RMAF 2012

Musical Surroundings

Stephen Mejias  |  Oct 17, 2012

On the Mezzanine Level, in the Crestone Peak room, Musical Surroundings put together an audacious, high-aspirations system:

Focal Maestro Utopia loudspeakers ($50,000/pair); Clearaudio Master Innovation Wood (ha) turntable ($25,000) with its matching Wood (ha ha) stand ($9000), Statement record clamp ($1000), Outer Limit peripheral ring clamp ($1350), and Goldfinger Statement phono cartridge ($15,000); Graham Phantom II Supreme 10” tonearm ($5750); Aesthetix Romulus VC DAC/CD player ($8000), Io Eclipse VC phono preamplifier ($19,500), Callisto Eclipse ($19,000), and Atlas Mono monoblock power amplifier ($16,000/pair); TARA Labs Air 1EX cables; Critical Mass rack and amp stands; and Running Springs AC conditioning. A second turntable—AMG’s beautiful Viella 12 with 12J2 tonearm and wood trim skirt ($16,500) was equipped with a Benz-Micro LP-S phono cartridge.

About the only thing I could ever afford in this room was the record: Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” had never sounded so smooth, so groovy, so deep in the pocket.

Musical Surroundings’ Garth Leerer also played a great new ORG release, Jon Hendricks’ Fast Livin’ Blues, which showed off the system’s outstanding sense of momentum and flow and its realistic tone color, especially with brasses.

COMMENTS
JohnnyR's picture
Submitted by JohnnyR on October 17, 2012 - 3:46pm

Yet another ridiculously priced system. NEXT.

Regadude's picture
Submitted by Regadude on October 17, 2012 - 3:51pm

Hey Johnny on the swing. Just because you can't afford anything better than your current system:

A 1986 Sansui CD player;

Lloyds 15 watt integrated amplifier;

Realistic (radio Shack brand) speakers from 1982;

Doesn't mean that expensive high end stuff is no good. Get a job and buy better gear...

Pro-Audio-Tech's picture
Submitted by Pro-Audio-Tech on October 30, 2012 - 11:52am

So many negative posts on web sites these days and most of it useless info.

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