CES 2012

Crystal Cable's first loudspeaker, the Arabesque, used a complex-shaped enclosure fabricated from glass panels. Three years later, the Dutch company showed the new Arabesque Mini ($25,000/pair plus $1000/pair for matching stands), which uses a small aluminum cabinet with the same "comma" cross-section as the glass speaker, a shape that confers advantages when it comes to controlling the inevitable air-space resonances. A beryllium-dome tweeter is coupled to a long-throw, 1" maximum excursion (presumably peak–peak) 6" woofer. Crystal specifies distortion as being <0.5% from 120Hz to 20kHz, though no spl is given for this specification.

Driven in the Audio Plus Services suite in the Mirage by the astonishing Devialet D-Premier digital amplifier (review underway), the Arabesque Minis produced a big, easy sound for such a small speaker. The Devialet is now available in gloss white and back finishes, as well as the mirrored chrome that so frustrated Robert Deutsch's attempts to photograph it.