RMAF 2010

Selah Audio, a North Carolina speaker manufacturer that sells its products direct on the net, was showing the Verita sealed box loudspeaker ($2000/pair, or $2650 with the veneer displayed at the show). A sealed box with 84dB sensitivity and a frequency range of 60Hz–20kHz, it combines the excellent RAAL ribbon tweeter from Serbia's Aleksandar Rasisavijevic with a ScanSpeak woofer.

Dragan Solaja of Serbia (pictured) also pointed out the Solaja SA-TUC1 remote controlled passive preamplifier ($1800, not yet distributed in the US), Solaja SA-R tube preamp ($4500), and Red Dragon Audio M500 50W monoblocks ($1398/pair). Zooming into the photo also reveals a Marantz player and Benchmark DAC.

The preamp I heard had 6dB volume detents, which meant that we could never get the right volume level for the music I wanted to hear. When I finally surrendered to too low volume, the sound was most successful in the tweeter range. The woofer side of things was, according to my notes, "kinda wooly", neither clear nor full enough. Perhaps the woofer sounds better at higher volume.