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That's a great demo disc.
On hand were Rogue’s M-180 monoblocks ($5495/pair), Athena line preamp ($4995), and Ares phono preamp ($1995). A turntable equipped with an Oswalds Mill slate plinth, two 12” Schick tonearms ($1475 each), and a Miyajima Shilabe cartridge ($2800) was helping to produce enormous, fleshy images with tons of color and impact. Then, Robyatt Audio’s Robin Wyatt quickly and effortlessly switched over to a Premium BE Mono cartridge ($1140)I think he might have had his eyes closed when he did it, tooand suddenly everything just got bigger and better. The record was Ben Webster’s Soulville.
I’m sure the speakers also had something to do with the awesome sound. The Revel Ultima Studio2 loudspeakers ($16,000/pair) have received high praise from Kal Rubinson, Fred Kaplan, and John Atkinson.
Cables were supplied by Tel Wire, another company completely new to me. In fact, Tel Wire’s Chris Kline informs me that this was his first show. Tel Wire Cable ($1299) was used for the Revels; Tel Wire Connect ($699, RCA) was used between the phono stage and preamp and between the pre and power amps. Tel Wire Cord AC cord ($799) was used for the phono stage and preamp, while Tel Wire HC (high-current) Cord ($999) was used for the power amps.
This was one of my favorite rooms at Rocky Mountain.
I'm not sure what it is, but at RMAF 2010 just as at RMAF 2009 the Revels just didn't move me. Perhaps I'm the only one, but I thought the original Revel Studio and Salons sounded much better than the Studio2/Salon2s do, both of the newer ones having an ever so slight "boxy" coloration to them(The first generation of Revel Ultimas had a rear firing tweeter that seemed to downplay other colorations.)
This was one of my "audio oasis" rooms. Robin treated me to a couple of wonderful mono recordings and I was in heaven. As a previous exhibitor, I can agree wholeheartedly with Robin....a given system cannot play without the cabling, and the Tel-wire was an integral part of the beautiful presentation.