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Cantankerous Consumer:

Some of the excellent
amidst the excrement

By David Cobain

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

As with any commentary on consumer affairs – as, indeed, with society as a whole – there is always some bad news to leaven the good, a negative to balance the positive. What's important, though, is the degree: whether we are to be swept unprotestingly away by an avalanche of excrement or arrested in our plunge by outcroppings of competence, even occasional excellence, from worthy producers and purveyors.

Such companies, to name but a few examples, as Primus, Lenbrook Group and Tivoli Audio, each vying for the loyalty and lucre of cannier consumers. What they have in common, these three – two Canadian, the other a U.S. firm – are integrity and competence. The latter, of course, embraces the former in any commitment to build or distribute products of excellent design, decent quality and fair price.

Primus, comparatively small and a relative newcomer to the telecommunications business, is up against some of Canada's established giants – notably, Bell, Rogers and Cogeco. It offers home telephone service, with a variety of options, starting at a highly attractive $19.95 a month, and both dial-up and broadband internet connections ranging in price from $9.95 monthly to a modest $29.95 for a high-speed system.

So impressed was I by the packages Primus offers that I switched to them a couple of months ago from my long-time reliance on Bell. I signed up for their 'lite' telephone and Internet connection bundle, which provides excellent 'phone service and what seems a far-from-'lite' internet connection for an extremely modest $34.95 a month. Added to which, I'm relieved to remark, I no longer have to deal with Bell.

How do I like Primus? Well…well enough that when Bell approaches me with some inducement to return to them (which, they told me after I switched, they are allowed to do only three months after losing a customer), I won't be interested. I was – once, some years ago – an ardent admirer of Bell Canada, then an exemplary telecommunications company. But that, as they say, was then and this is very much now.

Another example of the best of this high-tech world is the Audio Music System, an all-in-one radio/CD stereo set engineered by Tivoli Audio. This is, one might think from its classification as a tabletop radio, comparable with seemingly similar units from Bose, Boston Acoustics and Cambridge Soundworks. And so, in a sense, it is. Tivoli's little beauty compares with those two as a Steinway grand might with a duo of barrel organs.

One's first impression of it is of exquisite design and workmanship, with its silky wooden cabinet and wondrously smooth and precise controls. It's a delight to behold and to handle. But the real pleasure of this compact, yet substantial, unit comes as the two speakers and the down-firing subwoofer transform a CD, a radio signal or input from a television receiver or other device into output of extreme fidelity and musicality.

If you're seeking a new multi-purpose entertainment system combining modest dimensions and price with superb performance and visual appeal – and who, in this constricted and costly world, isn't? – cast an eye and an ear on the offerings of Bose, Boston Acoustics, Cambridge SoundWorks and all the others. Then…listen to this sonic wonder from Tivoli Audio and your search, you'll find, is at an end.

Tivoli's products are handled in this country by Lenbrook Group, Canada's foremost distributor of high-end audio equipment, including the legendary NAD range – originally, a British marque now owned by Lenbrook – and Paul Barton's superlative PSB speakers. Writing of which, I recently had an opportunity to review a pair of this renowned audio engineer cum violinist's diminutive entry-level Alpha LR1 Monitors.

I am not, I confess, an audiophile. Music – good music, of the type known generically as 'classical' – is a love of mine and my wife's. But, while we are not educated in the genre, 'we know' – which will make the culture vultures smirk – 'what we like'. That is, the peerless purity of J.S. Bach and one or two of his talented off-spring, some of the earlier Romantics, the voices of Sarah Brightman and Kathleen Battle and Andrea Bocelli….

Most importantly, we appreciate – indeed, we demand – real quality, not just boom and bluster, from the hardware on which we play our CDs and DVDs. And the little PSBs supplied by Lenbrook for me to audition passed our listening test with flying octaves. They were, from the first note, almost incredible: making it all but impossible to believe that such purity and musicality issued from such tiny, and inexpensive, enclosures.

But so they did – and little, if any, of the credit had to be awarded to my inexpensive little JVC system, which came equipped with two 'wood-cone' speakers much ballyhooed by their manufacturer. To say that the PSBs put these units firmly in their place would be an understatement. They outclassed them completely – and I unreservedly recommend the Alpha LR1 Monitors for those wanting great sound from small units at low cost.

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