Forward a week. Now it was time for two shows in Rotterdam. One is a show organized by a dealer and his suppliers, the other a supplier/importer show with a special touch - a mini jazz festival. We began with the dealer show that piggybacks on the other show like the T.H.E. show does with CES. In nine rooms plus additional hallways, dealer Pluimgraaff housed some of his vendors. The emphasis was clearly on listening. The nine rooms occupied were fair in size and each could seat about fifteen to twenty people.


New in Holland was the DK Design VS1 amplifier demonstrated with a Marantz SACD player, a Basis 2000 turntable and a pair of Master Four loudspeakers. We spotted many listeners with serious and sturdy faces, quite in contrast to the happier faces in Antwerp of a week ago. Listening looked like serious work here. The same seriousness was present in another room where recording maven Jean-Marie Gijsen became the host for Van Medevoort. Jean-Marie is an engineer with Polyhymnia and responsible for various Telarc and Pentatone multi-channel SACDs. The new Van Medevoort active monitors DD5.0 provided the sound. Being relatively small, the monitors make it easy to create a multi-channel system in a standard-size room. Still, a correct setup does require a lot of space. The recording of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata with Mari Kodama proved once again that one must sit in the right spot to enjoy all of multi-channel's effects.


To be fair, we have to add that presentation makes or breaks everything, especially at a show. On the negative side of that equation, we must mention a new Dutch loudspeaker brand, Andromeda Design. Their pyramid-shaped, Accuton-outfitted loudspeaker was carelessly plunked into the room on a rag. The electronics on the floor were strewn in the middle and on top of it, the designers more interested in each other than visitors to their room. These gentlemen could learn a lot from Wim van Kraanen, Dutch importer of classy Italian lines Graaf and Zingali. He presented the visitors with a simple printed summary of what was playing in the room. That's the way we like it! This in combination with a good setup and proper voicing of the system makes visitors stay for a while. On the way home they might think about selling the car or not buying a new one to invest the money into something far more valuable instead - like a good audio set.


Just across the street from the Pluimgraaff show is the Doelen conference center and concert hall. Part of the complex is the Rotterdam Conservatory. This combination inspired organizer Tom Gosselaar to expand his concept of an audio/video event. In order to commemorate Dutch jazz pianist Pim Jacobs who played school concerts for many student classes in the seventies and eighties, Tom has added a jazz competition to the show. Young musicians from conservatories all over the country are selected by their tutors and enter the competition. A serious jury whittles the contenders down to a final selection of five who get a half hour each to prove themselves with a companion band, live on stage for an audience at the show.


Whenever there's an opportunity to hear live music, you gotta take it. Always. This year's competition -- the fifth -- was the best so far. The quality of the musicians was much higher than in years past. It was not only their playing but also their stage manners - confident, mature and with a certain experience it seemed. This also said something about the quality of the conservatory they attend.


Two of the competitors deserve special mention because of their originality. First is pianist Francesco Tussisi, originally form Italy. His trio combined modern jazz with Italian renaissance music. The result was very very special and uplifting. Let's hope we hear more from them soon. The other musician that stood out was saxophonist/clarinetist Slobodan Trkulja. He played a duet with drummer Arie den Boer. Eastern European influences from the fanfare tradition were combined with free-style drumming à la Joey Baron. The incredible control when Slobodan entered a piece in 11/8 and just as easily sped up into 15/3 (or more!) was awe-inspiring. Sometime it seemed there was more than one player on stage. Sheer fun. The winner of the competition was a young bass player who in the eyes of the jury stuck most to the traditional jazz genre which Pim Jacobs played after whom the prize was named. Winner Bart Soeters, we had to admit, was the most varied of the five competitors, alternating between duo and trio formation and even performing together with a string quartet.


The rooms around the concert hall housed electronic music-making setups. On the ground floor, loudspeakers by Italian startup Paolo Beduschi attracted attention. Positioned in a large open space, there wasn't much to say about quality but later this year, we'll have a pair for review [left].


