A younger listener walked into the room and requested “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes, a song I know well.

The system, built by Tempo High Fidelity: Verity Audio Amadis loudspeakers ($30,000/pair); Musical Fidelity M8700m 700W monoblock power amplifier ($12,500/pair) and M8PRE preamp ($5000); dCS Paganini stack with a Puccini clock; Vibex power conditioning; and a mix of Transparent and Basis cables.

I don’t know anything about the young listener or his experience with this song, but, judging from the system, I figured I’d better get the best reproduction of “White Winter Hymnal” imaginable. Well, it was up there, and certainly better—better image separation, better bass control, better tonal color, easier to follow the individual harmonies—than I’d ever heard from my modest system of PSB Alpha B1 loudspeakers, Rega P3-24 turntable, NAD C316 BEE integrated amplifier, Parasound Zphono phono preamp, and Kimber and AudioQuest cables.

The Tempo system struck me as sounding very accurate, open, and direct, with an especially fine way of communicating music’s momentum and flow.