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Stereopal.com Visits: Lawrence in Toronto

Date: Oct 8, 2011

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A few weeks ago I casually overheard a negative comment from someone who has never participated in our activities. He said "the Stereopal.com is not actually an audiophile group, they are nothing but a bunch of drunkards who get together to eat and drink. Audio and music is not on their agenda. A true audiophile should be about how to tweak your system to get the best out of your system". My my, the person has truly been missing the point.

He is right about one thing though, we do enjoy each other's company with plenty of good wine, good food, and good music. I consider myself fortunate to have met this group of fine individuals who are generous, friendly, and knowledgeable. Audio equipment are only means to a better end, the goal is the fine reproduction of music together with its enjoyment with fine people.

New Audio Frontiers 845 Amplifier - I first heard the amplifier 3 years ago on the day it came out of the box. At the time I wasn't very impressed with the sound but experience tells me break in time was necessary. Three years later, the amp is now fully broken in. What a difference 3 years can make to the sound !!

The NAF 845 has the open airy top end of 300B amplifiers but without the lack of refinement often associated with many 211/845 amplifiers on the market. The NAF 845 is definitely one of the best sounding 845 amplifiers I have ever heard, I think of it as a 300B amp on steroids. The sound coming out of the NAF is ranked up there with the very best in my book. If I have to guess, it will probably earn it's place at the table with the Big Boys such as the Kondo Ongaku or Wavac amplifiers, but without costing the buyer an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, I don't think the day will ever come where I can heard them side by side each other.

As far as I know, this is the only NAF845 unit ever been imported into Canada.

For the evening, we played an open reel tape recording made by Edward Pong, the music lover who currently owns the cello which once belonged to Janos Starker. The live record ing was a performance made at his own mini-concert hall, with the same cello.