1/4/2016 - NL33

I hope Y'all had a great Holiday season.

The move to Tennessee continues to be a long process, but we've made one big step in that process with the closing of the sale of our home in Maine.  Laurie and I are down in TN now, living in our 30' long camper trailer right here on the jobsite.   We're keeping very busy each day, planning and overseeing the construction of the new shop.  Here's a photo of the slab foundation and another showing the exterior block walls underway.

Business has been great lately, and I will be heading back to Maine whenever I can to build speakers and fill Klipsch Upgrade orders.  The 'old' shop remains active and useful, so there are no plans to sell it until I get the new place ready to go down in TN.  Currently, the shop is completely booked with work until June, 2016.  So if you're wanting a set of Vittoras sometime in 2016, I recommend getting your order in sooner rather than later.

Please note that there will be a small increase in price of the Vittora system, effective February 1, 2016.  Pricing will increase 3% to cover costs due to changes in the manufacturing process.  If you pay a deposit and place your order prior to 2/1/2016, I will hold the old price for you.

I brought some work with me down here to TN - building crossovers on the kitchen table as a way to get caught up on some of my workload.  For those of you who are considering the purchase of Klipsch Upgrades, I am planning to be back in Maine in mid-January and I can fill orders at that time.   I just finished up a large batch of V-Trac horns and so all of the upgrade parts are in stock and ready for shipment.

When you've got a good thing working, why change it?  The 2014 system in room 1102 garnered at least two 'Best Of Show' nods from the Audio Press, and that's no easy feat in a show as large as RMAF . . .

 . . . and with essentially the same gear as we had last year, we did it again!

Check out this show coverage!  Best Sound - Cost No Object!  From Dick Olsher of The Absolute Sound.  

Please make sure you put this in perspective - Dick Olsher has been doing this a long time, and he has heard it all over the years - and this is Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, a large show with a big selection of the best gear from all over the world.  Needless to say, we at Volti Audio, BorderPatrol, and Triode Wire Labs are very proud of this recognition.

Check out the full articles by clicking the links below for each story

"104dB sensitive, and staggeringly capable down to 25Hz, the Vittora is a slam-happy, vertigo-inducing, roller-coaster of an audio system.

The amplifier was a BorderPatrol S20 EXS ($25,750) integrated . . . 200lbs of power supply . . . 'real bass' and 'real air', in addition to the 'walk-in midrange'

This was one of three rooms where the speakers did that vanishing act.

The speakers, set up counter-intuitively along the long-wall of the hotel room and heavily toed-in, provided a single-seat sweet spot that unzipped my skull and poured in a fiery blend of awesome and 'we're all gonna die'.   Did I mention that these guys really like to turn it up?   Erhmahgerd.

This was an amazing room.   Best in Show?   Definitely one of my favorites! "

The Inimitable Scot Hull - Part-Time Audiophile

"Volti Audio's direct sales model makes this not just one of the most enjoyable and easily accommodated horn systems on the market, it's also one of the most affordable"

Roy Gregory - The AudioBeat

"Rocky Mountain Audio Fest: The Best of the Best - Even on the first day the mighty Vittora horns and the BP amp delivered a settled, relaxed sound that had all the familiar dynamics and impact but a significant extra slice of textural resolution and intimacy"

Roy Gregory - HiFi +

For those of you who don't know of Roy Gregory, he's from the UK and has been reviewing and writing about high-end audio gear for various magazines for many years.   He has a refreshingly candid style of reporting what he sees and hears at these audio shows.  He's not lawyer-phobic, politically correct or agenda-driven, and if you're on his good side, you're ok with that style.  If not, you better "Duck For Cover"!  

Roy recently reviewed the big Living Voice Vox Olympian system in his own listening room.  Read the review HERE

The Vox Olympian and other large-format horn systems like this are intriguing to me.  You can be sure that there will be a Volti Audio system of this scale sometime down the road.

Gary Dews enjoying the moment

Here's the White Board

Send Them to NC!!!
You guys are my heros!
Nice wood
Way Organic Sound!!!
Great Sound!
Sounds Great!
THE DOG'S BOLLOCKS!!
Way Too Much Fun!
THE BEST
WOW RAZOR WOW
Best Veneer ever!
Volti Rocks!!
GREAT SOUND
FABULOUS SOUND, FABULOUS WOODWORK
RMAF 2015 Hands Down Winner
Best Sound!!!
Beautiful in many ways!
Nice job
Wow! Organic

I had the lobby sign set up again this year.  This has really turned out to be a great marketing idea.  I need to come up with a different one though.

