Peak Princess Pleases Press

I admit: I’m impressed that the Danish loudspeaker manufacturer Peak Consult has made such a name for itself in little more than a decade. (Adding to my surprise is the fact that “Peak Consult” does not, at first glance, seem to mean anything—although the name makes sense once it’s been explained.) Now Jay Rein and Bluebird Music, North American distributors of Chord and Exposure electronics, Spendor loudspeakers, and van den Hul cables, have taken on the line. At SSI they demonstrated Peak Consult’s least expensive model, the Princess XE ($24,000/pair). Driven by a Chord CPA 5000 preamp and SPM 1400 amp ($21,900 and $32,900, respectively), and fed by a Chord Red Standard CD player ($14,900), the Peak Princess sounded true to its name: serenely composed and very refined. The Princess seemed to have a knack for conveying detail without brightness, and the system as a whole played small-scale vocal music with a nice sense of immediacy and realism.

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