"You have to go by the Ayre room," He gushed. "It was . . . it was . . . I mean . . . Ohhhhhh! You just have to go."
So we took his, um, word for it.
It was . . . it was . . . you really should have been there."
What did us in was the combination of Ayre's spanking new reference loudspeakers, the incredible JBL K2 S9800se ($30,000/pair) and Ayre's new 300W MX-R mono power amplifiers (price TBA). Small the MX-Rs may be, but light they ain't—the chassis is milled out of a solid billet of aluminum and, as Steve Silberman put it, "the whole darn thing acts as a heat sink." The amp sports three paralleled transformers and operates in A/B—and it doubles its output into 4 ohms.
I had them insert the Marvin Sewell Group's The Worker's Dance into the Ayre C-5xe player and that's when the words escaped me. I'll try anyway: The sound was open and driving and rhythmic and dynamic—very dynamic. It was . . . it was . . . you had to be there. I'm sure glad I was.
We shall speak of this no more.
COMMENTS
Oh," great! Now i'm sure they will increase the price ever so much out of my budget! You could have said something like ""these lil amps could be a real giant killer if they price them low enough."" Somebody take Wes' keyboard away from him until he forces the prices out of the distributors first. Haggle", Wes, haggle!
Yep, JA, Steve Silberman confirmed that price of $15,ooo/pair at the Stereophile cocktail party last night. I'd asked if the prices were on the product sheet he'd given me and he said yes. The MX-Rs were listed as TBD," but they had come up with a price by showtime. That'll teach me to be more direct and ask ""How much they is?""
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