Room 1013

In room 1013, Volti teamed up with Tortuga Audio, BorderPatrol, and Triode Wire Labs to make a very nice sounding system.

The system consisted of a Music Server feeding into a BorderPatrol USB DAC, into a Tortuga Audio LDR Passive Preamp, into a BorderPatrol S20 amplifier, into the Volti Audio Alura speakers.  And of course, all connected via Triode Wire Labs cabling.

I spent very little time in this room, but the few songs I heard sounded really good, and we got good feedback on the room all weekend.   I found a few things written about this room on the internet:

"Big dose of effortless"

Rafe Arnott - Part-Time Audiophile

"Great Sound"

AV Showrooms

"If there would have been grilles covering the drivers of the Volti Audio Alura, no one would ever know that horns were directing the images on the soundstage of these gorgeous loudspeakers.   No horn honk, nothing, zip, zero, zilch.   Just invisible performers, playing music in your own personal show.

Certainly, the Tortuga LDR.3 V2 battery powered passive preamplifier using Light Dependent Resistors (LDR) had much to do with this transparency, feeding the signal to the BorderPatrol USB DAC, which features the Philips TDA 1543 chip.   No oversampling, no filtering and no buffer, the DAC is said to be as close to outputting exactly what goes in, as is possible.   Power was handled by the 18 watt BorderPatrol S10 EXD 300B based Single Ended Triode (SET).

A clean, clear signal path to high efficiency horns that demand very little movement from the drivers, keeping distortions extremely low, made this system a show stand out for me.  "

Home Theater Shack

Here's a nice show wrap-up by Scot Hull RMAF 2015 End Of The Line and Best Of Show

Photo credits - Scot Hull, Rafe Arnott, Art Dudley, and Paul Elliot - Thank you guys, I appreciate it.

It's not very often that someone in our industry does something truly different or unique.  Trust me when I tell you, if you get into this business, it isn't long before you realize that there have been dozens of brilliant people in the past who have thought of, designed, and built the very things you think you've 'discovered' to build yourself.  Bringing the idea to market and sustaining a business on these ideas is a different ballgame, but the 'idea' is usually something that's been done before - sometimes decades ago.

So it's quite something to come up with an idea/electronic circuitry/product that is truly unique in the audio industry.   Has Vinnie Rossi done it with the Lio?  Maybe.  The Lio uses a power supply that is completely different than anything I've seen or heard about before.  The Lio has two built-in Ultra Capacitor banks used as 'batteries' of sorts, to provide a completely isolated DC power supply to the unit.  One bank charges while the other is in use, providing continuous off-grid power that is as clean as it gets.

After hearing the Lio/Vittora combination at CAF this year (in an after-hours demo), Vinnie and I decided it would be a good idea to put this pair together at the New York Audio Show.

The system consisted of Vinnie's personal turntable, a Palmer, made in the UK, which sounded fantastic.  We also had a CD player and a computer server as well.  The Lio was configured with tube preamplifier, DAC and Phonostage modules, which fed into the new Vinnie Rossi VR120 amplifier.  Triode Wire Labs speaker cables connected the Lio to the Vittoras, and the end result was a best in show sound.  Please allow me to "toot my own horn" here for a bit!   :  )

Since this was a small show - about 30 rooms - and I had plenty of help running the room, I got a chance to listen to every other room at the show for at least one full song in each.  The Volti room was by far the best sounding room at the show.  

The only other room that came close was the Martin Logan/Rogue Audio room with the big ML Neolith speakers.  But even that system fell on it's face when called upon to reproduce basic rock and roll music.  Great with classical and lighter stuff, but if the system can't play something with bass and drums without losing composure, it's failing as far as I'm concerned.   Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about the Vittora system is the ability for it to handle ANYTHING you throw at it with effortless poise.  The Vittoras are perfectly capable of capturing the small nuance of a plucked string at 1/10th of a watt input, and also capable of cleanly and effortlessly hitting you in the chest with ZZ Top La Grange at 100 watts input.   We explored each extreme at the NYAS to confirm this.

