CES 2014

The floorstanding Canalis loudspeakers in the Spiral Groove room, driven by Qualia digital source and amplification, were new to me, but were sounding clean, uncolored, and dynamic on the classic LP of Massenet’s Le Cid from Louis Fremaux and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, played on a Spiral Groove SG1.1 player fitted with an Ortofon Anna cartridge. Like all Canalis speakers, the new Amerigo ($10,000/pair) was designed by Joachim Gerhard (erstwhile designer of AudioPhysic and Sonics) and manufactured in the Bay Area by Spiral Groove, and should be available in March.

The Amerigo uses SEAS drive-units—including a 5" midrange unit and two 5" aluminum-cone woofers— and the sleek appearance, with a vent at the base of the front baffle, hides a complex inner construction. Each woofer is loaded differently to give an alignment that Gerhard feels combines the benefits of both transmission line and reflex loading. Whereas a reflex has two impedance peaks in the bass, Gerhard’s new topology has three peaks, and is said to avoid the pipe resonant modes in the upper bass that often afflict short transmission-line designs.