and tell the gentleman behind the counter that I am just here to drool. I was in California on business/pleasure this past weekend and the business part was over. I had nothing better to do but walk into an audio store and kick some tires.
The name of the store was Audio Video Today and was located at 14306 Beach Blvd in Westminster, CA. They had several rooms of gear, and a lot of very nice brands. He had Steely Dan blasting in a multi-channel room, but none of the two-channel rooms had anything fired up.
Right up front in the lobby area of the store was an impressive rack of Classe equipment. He had three pairs of speakers carefully arranged and toed-in in front of that rack. I asked to hear the Sonus Faber Amati Homage speakers. He asked if I was in the market for speakers. I told him I might be if I heard something that I could not live without. He was trying to size-me-up a little, but that's OK.
He did try and qualify the audition as something that would not be a serious/critical evaluation of the speakers/equipment b/c the speakers need to warm up for 15 minutes and the amps needed at least an hour to get to their peak.
Here is what we were listening to:
Classe CA-M400 monoblocks
Classe CDP-100
McCormack RLP-1
Audience I/C's
Audioquest Speakers Cables (not sure which model)
Sonus Faber Amati Homage
So after he qualifies this audition, and I'm thinking this isn't going to sound too good, he fires up a cd and from seemingly somewhere in the room music just appears in front of us. I almost asked if he could turn on the Sonus Fabers because I was sure the music was coming from somewhere else. But after a few seconds I remembered that he had just hooked the speaker cables up to them, so I knew they were the speakers we were listening to. But the music was just in the room, like it appeared from nowhere, like it was just there and not actually emanating from the system in front of me.
I have never heard a system like this. I have never heard a system that so totally disappeared and produced music in such a way as to make you think there is no system at all. I was absolutely floored. Just to make sure I was not imagining it, I gave up the center seat to my father-in-law who was with me, and his jaw hit the floor as soon as he sat down.
We only listened to two songs, but it was enough. I told the dealer that I had never heard a system like that before. He said the secret was actually a new product that he was evaluating. It was a power conditioner by Audience. He claimed that if you took the power conditioner out of the system, you would lose about 50% of the magic. I did not ask him to take it out so we could compare because we had a whole bunch of nothing to do that day, and I was not seriously going to buy this $3,800 unit. But if what he says is true, I urge those of you with more money than I to audition this unit.
You can find info on it here:
http://www.audience-av.com/power.htmWe ended up just talking about audio stuff for a while, and he was a really knowledgeable guy. If you are ever in Orange County with nothing better to do, drop in and listen to that system in the front of the store.
