CES 2010

Amplification in the Signature system in the Lamm room featured the ML3 Signature power amplifiers ($139,290/pair). Like the LL1 preamplifier, the ML3 isalso a four-chassis system. These 32W, single-ended, pure class-A amp is based on a direct-heated GM-70 triode.

The sound in the Lamm Industries system started with a digital front end from NeoDio, a full complement of Kubala-Sosna cables, and the Wilson MAXX 3. I totally blissed out listening to Arleen Auger singing works by Aaron Copland. The total cost of this system as I heard it was more than $335,000. This doesn’t include the analog front end that wasn’t hooked up yet. I’m still wondering why this system wasn’t under my tree this Christmas.

Jason Victor Serinus comments: In their large suite on the top floor of the Venetian, I think I got closer to the Lamm/Wilson experience than ever before. But what I heard puzzled me. On the one hand, listening to a voice I know very well, that of operatic tenor Fritz Wunderlich, I experienced a realistically scaled operatic voice and an equally credible, large soundstage. That's what big speakers on the order of the Wilson MAXX3s can do. The air around the voice was marvelous, as was the magical beauty of the midrange.

But on both the Wunderlich recording and another of a female jazz singer that was playing when I entered the room, I heard a metallic electronic edge around the voice that to these ears sounded artificially etched. I'm pretty familiar with the ringing sound of a large operatic voice, and how it interacts with acoustic space, but this was something different. Erich Lichte, who had visited this room when the turntable was not yet in operation, told me that he heard nothing of the sort on his CD of soprano Arleen Auger singing Love Songs. Who knows what was going on?