CES 2012 – Perfect8, Balabo
The Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 loudspeakers
Last year they brought their larger speakers, which were interesting, although there were issues with the cone drivers keeping up with the ribbons. This year, after what were described as significant modifications, the speakers were not as interesting, perhaps because they were driving the system with the Slim Devices, which is perhaps not the best thing to use when trying to demonstrate high quality speakers – although one ‘should’ still be able to hear around it…
The Grand Prix Monaco rack had a Zanden CD player and BAlabo electronics.
A Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 speaker
A Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 speaker closeup
A Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 speaker
A Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 speaker
A Perfect8 ‘The Point’ Mk2 speaker from behind
The Zanden 2000 Premium transport
The Zanden 2000 Premium transport
The Zanden 2000 Premium transport
The Zanden 2000 Premium transport power supply
The BAlaba BC-1 MK II control amplifier
The BAlabo BD-1 DAC
The BAlabo BD-1 DAC from a different angle
The BAlabo BP-1 MK II amplifier
The Slim Devices transporter
The Blue Smoke Entertainment Systems music server
how do you know it was the slim devices and not the speaker/room/power/dac/amp/preamp?
Hi David! 🙂
Not the speaker – we had thought long and hard about carrying Perfect 8. Did a lot of listening.
Not the BAlabo (DAC, amp, pre) – it is of the, pardon me, boring sounding solid-state gear. Such gear, in the attempt to avoid brightness and edginess and nastiness at all costs they IMO remove too much of the signal.
Not the room, though the room can be nasty, sure, but small speakers like this, and as heavily damped as the Venetian is…
Could be the rack – this rack does have a tendency to sound a little bright sometimes…
But AFAICT all devices like slimdevices circa 2012 had a certain sound that was significantly inferior to CD. This was plainly evident as one walked through the rooms at the shows in those days. This is no longer the case. We just picked up Roon last week. [the Nucleus Plus is still in the box… Mike and Neli are in the middle of a fiesta of audio remodeling…]
So, don’t know for sure, of course, but it is with high degree of probability that the diagnosis was spot on.
So glad to hear from you. We HAVE to have you over once things are setup again… Still have the Polymer and Karan (I think it was)?
Take care,
-Mike