Red Rose Anyone?

I've been to the Red Rose showroom in NYC... I found the speakers to have nice craftsmanship to be be fairly strong in the bass and mids. But all the speakers sounded a bit bright to my taste... the ribbon tweeter on the small speaker (the R3?) sounded downright screechy. (My wife nearly put her hands over her ears.) However, when I heard those speakers at the big Home Entertainment Expo in NYC in 2001, they sounded pretty good.

I think Brian (see posting above) may be referring to Korsun, which I believe is a Chinese manufacturer. As for Red Rose electronics, be careful... some searches on audioasylum.com might be worthwhile.

All that said, the Red Rose SACD (title is something like, "Live at Red Rose, Volume 1"), is excellent.

There seems to be a great deal of confusion about the Red Rose products so hopefully I can clear up some of the confusion.

There is the original Red Rose tube line which is a joint venture between Audio Prism and Red Rose. The Audio prism tube line was upgraded and came out as the Red Rose line.
The $8000 model 5 integrated amp is part of that line, along with the Model 1 Amps at $25,000, the model 2 A amp at $5000, the model 2 A Silver Signature amp at $7000, the Model 3 A preamp at $5000, and the amazing Model 3 Silver Signature preamp at $10,000. My 2 personal favorite pieces are the Model 5 integrated and the Silver Signature preamp. Expensive no doubt but very good especially the preamp.

There is also a solid state line that is made for Red Rose in Asia somewhere. I don't carry the solid state line so I am not up to date on it. But expect alot of products to start coming from Asia being built for US manufactures the prices are so reasonable for the quality - - look at the Shanling CD player.

Hope this helps. The integrated is a great piece of audio gear. It is one of the few store demo's that I have ever sold and my wife has stated, "why did you sell the Red Rose", she never cares.

Thanks SOS for the clarification.

A little search on Google revealed the following link in regards to the Red Rose Rossette being made by the aforementioned Korsun, http://www.geocities.com/super_bq/Korsun_2.html. According to this, the Korsun version is $200 while the Red Rose is $2000, but nothing was confirmed whether it is changed at all.

The aforementioned Shanling, I had read that it is made by Denon; anyone know for sure?

I remember hearing the AudioPrism Manas, the precursors of the Model 1 amps. Now, I don't know what the "red rose markup" actually is, but the Manas were very, very good at 12K and I'm wondering what magic wand was passed over their chassis to transform them, via $13K, into the Model 1's?

I remember a story. I was at a CES one year for a mag and talked to a famous foreign designer known for his ultra products. He had just come out with a SS amp and told me that at first he couldn't sell it. I asked why given his reputation and he said because rich people didn't think they were getting something better than the not-quite-as-rich unless it carried a certain elevated price tag. He doubled the amp's price and sales rocketed among that clientele.

I've heard that ML has a grand showroom fronting an art museum to give it that just certain cache...

If he is looking for that certain cache, the decision to retail some of the line via amazon.com seems strange. Ran into a bunch of "Red Rose Music Spirit" line stuff on their site. It struck me as odd at the time, even odder given comments above...