In a minute I will add another setup (Dartzeel) I forgot, to the previous section…but now…
The impressing section (the last one)
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Einstein this year introduced their new largest prototype speaker and it’s a revelation, ribbon top, compression driver mids, large midrange dynamic driver and large bass driver, separate crossover, nearly all way adjustable in the crossover (which is worth a lot). I think the bass is active, I don’t remember exactly.
They sound absolutely seamless, dynamic, detailled, fantastic. An example how good show sound can be with some care (I guess they are also well adjustable to rooms). Their placement was less to listen deep into the room, but I bet they enable this very well, too. Around 150k probably.
Their new record player:
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Boring for those who read my other reports…Living Voice is always impressing. A little bit less for whatever reason than the years before but still an extremely lively, transparent, airy, 3D sound by quite tiny speakers. This is realistic sound (with some compromises due to the size of the speakers)…but in terms of soundstage they sound bigger than all previous sections and more lively than most, too.
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Odeon is always impressing with air, realism and a balanced sound (notable for horns at least). This year with much less costly amps than the years before, but still very nice.
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The Zellaton/Schnerzinger room used much smaller speakers than the years before (on a lower level), but the whole setup and especially the active HF noise cancelling all over the room and gear, enabled an amount of air and kind of realism not present in any other room.
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This years winner for me is a room with speakers, which must have transformed out of a B-movie monster scene.
One only gets the full amount of air, 3D and realism with the aforementioned measures, but this was great anyway. No horn coloration, fast, seamless, dynamic, resolving, airy, transparent, levitating, 3D. Horn with something like an internal open baffle bass and attached ribbon tweeter, semi active.
www.aries-cerat.com
Aries Cerat Speaker and electronics.
I bet only few of you heard about it yet.
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The back of the speaker
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Finally…I don’t come from the horn camp initially. Horns usually sounded heavily colored to me and rarely had seamless bass integration. Not rarely really bad sound. That’s why I’m very picky when it comes to horns. But I noticed, the further my own setup got (no horns), the more the kind of realism, ambiance enveloping, holographic imaging and air I‘m used to by partly non-market available tuning for the whole chain, comes closest with horns in normal setups,often driven by triodes or OTL amps. And if they manage to sound quite uncolored with seamless bass integration, the rest of their performance is quite striking, too. Anyway I never had horns…probably,because the ones I’d take and which can also deliver a solid, well integrated foundation which needs a certain quality of amps, too, cost a fortune. I’d try it with those however, I even like the looks…if I could afford them. I don’t remember the price, but I think it was something between 100-200k. But there’s more…look at their bigger ones…
