February 5, 2012 by Michael

THE Show 2012 (at CES) – Lotus Group, Audio Power Labs, WAVAC, Pranawire

This room featured the Lotus Group’s Granada loudspeakers being bi-amped with the big Audio Power Labs TNT-833 amps and the smaller WAVAC MD-805m amps. The larger WAVAC amps that were originally planned for this system developed some kind of issue during shipping, I think.

I was happy to see the Audio Power Labs here, having just come from the room that featured them on the smaller Tidal ‘piano’ speakers. I really was anxious to hear the Granada speakers pushed closer to their audiophile limits than I had previously heard them – those being systems with the speakers driven by the Pass Labs amps and later the Musical Fidelity amps.

Unfortunately something was not quite right here.

The sound was dull, notes kind of slurring together; atonal, notes not ringing free [which these speakers can do really well] and the color was more pastelish than vivid [which these speakers can also do well]; and dynamically compressed, specifically in the midi-dynamic region, with micro-dynamics not really happening either.

I only heard the system driven by the CD player, even tho I came back here a few times – but Neli heard it later with the Hanss turntable and said it sounded much better. They may have made other changes to the front end as well.

Trying to capture the glow of the vacuum tubes of the Wavac and Audio Power Labs.