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SoundStage.com
Lamm's updated ML1.1
monoblocks ($22,690/pair) were on static display, the mighty
ML2s driving a pair of Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy 7 speakers.
http://www.shows.soundstagelive.com/shows/ces2003/dly_jan09.shtml
UltraAudio.com
The next stop proved
there is more than one way to float the boat. Lamm Industries
showed off their ML2 amplifier and L2 preamp to
great effect. Lamm coupled them with some enormous vintage horn
speakers, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on vinyl
washed over me with grace and beauty, causing me to re-evaluate
my aversion to tube- and horn-based systems. American Sound
constructed the turntable, a prototype, from blocks of solid
steel. Despite its compact dimensions the base alone weighs in
at 400 pounds!
http://www.ultraaudio.com/features.shtml
EnjoyTheMusic.com
THE EXPO 2003 and
WCES'2003
Pre-show report
Lamm Industries
has setup at both the CES and T.H.E. Show to proudly display
their products including one with the original Vitavox corner
horns model CN191 driven by the Lamm single-ended ML2
amplifiers. Another setup will feature the original Siemens
Bionor loudspeakers driven by a pair of the Lamm Industries
ML2s. Both T.H.E. Show setups will use the American Sound
turntable model AS-1000X with the SME model 3012-R pick-up arms
as a source. Lamm's CES rooms will have the critically acclaimed
Wilson Audio Watt/Puppy 7 loudspeakers while the other room has
Kharma's Ceramique Reference Monitors.
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/ces2003/preshow/
Show report
Going
vintage are some Klangfilm Seimens Bionor hornspeakers from
January 1960. Still mighty fine sounding decades later.
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/theexpo2003/thursday/
OK, so it isn’t a commercial product, but the Siemens
Bionor horn loaded cinema speaker made by Klangfilm in Germany
and dating back circa 1960 was for me a fantastic experience.
Kudos to LAMM Industries Vladimir Lamm and distributor David
Carmeli for going to a lot of trouble in order to display one of
the greatest speakers of all time. Visitors were treated to
glorious horn sound with stupendous dynamics and unbelievably
tactile voicing. Relative to a modern audiophile favorite such
as the Wilson Audio Grand Slam, the Bionor is of course a
different “cup of tea,” but if I had the room and could find
a pair, that’s what I’d be drinking.
Associated equipment included the LAMM ML2 power amplifiers
and L2 Reference preamp. The LAMM LP2 phono preamp and American
Sound turntable fitted with a SME 3012-R tonearm comprised the
analog front end. The Weiss Medea DAC and CEC transport made up
the digital front end.
Dick Olsher
www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0303/olsher/
One
of the biggest rooms at
T.H.E. Show housed the Most Outrageous
Loudspeakers, namely the eye-popping Siemens flat-front horn
theater loudspeakers, powered by Lamm electronics sporting the
tri-tipped 6C33C vacuum tube. These were rare, original
1960 speakers with about a 6-by-8-foot frontal area. The
sound was quite enjoyable, and it was fun to watch the reaction
of Clark Johnsen and many others to both the appearance and
sound quality of these honking big mothers. Pictured [is]
Vladimir Lamm.
Dave Glackin
www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0303/glackin/page2.htm
The Lamm room had their
ML1.1 ($22,690, front
left) 90-watt monoblock amplifier. Cabling for the system
consisted of the Stereovox SEI.
www.enjoythemusic.com/ces2003/saturday/
The
Absolute Sound
LAMM Industries
replaces the ML1 with the ML1.1 at $22,690. The
user-friendly changes include a simplified procedure for idle
current adjustment and balancing the output tubes, and a
top-mount fuse holder for easier replacement. Other
incremental changes are modified transformer and improved
speaker posts.
[The Absolute
Sound, issue 141 April/May 2003, page 57]
The
Audiophile Voice
At the
last hour I ran into Vladimir Lamm, the creator of
the famous amplifiers by Lamm Industries.
Since I was way behind schedule, I was in a
hurry. Luckily for me, he would not have any
of that. He politely guided me into the sweet
spot, and had me sit and prepare to listen. At
that point, knowing Vladimir, I realized I was in
for a treat.
He put
on an old Connoisseur Society LP of Ivan Moravec
doing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and he had
me. Captivated, amazed, and intrigued.
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.
How
come? You see, I was listening to 42-year-old
speakers! They were the Siemens Bionor
Loudspeakers. A two-way system, it consisted
of a horn-loaded mid-range and tweeter unit and a
horn-loaded cone woofer. Not too
unusual...except that each side was seven feet high,
a good 10 feet wide and at least five feet deep
right behind the drivers.
What was
bothering me was that I was listening to a decades
old product and I was absorbed and involved. I
had really expected that much more progress had
taken place in the intervening years. It also
occurred to me that, given the progress in
amplification and playback, the designers of this
speaker probably never got to appreciate just how
great their accomplishment really is.
[Arnis
Balgalvis, The Audiophile Voice, Vo. 9/issue 2, page
18]
AudioAsylum.com
Jeff
Day (A)
on January 12, 2003 - CES'2003 show impressions
You might
be wondering what speaker stood at the very top of my
personal podium at this years show. For my tastes it
was the vintage 1960’s Siemens horns in the Lamm
(http://www.lammindustries.com) room hands down. These
big horns were about ten feet tall and fifteen feet
wide each! There are a lot of small auditoriums that
don’t have that kind of stage width! They had two
12” or 15” (not sure) drivers in each bass horn,
paired with a mid-range / tweeter horn to cover the
rest. They are a smaller version of the horns they
used behind the screens in movie theaters back when,
scaled down to fit in a home – a big home at that.
