KLIAV2010 - I Like to Hear This

Of the hifi equipment on show in KLIAV 2010, there was one design idea that caught my attention. I really would like to hear this in my own system.

I think, by now, many must have heard a lot about the Manger loudspeakers demo'ed in KLIAV 2010. If you had walked into Sound Precision's room, I am sure your attention would be first drawn to the Manger speakers and your gaze would automatically be fixed on the unique design of the MSW driver. Yes, the speakers showed great promises and I would love to listen to them more extensively. But to listen to such speakers in my own system is logistically difficult (I shudder to think of the effort needed to cart the heavy speakers into my room AND then having to move my own speakers away).

I digressed actually.

The interesting design that I mentioned early was in the same Sound Precision room alright. It was the INEX amplifiers, especially the monoblocks. At one glance, I thought the INEX amplifiers were like any other, but Uncle Vic and Chan of Sound Precision explained that all was not what it seem.

Look at the photo above, the main box lying on the floor was actually just the power supply. The amplifying circuit itself was in the smaller box (at the top part of the picture) dangling from the speaker binding posts, connected via very short length of speaker cables supplied by INEX (these were as short as jumper cables used to connect the top and bottom binding posts on bi-wireable speakers). The interconnects from the pre-amp went directly into the smaller box (the cable with red colour termination). The other cable that went from the big box to the small supplied power to the amplifying circuit.

What are the advantages of such a design? I do not have the official story yet. But a design like this would save on investment in loudspeaker cables for one! There would also be no loudspeaker cables to colour the sound. The closeness of the amplifying box to the speakers would probably minimize interference and signal loss.

Sound Precision also displayed the more conventional looking INEX pre-amp. You can see that in Big E's Show Report part I.

Well, like I said, my interest was piqued. Let's see if Hifi-Unlimited could request for a demo pair to listen for ourselves.