The World's Number One Audiophile?

Posted by: Robert Harley at 6:06 am, December 10th, 2007

December 10 - "You have to see it with your own eyes to believe it." So I was told by more than one person during the GuangZhou audio show about the hi-fi systemâno, make that systemsâof a Mr. Ji Hui Li.

Everyone who mentioned Mr. Li invariably referred to him as "the world's Number One audiophile."

The show was winding down and we were leaving the next afternoon for Zhu Hai to visit the Original CD-player factory. The town in which Mr. Li lived was a few hours out of the wayâwould we like to visit? How could I pass up the opportunity to visit "the world's Number One audiophile?"

We arrived at a completely nondescript building in middle of the city of Yang Jiang. The outside of the building gave no hint of what lay inside. Mr. Li, an extremely jovial and friendly man, greeted us himself with great enthusiasm. He led us to the elevator of his seven-story "house" and the tour started on the second floor. The elevator doors opened and the first thing I saw were two massive AC power stabilizersâall to power his hi-fi gear.

And these were the stabilizers for just the second floor; each floor had an identical pair.

Entering the house itself, I was confronted by a veritable museum of classic hi-fi gear, much of it displayed behind glass, but some of it connected and working. Marantz Model 8s and Model 9s? Check. Altec Voice of the Theater? Check. Original Spendor LS3/5s? Check. The world's first CD player? Check. The list was seemingly endlessâthere must have been a hundred pairs of vintage speakers and scores of electronics on display.

We walked into an adjacent room, a large, acoustically treated space with four Wilson WATT/Puppy loudspeakers and a Wilson WATCH center channel in a 5.1-channel configuration. Two massive Sony CRT projectors hung from the ceiling and a projection screen dominated the wall behind the speakers.

This was the one of the multichannel music rooms that could also serve as a home theater. The electronics were an EMM Labs DAC6e six-channel DSD decoder, EMM Labs transport, and EMM Switchman six-channel preamplifier.

The room was filled with other gear, most of it not connected, including about five other pairs of expensive loudspeakers. Mr. Li's assistant (he has a full-time employee to take care of the systems) played some multichannel SACDs and the effect was mind-blowing.

The sense of space, continuousness of the soundstage from front to back, and immersion were as good as I've heard from any multichannel setup.

We left the "Wilson room" to discover a smaller space with a pair of Venture loudspeakers (about $65k) and a whole host of top-end electronics and sources, including a huge Burmester power amplifier.

A pair of speakers was off to the side, unused at the moment. Both rooms were filled with CDs and LPs lining the walls, and CDs were stacked on coffee tables in front of the listening seats.

We didn't stay to listen; there was more to see. Unfortunately, I didn't take detailed notes of all the sources and electronics in each room; it went by so quickly and cataloging everything would have been a major job. Nonetheless, I didn't see any gear that was anything less than first-rate.

We took the elevator up a couple of floors to find another system based on the JM Lab Grand Utopia driven by the massive Mark Levinson monoblocks.

As with most of the rooms, this one featured two turntables, one fitted with multiple arms and cartridges. All the turntables in Mr. Li's house were spinning and ready for action. We didn't stop to listen to this system; it just happened to be on our way to another huge room, this one featuring the MartinLogan Statement loudspeaker.

The Statement is a massive four-piece electrostatic-dynamic hybrid system about eight-feet tall with similarly sized dynamic woofer columns. It represented MartinLogan's best effort, and cost, if I remember correctly, about $85,000.