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If you value smoothness and liquidity, the eye-catching system from Beauty of Sound and KT Audio Imports was to fall in love with. Playing Aaron Neville's aptly named LP Warm Your Heart, the sound was so warm, sweet and mellow, and the presentation so beautiful and spacious, that it was a challenge not to feel as though I had died and gone to heaven.

Chicago retailer Pro Musica, led by recording engineer Ken Christianson, had two rooms at AXPONA. The first featured a system built around Dynaudio's Confidence C2 Signature loudspeakers ($13,500/pair in standard Mk.II finishes; $15,000/pair in Signature finish). The electronics were a Naim NAP 300 amplifier with 300PS power supply ($11,495), Naim 282 preamp with NAPSC2 ($6795), Naim SuperCap2 DR preamp power supply ($6595), Naim UnityServe SSD server ($3045), Naim NDS streaming player ($10,995) with Naim 555PS DR power supply ($9645). Speaker cable was Naim NACA5 ($15/foot) and the equipment rack was the Quadraspire EVO (6 shelf, $1200).

In Pro Musica's second room, Dynaudio's Confidence C1 Signature speakers ($8500/pair in Signature finish, $7700/pair in standard Mk.II finish) were driven by Naim's SuperUniti integrated streaming amplifier ($6000), hooked up with Naim NACA5 speaker cable ($15/foot). I listend again to some of Ken Christianson's recordings on the Naim label, including a Schubert Symphony 5 performed by Iona Brown leading the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Sonics, music, balance, communication—I wanted for nothing.

Walter Schofield had lots to smile about besides his new trim and fit look. The great buy Wharfedale Jade 5 loudspeakers ($3199/pair), fed by an Avid Ingenium turntable with Pro-Ject arm ($1750) and Ortofon 2M Black cartridge ($719), Avid phono preamplifier ($7000), Marantz SA-15 SACD player ($2000), Marantz 150Wpc integrated amplifier ($2500), Audioquest Columbia interconnects, and PS Audio power strip—there was more, but I can't decipher my notes—produced a really nice midrange on Madeleine Peyroux's "Dance Me to the End of Love." The sound may have been euphonic, but it was also euphoric; the music swung so compellingly that I couldn't stop tapping my foot.

In Room 806, one word said it all: Rega. Demming the Rega RP8 turntable with Rega Exact 2 cartridge ($3400), Rega Apollo R CD player ($1095), Rega Brio R integrated amp with phono stage ($895), and Rega RS3 floor-standing speakers ($1395/pair), the nattily bow-tied Barnaby Fry of The Sound Organisation was having a ball playing Johnny Adams' From the Heart. The system did best on Adams' voice—the voice was great—but when the blues artist sang, "I can't control the vibrations," I'm afraid he was talking about the limitations of the system's bottom reach and bass control. (For starters, I don't believe power conditioning or special equipment supports were in use.) But on voice and piano, Rega x 4 = very nice.

In the second room sponsored by Arnold Martinez' newly opened Tweak Studio (located in Chicago's Hyatt Downtown) and Colleen Cardas Imports, a SOTA turntable, curiously unidentified on the room's equipment list, and unidentified cartridge and tonearm, were making lovely sound with three products from PureAudio. Designed by Ross Stevens and Gary Morrison, formerly of Plinius, the redundantly titled PureAudio dual-mono vinyl phono preamplifier ($4500) joined PureAudio's dual-mono Control preamplifier ($9500) and Reference 65Wpc class-A monoblock amplifiers ($15,500) to drive My Audio Design 1920S loudspeakers ($3800/pair).

I first heard the dipole Orion 4 speakers ($14,750/pair with Analog Signal Processor), designed by Siegfried Linkwitz and manufactured by Wood Artistry of Healdsburg, California, at the 2011 AXPONA in Atlanta, where they were one of the best-sounding rooms at the Show. They were in too large a room in Chicago, but still managed to sound clean and natural, with a full range of frequencies, driven by Pass Labs amplification with DH Labs cabling. I refer you to me 2011 report for details on the speaker's design but new at Chicago was a refined version of the Analog Signal Processor, with closer-tolerance crossover components, and an amplifier/processor that obviates the need to drive the Orions with 6 or 8 amplifier channels and the resulting confusion of cables.