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Long ago, in what seems like
a former life, I worked for an importer of exotic record players, a producer
and distributor of audiophile vinyl. Like all such operations we received
our fair share of unsolicited offers from overseas manufacturers looking for
UK representation. More often than not they never got beyond the phone-call
stage.
Imagine my surprise then, when arriving at work one morning I
discovered a rather battered, French registered Renault 5 parked outside,
complete with sleeping Frenchman; surprise that quickly turned to
embarrassment as I realised that Fordingbridge might be able to provide most
things but a decent cup of coffee (as defined by the French palette) wasn't
amongst them.
Still, Jean-Christophe Crozel (for it was he) took the lack of coffee in his
stride just as easily as the fact that the partner in the company who'd
arranged the visit had forgotten to inform anybody else about it, or even
put in an appearance. He was, he announced, here to demonstrate his
integrated amps. Thinking on my feet and wanting to appear at least polite,
I rapidly arranged a visit to Pete Christie at Movement Audio, purveyors of
many things integrated, including the well-regarded Shearne amps.
On arrival
J-C unshipped two cardboard boxes containing small, yet expensive amplifiers
of a design and presentation so plain as to please the Amish. No, we were
informed, they didn't require warm-up, although a bit of care in connecting
the speaker cables would pay dividends, as would a wooden support.
With no
such shelf available, our indomitable Gaul seized the grill from a suitably
large speaker and inserted it between the smaller of the two amps and the
glass shelf of the Sound Style rack. Announcing himself satisfied he sat
back with a beatific grin and bade us listen.
The rest, as they say, is history. The little IS integrated promptly
demolished the Shearne (along with its second power amp for bi-amping).
Indeed, it left just about everything in the shop sounding muddy and
confused. Except that is, for its big brother, the IT.
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Half again as
powerful, twice the height and around half the inputs and no line-level
outputs, this was the stripped down hot-rod of the range, and if we thought
that the IS was good, the IT frankly left us flabbergasted; this from a
product that had arrived unexpectedly and unannounced.
It was one of those
hi-fi epiphanies that are, in reality all too rare, and all too often reveal
themselves as false dawns. Yet we were far from the only ones duly
impressed.
The performance of the IT was sufficient to open a serious
fault-line in the edifice of PM's 25-year devotion to Naim electronics, a
response that was echoed in one form or another by all who heard it. Here
was a true, audiophile gem.
With stunning and brutally apparent sonic superiority on its
side, along with the reviews to support the fact, the rest should all be
plain sailing, no? No indeed! Lavardin amplifiers, through no fault of their
own, were about to embark on the rockiest of roads.
First the importer
imploded when the same partner who'd overlooked the original appointment
managed to overlook rather a lot of company funds as well as his other
responsibilities. Not a good start for a fledgling brand. Dealers grew
understandably suspicious of the repeated assurances they'd been receiving,
and the products they hadn't.
Then, tragically, the amplifier's designer
was killed in a traffic accident. J-C was facing meltdown. The problem was
that the Lavardin amps depended on a new topology and understanding of
distortion artefacts in electronic circuits. The simpler IS could continue
in production, but reverse engineering, even servicing the IT was so complex
as to be almost impossible, at least in the short term, leaving the company
without the jewel in its crown.
However, one dealer had kept the faith and Audiocraft duly
worked as the UK distributor to shore up and slowly re-establish the IS,
the tweaked and refined IS Reference and the pre-power spin-offs.
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