The same qualities I strive for in my system at home—a sense of touch and drive, rich sonic textures and colors, musical momentum and flow—seem often to be abundant in the systems put together by the New York-based distributor and retailer High Water Sound. Given that, and the fact that HWS proprietor Jeff Catalano has superb taste in music, I was sad when the time came to leave this room and move on.
For this, their first time exhibiting at SSI, High Water Sound played a system comprising the lovely Thöress Systems 845 single-ended mono amps ($14,000/pair, and pictured above), plus Thöress preamp ($9000), TRON Seven GT phono preamp ($18,000), TW-Acustic GT turntable ($9,500) with two TW 10.5 tonearms ($5500 each), and Miyajima Labs Shilabe cartridge ($3000). This isn’t a cheap system, by any means, but to hear it play Bonnie Prince Billy’s new album, The Wonder Show of the World (LP, Drag City DC 2012) was to fall in love.
