018: Purist Audio, Classic Audio Loudspeakers, and Atma-Sphere

I caught up to Purist Audio Design‘s Jim Aud at RMAF, where the music flowed like water and the dynamics made the angels weep. This was a great room. Of course, this was also a Classic Audio Loudspeaker room, so this was a gloriously familiar sound. And yes, those were Novacron amps — new ones, this time — from Atma-Sphere driving them, and a Kuzma turntable spinning vinyl.

Mr. Aud was showing off a brand new cable — the Diamond Revision 30th Anniversary USB. Yes, a USB cable. Their flagship offering, this cable retails for $2,000 for a 1m run. The cable features separate runs — silver for data, copper for power — with an improved dielectric and wound with a unique twist-ratio. The gold-plated connectors are all made in-house and feature some secret-sauce design elements. I now have one in-house, so I’ll get back to you on the sound quality.

Also new: the AC Power Extension Box ($2,000), a 3 receptacle/6 outlet distribution system featuring Furutech outlets and inlet, some passive filtering tech, and the internal wiring directly from their flagship power cords. The shell is aluminum and damped. It looks like a tank. Or that a tank could drive over it and not scratch it.

Also in the room was John Wolf, swinging around a giant over-hung driver for his field-coil speakers. Under-hung drivers have a real short excursion (and, therefore, less distortion), but since the field-coil has a “lock” on the voice coil, an over-hung driver maintains low distortion and can stay way tigher as it goes lower. This new woofer is going to be available on new (and old) T-1 loudspeakers. Pretty cool.

I spoke with Ralph Karsten of Atma-Sphere briefly about his upcoming Class D amp. Yes! with “continuous switching”, the new amp is “immune to shoot through” issues, with no “dead time” required. Still runs stone cold, and will be fully differential with zero feedback. Power output is expected to double as impedance halves. I don’t know about you, but this seems like a too-good-to-be-true list — I’m gonna want to hear it. And we’ll get that chance next year (knock on wood).