Noteworthy was Dutch speaker builder Xanadu who introduced the new HRS33, a tall
floorstander powered by a HQSE 65 Alfi valve monoblock, another new Dutchie. Alfi stems from the Amplimo transformer factories. The sound in their large room was somewhat lean to our ears. The neighboring room saw the importer of the Austrian Ayon brand, which produces a whole chain of products from cables to amplifiers to loudspeakers. The demonstration here was based on themes. Before the show, visitors of the importer's website could cast votes for their favorite music. A half-hour selection was then played of rock or pop, classical or jazz. More eclectic listeners had to sit through many sessions to cover all genres.


Importer Eurogram's 25 years in business found themselves celebrated with a huge system in the largest room of the show. For the occasion, a Pluto turntable, KR Kronzilla and VT amplifiers and Harmonic Technology Cyberwire were connected to the new Von Schweikert VR7 SE MKII loudspeakers. The VR7s are really big and consumed all the power of the KRs to fill the room with a sound that rewarded all of Eurogram's efforts to get the equipment into the country, delivered to the show and set up expertly.


The cherry on the cake of this show was surprising to say the least. It arrived from Germany, presented by Gisela & Ralf Ballmann [below] under the name behold -- no capital B here -- as a complete digital system including a digitized turntable! This warranted some extra attention.


Ralf Ballmann is an engineer who made a name with his Ballmann network measuring and analyzing equipment working up to 6GHz. These ultra-fine laboratory-grade instruments can for instance be found at Siltech where they're used to measure transitional influences in cable-to-plug connections. In his spare time, Ballmann is keen not only on motorcycles but also music. He sought and found some investors who joined him in a new audio project. In Ralf's view, music is a cultural heritage which needs to be preserved and processed in the best possible way regardless of cost.


For the 21st century and Ballmann, this means digital and modular. It also means precision instrument-grade to be capable of extracting every nuance and shading embedded on any data-carrying medium, whether it be vinyl, CD, SACD or DVD. The behold system starts at the center with the audio processing unit or APU. This unit can be viewed as a pre-amplifier accepting any imaginable input, with 14 slots available to connect components to the APU. The plugged-in units communicate with the APU via a high-speed bus. The unit works at a sampling frequency of 768KHz per second or 18 times the sampling frequency of 44.1kHz RedBook CD.


Now take a record player and add a behold MCA768 moving coil adapter to the head shell. Tiny leads connect the 4.2 grams circuit board to the cartridge; only a 30mm length of cable is needed. The sampling rate again is 768KHz and the word length 24 bits. The clock is located under the tone arm from whence a 50-ohm cable transports the signal to the APU768 where an appropriate module receives the signal. Alternatively, two DAC768 D/A converters -- 768kHz/24bit of course -- can be used in not fully beholden systems.
For CD playback, Ballmann offers a truly massive CD player that's carved from 42lbs of solid aluminum. The APU provides a special input module for this player. For SACD playback, a for now analog output is fed to a 192KHz A/D converter with 24 bits word length. The module also accepts up to 7.1 analog signals. When all input signals are received at the APU768, the final stage becomes a pair of power DACs that act as both as power amplifier and final DA converter. In fact, the BPA768 is a bi-amping power DAC delivering up to 2 x 600 watt per module. All controls are carried out via PDA with Blue Tooth connection. Needless to say, the physical finish is beyond stunning.


And yes, it's a cost-no-object, ne-plus-ultra system. A fully loaded Ballmann rig will set you back around $80K or an S-class Mercedes. So what? Interest rates are low, fuel prices are on a logarithmic course/curse and cycling is healthy. On top of our reasoning list so far, the system is modular. Add water and it makes its own sauce. Did we mention that we are on the review list for this system?


Three shows in a row proved to us that interest in music and video is alive on both sides of the scale, supply and demand. Multi-channel at a high-end level is still problematic, mostly due to lack of PR from the manufacturing side. The sporadic good multi-channel demonstrations use equipment far too expensive to generate actual sales. On the positive side of the ledger, these shows proved once again that good stereo sound is possible in each and every room you want just as long as you sweat the necessary efforts. Lastly, digital is the future as surely as 00000010 + 00000001 = 3.