T.H.E. Show Newport 2013

The price of the Duke loudspeaker from Trenner & Friedl—$175,000/pair—took my breath away when I heard it at the 2011 CES. The Austrian company’s Isis ($40,000/pair), on display in Profundo's second room, uses the same compression driver for the HF as the Duke but combines it with an 8" paper-cone midrange unit and a 15" paper-cone woofer in a conventional, if large, cabinet. (Each cone is doped with six coats of lacquer.) The sound of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, from the Witches’ Brew RCA LP on a Basis turntable, with the speakers driven by Viva Audio Aurora tube monoblocks ($43,500/pair), had huge dynamics and a natural tonal balance. The image of the solo oboe that represents the cock crow at dawn in this work was superbly well-defined, without any exaggeration of its size.

“That sounds like the Crusaders,” I said as I sat down to listen to the Kharma DB9 Signature speakers ($36,000/pair) driven by Exquisite Signature monoblocks ($88,000/pair) and an Exquisite preamplifier ($40,000), hooked up with Transparent cables. It was, the Second Crusade LP from the Jazz Crusaders, played on a Spiral Groove SG1.1 turntable with a Zesto phono preamplifier sounding very good indeed.

“That’s the speaker I am holding,” explained Exelway’s representative, “it includes a 20W amplifier and a Bluetooth connection. It is called the Slimspeaker.” Slim this Korean speaker certainly was and sounded bigger than I was expecting, given a degree of low-frequency reinforcement from the wall it was mounted on.

I was familiar with the unique concentric, point-source, multiway drive-unit from French manufacturer Cabasse, as Michael Fremer had reviewed the spherical Baltic II speaker that used it back in 2005. But the floorstanding Pacific 35A speaker ($19,900/pair), which complements the smaller spherical Riga(inboard, on stands) with a pair of powered 7" woofers was new to me. In a system featuring Esoteric’s A-02 monoblock amplifiers and K-03 disc player—Esoteric distributes Cabasse in the US—and WireWorld cables, the late Eva Cassidy’s voice on “Field of Gold” was reproduced with rock-solid stereo imaging and a natural tonality.

It’s been a long time since I listened to a pair of Sound Lab electrostatic speakers, but the gigantic A-1Xes ($28,270/pair), powered by MSB M203 monoblocks in the room Sound Lab was sharing with San Diego dealer Blue Skies Audio, sounded as awesome as I remembered from when Dick Olsher reviewed the A-1 in the 1990s. (Review to be posted in Stereophile's free on-line archives in late June.)

The second Aaudio Imports room I visited featured the German-designed but China-manufactured components from BMC. The Arcadia bipolar speakers ($36,300/pair with external crossovers) were being driven by AMP M2 monoblocks ($15,980/pair), connected with Stage II speaker cables and interconnects. Front-end components included a Hartvig battery-powered Gramophone ($28,400 plus $5400 for battery supply) and BMC’s MMCI current-input phono preamplifier that Michael Fremer raved about in the June 2013 issue ($3890). I have a sample of the MCCI in for a follow-up and provisionally, my reaction echoes Mikey’s