Scaena: New products, same great sound

The midrange on Christian McBride's "Hallelujah Time" was excellent, and the deep bass pretty damn fabulous. Ditto for the depth on a recording by Amber Rubarth, and the air on Reference Recordings' hi-resolution version of dance from Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa (you know, the one everyone plays at audio shows). Instrumental timbres were also spot on. Even though Alan Eichelbaum and Sunny Umrao had not been able to successfully tame all the problems in their very slap-happy room—Alan called it "echo chamber"—their set-up persistence allowed the music to come through loud and clear.

Speaker-wise, we heard Scaena's new model 3.1/12 ($40,000/pair) that comes complete with new, far more visually and spatially acceptable 12" active woofers ($10,000 if sold separately), D/A conversion, and advanced DSP room correction from Bohmer Audio. The source was Scaena's new Mainframe music server ($4800). The server utilizes CHIME (Continuous. High throughput. Integrated. Multimedia Engine), which Scaena claims has the "world's first complete error checking for ultimate in accuracy and naturalness." (Why do I think that more than one manufacturer is going to challenge that claim?) The Mainframe plays everything from DSD to Blu-ray, and is battery-powered. Amplification for everything but the subs was courtesy of Ayon Titan 75Wpc SET monoblocks ($68,000/pair).

COMMENTS
Pro-Audio-Tech's picture

Everyone was having issues with their rooms, I wonder if this new hotel should be retired in favor of a new hotel next year??
Just saying if there is a known problem why do it again?

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