Florida Audio Expo 2020

AudioShield, now the distributor for Credo Audio of Switzerland, partnered with Florida dealer House of Stereo to introduce the Swiss maker’s EV Reference One speaker ($40,000/pair) in a system driven by a full suite of EMM Labs high-end electronics, with EMM’s DV2 integrated DAC with preamp stage and volume control ($30,000) and NS1 streamer ($4500) and Wolf Audio Systems Alpha 3 SX Audio Server ($9895) as digital sources. A van den Hul Grail SE+ phono stage and a VPI HW-40 40th Anniversary turntable served as the analog front end.

The Credo EV (as in Evolution) Reference One three-way speaker is small-batch hand-made—including most all its parts—product, and is supplied in two completely separate sealed cabinets (joined by jumper cables), with side-firing woofers (one per channel) and drivers custom-made by ScanSpeak. Having two separate enclosures per side improves isolation and vibration control through decoupling but also allows for versatility in positioning the speakers: You can have the 12-inch long-throw woofers face outwards or inwards by swapping which side they’re placed on; same for the coated-textile tweeter and coated-paper-cone midrange units with their off-center tweeters. The bass, which sounded nice and punchy on some funky hi-rez digital tracks, is said to reach down to a 20-to-30Hz rolloff (at -10dB to -3dB); frequency response is spec’d as 40Hz to 20kHz.

Wolf Audio showed its Alpha 3 SX audio server that also does ripping, streaming, and more. Based on HFAS+ Apex, it contains 32GB of RAM and is capable of 1024DSD playback over USB (a rare feat in itself) and plays six-channel DSD256. 2TB of onboard storage comes stock with upgrades to 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 10TB, and 12TB, available at additional cost.