John Atkinson

Perhaps it was the ridiculously expensive 20Wpc Lars tube amplifiers that Wes Phillips blogged about yesterday, but the modest-looking Prio 620 speakers (price starting at $5750/pair) from Finnish manufacturer Amphion, sounded both sweet and powerful on a track from bassist Brian Bromberg. The titanium-dome tweeter is loaded with Amphion's proprietary waveguide, which matches its dispersion above the low 1.2kHz crossover frequency to that of the twin 6.5" paper-cone woofers.

Wes Phillips gave me the tip. "You must check out the Sonicweld room. Their active Pulserod system uses the DEQX digital crossover." So I checked it out. Comprising two 4'-tall Pulserod towers and two Subpulse subwoofers, the system costs $110,000 but includes all amplification—three 200W class-D ICE modules for the upper-range drivers in each tower and a1.1kW class-D amp for each 15" subwoofer—the crossover module, cables, and even a remote control.

Montreal-based company Verity has been slowly building a reputation for sound quality with its unique speakers, which combine a conventional head-unit on-top a woofer module that, unusually, mounts the drivers on its rear. CES saw the launch of two new models, the Leonore ($15,995/pair) and Finn ($5995/pair). Both speakers offer high sensitivities in the low 90s, and while the Leonore produced an impressive sound from Keith Jarrett's Live at Carnegie Hall CD powered by Nagra's forthcoming MSA stereo amp that Wes Phillips blogged about earlier, I was also impressed by the more affordable, one-box Finn, which was demmed with Nagra's PMA "pyramid" amps. The rest of the system included a Basis Debut turntable and Vector 4 tonearm, Nagra PLL preamp and Nagra's new battery-powered BPS phono stage, which I am sure Mikey Fremer will be reviewing in the near future.

Although Mikey Fremer has received a pair for review, I haven't visited his Jersey crib yet to take a listen. So the system in Boulder's room at CES was my first chance to audition Wilson's new MAXX 3. I popped a data disc with some of my hi-rez 24-bit/88.2kHz files in the Boulder 1021 CD player, and a list of the WAV files appeared on the player's screen. The 1021 will play data CDs carrying FLAC, WAV, Vogg Orbis, and MP3 files, and as I found, will decode and play hi-rez files.