The first thing you may be asking yourself is, "What happened to 2005?"

No, you did not miss it, because it never happened.

Because of many problems scheduling, including the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in which Cogent participated in its first public showing, we all decided to push the usual date of the Tasting from mid November to a new, sunnier, warmer date at the end of April. So you could say that this is the 2005/2006 Tasting, a special combined vintage.

Cogent has made a great deal of progress, and this year we got to see and hear a new completed bass compression driver, the first field coil bass compression driver since the mid 1920's, when Bell Labs made an experimental unit which never went into production. In other words, we all were seeing a new piece of audio history in the making. The driver weighed over 50lbs, and used a cone type carbon fiber diaphragm. You too can listen to Steve's talk on cogent.

Speaking of history, there were some wonderful historical speakers present, speakers which really make you wonder what road contemporary high end audio has chosen. Any of these speakers, for example, would have been far superior to any speakers I heard at the 2006 CES show.

Hans Dietze, former RCA engineer and designer of the last version of the famed RCA DuoCone LC1 full range loudspeaker, the "C" version, originally designed by Harry Olson, brought a pair of these incredible things in original RCA utility enclosures, and gave a TALK on the subject, which you can listen to thanks to Herbert Jeschke's recording.

The smaller, less expensive 12" RCA speaker in the same lineup of RCA Soundproducts during the late 1950's, headed by the LC1, was the RCA SL12, which had a curvilinear cone, and very small aluminum voicecoil. This fullrange speaker was compared to a pair of very rare Western Electric two way monitors brought by Frank Clooney. Considering the WE monitor had a 15 inch Jensen Western woofer and a horn loaded compression driver, the little RCA 12 inch fullranger acquitted itself admirably. I would be happy with either if I found myself stuck in a log cabin till the end of days. Actually, not a bad fate at all...

A final RCA item of note was the extremely rare RCA 64 monitor, using a 6 inch field coil full range driver with a unique split voice coil design created by Harry Olson in what might very well be the world's first back loaded horn, an extremely complex labyrynthine design used as a monitor back in the late 1930's.

I learned that I have to be very careful with my Tasting captions, as last time I made a joke about Jeffrey Jackson, watts, and the weight of amplifiers. Jeffrey clearly decided it was time to turn tables. He showed up with the biggest amp ever at the Tasting, and actually the biggest amp I have ever seen. It weighed over 400lbs, I was told (no scale here to verify), and I believed it. It uses the 304tl transmitter tube, and I have no doubt this tube will be showing up with regularity in the future.

Till next year,

Jonathan Weiss
Oswald' s Mill