They were discovered in Japan by David, purchased at a
moments listen to just one of the speaker’s bass
horn, and then taken apart and shipped over from Japan
and set up for the show with a dedicated room which
was specially built into a San Remo conference room to
demo them to the show goers lucky enough to come into
the room. The planned Vitavox corner horns they were
going to use remained in a corner unheard. Maybe next
year huh guys? Nothing in the speakers has been
altered from their original manufacture, and with the
Lamm gear they were absolutely stunning and played
music better than any other system I have ever heard.
The tonality was so natural and true to life it was
enough to make a person weep and I nearly did—my
eyes literally teared up listening to the majestic
beauty of the big Siemens. Witnessing these Siemens
speakers tells me that speaker building hasn’t
advanced at all since 1960, in fact if you consider
most speakers it has regressed considerably. Even
Terry Cain, who makes extraordinary horn speakers,
told me at Bob Crump’s after hour’s AA party that
he thought the big Siemens were the best sound of the
show. That’s extremely high praise coming from the
normally reserved Terry, and he knows his stuff. I
just want to say thanks to David and Mario for making
it possible to hear these musical monsters, it was
truly a Herculean effort to build a room and assemble
the Siemens in them. The trip to CES was worth it just
to see these speakers. Wow! If anyone was to make
modern versions of these things, and you had the room
to put them in (I don’t), I can’t imagine you
would ever leave the house again. Hey, maybe the CAR
guys or Terry Cain would like to take a crack at a
reproduction? They’re probably the only ones in the
USA that would have a chance of pulling it off. Whew!
I am totally blown away! I ran into David and Mario in
the coffee shop of the San Remo on the way out to
catch a plane on Saturday and they invited me to New
York to do some more listening. New York’s a long
ways from Washington State but it would be worth it to
hear these amazing speakers again!
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/250263.html
Edp
(A)
on January 14, 2003 at 12:09:00 - CES - Hits and
Off Targets
Hit -
Lamm Seimens Bionor
The complete opposite of the
Halcro/Wilson. Ease,
emotive, technically flawed,
audiophile gymnastics deficient, but it played music
that had the ability to connect with the
listener instantaneously. Could it do
DynoStomp/Organ
pipe bass - nope. Could it do
the SACD 30Khz zing - nope. Could it present a
realistic sized concert grand piano with
tonal consistency across the entire scale - yep. Could
it full output without
compression/clip of a Soprano aria - yep. Could it do
a Ellington big band live rendition
of A Train with the full sized presentation imaging,
not the scaled down micro sized razor
thin version, - yep. Could it make you forget about
stereo and multichannel, ditch it all
and go mono. yep. Great kudos need to go to the Lamm
folks for the supporting
electronics and the willingness to share the unusual
gem. To me it spoke through the
decades of speaker designers who knew something that
has either never been learned or
forgotten by many present speaker builders, myself
included.
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/250641.html
justacoder
(D)
on January 18, 2003 at 02:51:33
Lamm/Wilson
room - Alexis Park
Lamm ML2 (sometimes) and Lamm ML1 (other times), L2
preamp, Stereovox cables, CEC transport, DCS
upsampler,
Wilson Watt/Puppy 7s. Surprise. The Wilsons
sounding... musical? Very. The 7's are known to be a
definite improvment over the 6's, by which it is
usually meant that they have all the positive
attributes of the 'Wilson sound' and won't bite your
ears off. In the Lamm room they sounded very nice -
perhaps a little tame, missing a little bit of the
Wilson slam and effusive detail, but keeping that
Wilson refinement and putting the whole package to
good use: making music. Neli says: "Lamms made
the Wilsons sound
gOOOooooOOOOd!".
Lamm/Klangfilm
Bionor ballroom-sized horn
speakers
Lamm ML2, L2, CEC transport, American Sound turntable
. These speakers are each approximately 10 feet wide
by 8 feet tall. What can we say: huge sound, able to
render big band sound in a realistic size and
seperation. Very real and powerful with an ease that I
had not heard before. But, I do not know what Neli was
thinking but what I was really thinking was that this
looked like it came out of an old movie theater and
that if we had a room big enough in our house, I could
put these speakers along the front wall, put a front
projection video screen between them, and recreate
Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Miles Davis on demand. OK,
it was the last day of the show and I was tired. I
thought it really showed a love of the hobby for these
people to go to the trouble to bring in these HUGE
speakers (they had to disassemble part of the external
wall just to get them, still in many pieces, into the
room), pay for a room to set them up in, and play
tunes so that we can all share this experience.
Best of
Shows:
Lamm room: Lamm
ML2/ML1 amplifier, L2 preamp, CEC transport, DCS
upsampler, Wilson Watt/Puppy 7, Stereovox cables
Kharma room: Lamm ML2 amplifier, L2 preamp, CEC
transport, DCS upsampler, Kharma 3.2 speaker and
cables
Honorable mentions:
Lamm/Klangfilm room: Lamm ML2
monoblocks, L2 pre, CEC
transport, DCS DAC and
upsampler, Stereovox cabling
(most awesome demonstration system)
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/251275.html
crisduro
(A)
on January 19, 2003 at 17:25:55
Lamm: with
Kharma 3.2, without doubt one of the best sounds in
all the CES. It is true that perhaps it only
diminishes to 35Hz, but for me the important thing is
not the quantity but the quality. And guys, this
systems does things very, very well. MArk:9,5/A-
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/251482.html
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M1.2
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