THE PRETENDERS 2019 DRIVER

Closer to realistic than most of the other stuff I heard in Chicago, the Borderland was excellent on a Louis Armstrong CD.

THE PRETENDERS 2019 DRIVER

The $60k three-way (25mm tweeter, 170mm midrange, 300mm woofer), spherically horn-loaded Avantgarde Acoustic Duo Mezzo XD, driven by Avantgarde electronics in a digital-only system, was the best hybrid Avantgarde loudspeaker I’ve heard at a trade show-terrific on voice, drum, and bass (nice deep growl on Fender guitar), with no audible shoutiness or edginess on transients, and a really superb blend of its integral, powered, dynamic woofer.ĭriven by the company’s own Emperor electronics, German Physiks’ $37,250 Borderlands loudspeaker, with omnidirectional DDD driver (crossing over to a down-firing 12” cone at 190Hz) in an elaborately braced hexagonal cabinet, sounded very open and quite delicate without any thinness or vaporousness. Simply an excellent balance of all criteria, and excellent sound. The Alumine Five may have reduced image height some and was a bit bottom-up in balance, but it showed none of the flashes of brightness or of megaphoning that I heard so often with other displays. It was quite good on my Pretenders LP, too, with unusually good expressiveness on Chrissie Hynde’s vocals.

The $58.9k four-driver, three-way Stenheim Alumine Five (two 10” woofers, 6.5” neodymium midrange, and neodymium tweeter in a massive aluminum cabinet), driven by VTL and sourced by VPI/Lyra, was real good on The Band Last Waltz LPs I brought to Chicago, with superb staging, imaging, tone, dynamics and bass. It wasn’t for want of trying, believe me. My sincerest apologies, in advance, to those manufacturers whose products I missed. Before launching into my report, I should note that the show was simply too big for me to cover in its entirety. On the whole, speakers sounded beautiful in timbre and exciting in dynamics, regardless of staging. But the effect was seldom marked enough to ruin the presentation. Many of the smallish Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel rooms made for darker, less expansive soundstaging, and sometimes added a slight megaphonic “push” to the mids, as if instruments were being funneled toward stage center. On the other hand, if the drama, detail, and color of music were your first priorities (i.e., if you were an “as you like it” or “musicality-first” kind of listener) AXPONA would have proved a consistent delight. Oh, next to nothing sounded spine-tinglingly realistic at the Chicago show, so if you were an “absolute sound” kind of listener you might’ve been slightly let down. Where RMAF was a nearly uniform disaster, AXPONA was a nearly uniform success.

Terry’s heartfelt sincerity.Sonically AXPONA 2019 was a 180-degree change from the last trade show I attended, in Denver. The introverted, humble Terry has a formidable rival – his polar-opposite friend Phil (Shameik Moore), a womanizing photographer who serves Catherine with some brutal honesty: “He ain’t gonna f**k you like you like to be f****d.” According to Phil, Terry views Catherine as a “cinematic ideal,” while Phil sees her for what she is…“flesh and blood.” As years go by, the two vie for her attention, with Catherine leaning towards Phil’s slickness vs. He pursues the woman of his dreams – the mysterious and elusive Catherine (Jane Levy), whom he met at the movies. Franco’s not quite there yet.īoldly spanning (almost) a decade, the film follows a young film student/aspiring director Terry (Jack Kilmer). Pretenders pretends to be Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in its meshing of a saucy young love triangle with an impassioned ode to cinema of yore. Here, the frequent allusions to the French New Wave movement (Godard and Truffaut get name-dropped, among many other auteurs) become borderline-insufferable.

The filmmaker’s evident, earnest desire to live up to his beloved literary inspirations went a long way to dilute the smugness. Its level of pretension, however, may even exceed his past endeavors. Pretenders, Franco’s latest directorial feature, is not based on a Great Novel. “…follows a young film student/aspiring director Terry, as he pursues the woman of his dreams…”

The pretenders 2019