Volti Audio’s room at the 2020 Florida Audio Expo show-cased the company’s newest offering, the $20K/ pair Rival Special Edition hybrid horn loudspeaker. With a custom cabinet and exotic Bubinga wood veneer, it easily counted among the best-looking loudspeakers I saw at the show. I also found the Rival SE’s sound, powered by Border Patrol amplification, intoxicating. I placed it near the top of my shortlist for Best Sound at Show.
Not that a good Volti performance came as a surprise: Stereophile ’s Ken Micallef was impressed, in his 2017 review, with the ability of the Volti Audio Rival to portray music of all genres with “supreme fidelity.”1 Four years after its release, the Rival remains in Class A (Restricted Extreme LF) on Stereophile’s Recommended Components list.2
The Razzes gave a remarkably real-sounding impression of the players and the big 30th Street Studio space.
At the Florida Expo, I talked at length with Greg Roberts, Volti’s “majordomo, designer, and engineer,” as KM called him in his Rival review, about the execution of the Rival SE’s cabinets. I found fascinating his description of the painstaking process required to create the SE’s graceful curves. Roberts later contacted me about the impending launch of his newest product, the floorstanding Razz loudspeaker. Volti’s location—just a few hours from my home—made delivery of a review sample easy, an important factor in the weeks leading up to the COVID-19 crisis. Arrangements were made.
Design
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Louis in London
No jazz-centric visit to New York City is complete without a trek out to Queens. At 46th Street in Sunnyside stands the apartment building where famed cornetist Leon Bismark \"Bix\" Beiderbecke's alcoholism finally killed him in 1931.
Believing in bricks and mortar
North Carolina hi-fi dealer Audio Advice has been busy lately.
Musical Fidelity AI
In 1989, I bought my second pair of Rogers LS3/5a's from a guy on Staten Island who had them hooked up to a Musical Fidelity AI integrated amplifier.
Burmester 218
As much as I tinkered with a little crystal radio as a child and started reading stereo magazines in high school, it wasn't until my early 30s that I half-stumbled into the higher end of the hi-fi sphere.
Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature
The \"Bowers\" in the name of British manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) refers to founder John Bowers, whom I got to know fairly well before he passed in 1987.
Hegel H400
STREAMING INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle
How many times have you been told by parents and teachers that everything successful must be built on a strong foundation?
RECOMMENDED RC2024 COMPONENTS
Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable.
Paging Dr. Löfgren
It started one evening when I was killing time watching YouTube videos and stumbled across a 2017 talk given by Jonathan Carr, Lyra's brilliant cartridge designer.'
Music among the Fairchildren
Pull down the shades, find a comfortable seat, and come with me on an imaginary journey to the year 1956. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket wins reelection, the United Methodist Church begins to ordain women, and a can of Campbell's tomato soup costs 10 cents.