I have always greatly admired the match of Robert Lee's Acoustic Zen loudspeakers—in this case the wonderful Crescendo loudspeaker ($16,000/pair), a 3-way transmission line design with a horn-loaded ribbon tweeter—with the Triode Corporation electronics imported by Santy Oropel of TWIN Audio Video. Here, the Crescendos formed an especially sonorous alliance with the TRV-CD5SE CD player ($3250), TRX-1 remote controlled tube preamplifier ($3200), and TRX-M845SE monoblock power amplifiers ($22,500/pair).

After several overly chatty rooms, it was a joy to discover that Robert and Santy had created a model demo where respectful silence allowed music to shine. The sound was exceedingly warm and inviting. Although the debut amps only had about 20 hours of break-in time, and the speakers needed a larger room to demonstrate all they can do, when music was played at optimal levels, the sound was lovely.