We received some nice Press for this room

"Vinnie Rossi showed off his LIO modular-do-everything front end ($6,775 with DAC and phono stage at the show) and VR-120 MOSFET amplifier ($4,995).   With the Volti Audio Vittora horns, calling on the spirit of Paul Klipsch, it all made for wonderful music that impressed with the sense of space (not always easy in show conditions).   Triode Wire cables linked it all together:   while one cannot discern the sound of anything with accuracy in a quick listen, these cables are nicely made and quite affordable in high end terms.   Another room where I could have spent a lot of time if it were possible"

Rick Jensen, Enjoy The Music

"I had a lot of fun here, especially listening to the wonderful selection of premium/audiophile vinyl on the Palmer turntable, Vinnie's personal unit.   This may have been my most enjoyable room at the show.   Vocals were just sublime, as demonstrated on record after record"

Steve Marsh, 6 Moons

"Room 5007 had yet another horn speaker set up that sounded sweet, dynamic, dimensional and open.   The Volti-Audio/Vinnie-Rossi/Triode Wire Labs room"

Karl Sigman, Audiophilia

Art Dudley's Show Report

Here's the white board:

A nice email I received after the show:

Dear Greg,

I attended the show yesterday and have not yet recovered from hearing the system that you and Vinnie Rossi built.   I wrote it on the white board but I have to tell you again that it was truly and by a wide margin, the best system that I have ever heard.   Normally it takes a while to get used to a room and to start to appreciate (or hate) an unfamiliar system  . . .but not yours.   I was enraptured after two seconds and it never stopped thrilling me.   I felt guilty for hogging the sweet seat and slid over to give another guy a chance to come under the spell and he was just as thrilled as I was.  

To have a super-system that's also fun and full of soul is a dream come true and I just wanted to thank you for the experience.   I hope that some day I will be able to buy a pair because if I had the means and the space I would not wait a minute.   Meanwhile I'll spread the word among my better-heeled audio friends.

Thank's again,
John

AXPONA - Two Rooms

The next show for Volti Audio will be AXPONA in Chicago, April 15-17, 2016.  I'm bringing a new set of Vittoras finished with a beautiful Sapele Pomele veneer.  I'm building two ELF cabinets for this system, each powered by a new, higher power Marchand amplifier.   I'm teaming up with BorderPatrol Audio and Triode Wire Labs again, and I hope we will have a turntable in the room like we did last year.

This is a great place to hear the Volti Audio Vittora speaker system, setup in a large room, with some great gear connected to them.   If you've ever wanted to go hear the Vittoras, perhaps this is the time to plan a trip.

We'll also have a second room at AXPONA this year, with the Alura speakers connected to Vinnie Rossi's gear.  Another top notch Volti system worth traveling to hear.

Rocky Mountain Audio Fest

We'll be back at RMAF again, in room 1102 with BorderPatrol and Triode Wire Labs.  The show this year is October 7-9, 2016.

Those are the two shows that I know for sure we are doing.  But I am considering one or two more.  I'm considering teaming up with someone at T.H.E. Show in Newport - June 3-5, 2016.  We had a great show out in SoCal two years ago, and I've had a lot of people ask when we're coming back.  This may be the year.

I always consider doing the Capital Audio Fest every year, and most years we've been there.  Maybe again this year, but I'm not sure right now.   Stay tuned to these newsletters and/or the Volti website for more information on upcoming shows.

Finally!  Volti Audio has T-shirts for sale.  I've been asked about this for years actually, so here you go.

They are short-sleeved with the Volti logo on the front and the back as shown in the pictures below.  The color is Heather Navy and they are available in Large, XL, and 2XL.  They are Gildan G200, 100% Pre-shrunk 6.1oz Cotton shirts.

I also have a limited number of Long-Sleeved Henley shirts in Cream color (not shown), Blue and Charcoal.   These are for us big guys only though - I only have them in XL and 2XL.  Here's a list of what we have along with a couple of pictures:

Cream long-sleeved Henley shirt - One XL and one 2XL
Blue long-sleeved Henley shirt - One 2 XL
Gray long-sleeved Henley shirt - One XL and seven 2XL

Send us an email and tell us what shirt you would like.  It's $25 for any shirt, which includes shipping within the USA.  If we're shipping out of the USA, please email for a shipping quote.

Greg Roberts
www.voltiaudio.com