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I hadn’t planned to visit the Göbel/CH Precision/Kronos/Bending Wave USA room, having spilled a lot of ink on Göbel and CH products at Munich High End. But, given that I’d heard everything in the room before and was familiar with the excellence of its sound, I wanted to see if it could surmount the sonic difficulties posed by the Gaylord Convention Center's huge rooms.

Saturday September 14th from 6 pm–10 pm, Excel Audio in Newport Beach, California, will be hosting its second annual Customer Appreciation night. In attendance will be representatives from Wilson Audio, D’Agostino, Luxman, Clearaudio, and Impex Records.

Eye-catching as all get-out, Alsyvox Boticelli loudspeakers ($89,000/pair)—having arrived from Spain with their optional external crossover ($25,000) —made a useful connection with Italy’s Omega Audio Concepts DNA CDP disc transport ($12,000), DNA DAC ($9000), and DNA mono amplifiers ($20,000/pair complete with integrated preamps) to produce intriguing sound.

The Hellena MK II uses a 604-8E alnico coaxial driver, made by Great Plains Audio, that owes its design to the original Altec 604-E. Its woofer, Great Plains Audio’s handmade Model 515-C low-frequency loudspeaker, incorporates a massive alnico V magnetic assembly. There's also an alnico horn supertweeter.

The story in the PS Audio room was the company's new loudspeaker, the AN3, various prototypes of which have been demoed at audio shows throughout 2019. The RMAF demo pair was described by the company as the final prototype. The design—strongly influenced by the late Arnie Nudell, the "AN" in AN3—includes servo-corrected powered woofers, a folded ribbon tweeter, a rectangular planar midrange, and an 8" cone "mid-bass coupler."

That the first big room I visited sounded as good as it did, which was far from the best I’ve heard those components sound, was due to the expertise of setup wizard Stirling Trayle. A lot of room treatment was brought in at first, but after Trayle did his thing, most of it was stashed in a hallway. The system, from Nordost, VTL, and YG Acoustics, was headlined by VTL’s Siegfried Series II monoblocks ($75,000/pair), TP-6.5 Series II phonostage ($12,500), and TL-7.5 Series III linestage preamplifier ($30,000); a special edition of YG Acoustics Sonja 2.3 loudspeakers wired with Nordost ($112,800/pair); and enough Nordost Odin 2 cabling and power products to keep several silver and copper mines operating for weeks.