Multi-Electronique (together with Plurison) had a massive line-up in front of their room to listen to a 20 minute demonstration of a $330,000 two-channel audio system. Inside the room were Focal JMlab’s Grande Utopia EM ($180,000/pair), the company’s top of the line speakers, powered by YBA mono-bloc amplifiers. The source was a newly introduced Esoteric disc player. It came as no surprise that this was perhaps the best performing system at the show. I sat in the centre of the front row during the presentation with the giant Grande Utopia EM speakers towering over me. The speakers looked a little intimidating at first from such a close distance but when the music started playing, they virtually completely disappeared. This first music selection, a Dvorak symphony, gave me a genuine sensation of sitting in the front row of a real life symphony. The most subtle musical details were revealed during the quiet passages in a perfectly balanced soundfield. When a powerful passage suddenly came up, the person in the seat next to me jumped in her seat. The presentation had all the energy of a real concert without doubt – yet it wasn’t tiring to my ears whatsoever. Overall, this was a superb sounding system in every musical aspect – imaging, soundstaging and dynamics. Outside the room, Plurison displayed most of the other Focal JMlab speaker models.
Totem Acoustic attracted me to their room with the sound of the Beatles DVD-Audio Love album. The large, designer-looking room had perhaps the most elaborate multi-channel setup at the show. The 7.2-channel audio system consisted of the new Wind Design floorstanding speakers (in luxurious glossy red cabinets), Tribe in-wall/on-wall speakers and the Tribe centre channel. The musical presentation in this room simply blew me away. The musical energy and power of this demonstration was like no other. The soundstage was enormously wide and extended far beyond the physical size of the room in all directions. The dynamics were superb and the music was pleasing to my ears even at the high volume levels. With 2-channel material, the Wind Design speakers produced a highly detailed, precise soundstage.
Coherent Speakers was demonstrating its Model 8 PHY floorstanding speakers ($14,500) playing music from a flash drive-based memory player. These 2-way speakers use a hand built ALNICO driver in the main cabinet and a ribbon tweeter that sits in a separate housing on top of the cabinet. We listened to a very enjoyable demo of various acoustic guitar recordings. I particularly enjoyed the warmth and the dynamics of these speakers. Coherent also offers the Model 8 PHY speaker in a monitor version which also retails for $14,500. The speakers have exemplary high-gloss hand crafted cabinets that are made from aged multi-laminate Baltic birch plywood (from the 1870s!) pulled for the St. Lawrence river.
Worldwide Wholesales demonstrated a number of different brands in their room including Xindak amplifiers, CD players and DACs, Mark & Daniel speakers, Teo Audio Liquid Cable (speaker and RCA cables) and Lafleuraudio speakers. We listened to a setup that consisted of a Xindak A600E integrated solid state amp, the C09 prototype CD player and the DAC8 digital-to-analog converter. The speakers were Lafleuraudio’s X1 speakers and everything was connected with Teo Audio Liquid Cables. Believe it or not, the Teo Audio cables actually use a special liquid formula to transmit the audio signal. After just a few minutes of listening we came to agreement that this was our favourite sounding 2-channel room yet. The combination of the components produced a phenomenal sound field in the room. The details and imaging were exemplary and the bass played shockingly low. I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot more from all three of these brands in the near future.
