RMAF 2010

Galibier and Daedalus wanted to make sure they would not be missed. Their products surfaced, together and separately, in six different rooms in the top floor of the Marriott Tower.

Two of those were large suites. As suited as large rooms may be for powerful systems with large(r) loudspeakers, they are also harder to control. Hence, while Lou Hinkley's Daedalus Audio Room on the 10th floor was distinguished by a strong midrange, the system-room interaction muffled detail on the LP of Solti conducting Holst's The Planets. There was an equally gray sonic signature to the really nice track I heard from Joe Jackson's 1982 LP, Night and Day.

Heard were the Galibier Design Stelvio-1 turntable ($15,000 show special), Durand Talea tonearm ($7900), Ortofon A90 cartridge, Gill Audio Anala preamp, and ModWright Instruments KWA150 monoblocks ($6000/pair), Daedalus Audio Ulysses loudspeakers bi-amped with the new Daedalus BOW (bass optimization woofer) subwoofer ($12,900/pair with the ALLPoly option—I've been given different prices in print and in email, so I'm not sure of this), Abbingdon Music Research CD-77 player ($11,000), a modded DAC I didn't hear, and Daedalus and Adona stands.