15 Jun 2014: Manos Kontos

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Monthly Meeting ACA Manos Kontos

Intro...

Sunday the 15th of June and this is the first summer meeting of 2014. It was a beautiful day and the mood in Manos house was absolutely great! Manos Kontos is one a low profile person characterized by his kindness and positive aura and everyone could tell it from his excellent welcome and hospitality.

We started gathering a bit late than usual and the meeting started with lot of friendly chats around Audio like every time. Audioholics as usual! Teasing and humor where at their best between member and friends that were present at the meeting.

Manos is a Tannoy owner and in his living room awaited us a very nice surprise! We had the chance to see and listen to a Vintage pair of Tannoys GRF at their first edition! Manos gave us o lot of clues on the speaker design and information during his system’s presentation.

The vintage GRF were driven by a pair of Cary single ended monoblock amplifiers controlled by a Greek passive preamplifier design of Tsakirides Devices company, the Alexander. Front end equipment was a Bauer DPS Audio turntable with DPS unipivot arm bearing a JVC Victor z1s cartridge which was driving a Trichord Dino phono stage. Digital front end was Austria’s Ayon Audio CD S5.

The System...

Loudspeakers: Tannoy GRF 1st edition
Power amplifiers: Cary Monoblocks 805 anniversary edition
Pre amplifier: Tsakirides Alexander
CD Player: Ayon CD5
Turntable: Bauer Audio DPS
Arm: Dps unipivot
Cartridge: JVC Victor z1s/Jico sas
Phono stage: Trichord Audio Dino
Power cables: Black Sand
Interconnects: Vlachos/Polakis DIY, Acoustic Revive
Speaker Cables: Vlachos/Polakis DIY

The Listening Session...

The listening session was divided in two groups of people in order to be more comfortable and better experienced for the people gathered as we were a lot like always. The program included choices of CDs and Vinyl with mostly classical recordings.

Music Program...

Charlie Mariano - Deep in a Dream, Dew Drops (CD)
The Gabor Szabo Sextet - Galatea's Guitar (CD)
Bob Marley (Vinyl)
Ella Fitzerald - My Reverie (Vinyl)

Music started and the Tannoys made their presence conspicuous. Big sound with pulse and big scene dimensions. The classical recordings were charmed by the big GRFs with the voices being presented with warmth and excellent articulation. The vintage feeling was present with the classical recording being reproduced but with strong clues of the Cary monoblocks excellent performance. The analog and digital front end proved their high class in every recording.

The turntable’s excellent trackability and performance contributed to an amazing analog recording, reproduction that was also of the same grade when the CD player took its turn. Everybody enjoyed the sessions and listening time gave its place to conversation and nice time at the balcony accompanied with very nice food and beverage preparations of Manos.