Aries Cerat at Munich High-end 2019

Video and audio in 24bit, 96kHz was recorded both times Neli and I visited this room – on the 2nd day then later with Florian on day 4.

The speakers and bass horns [very impressive sounding, positioned outside of the main speakers, not seen here] were well integrated.  Clean, good separation, wide bandwidth, good dynamics, and a neutral sound. Analog sounded quite a bit better than the digital tracks I heard on day 2 – did not hear digital the last day.

Very different aesthetic than an Audio Note system at similar $1M price points which we find a little more musical and emotional and involving – though if we are talking about AN systems with AN speakers, this room had a bigger sound, more generally impressive [and certainly less room dependent setup constraints!].

Neli thought the end of the last track, the flamenco tap dancing, was too loud [I know! Didn’t know that was a phrase in her vocabulary!] The thumps of the feet tapping was indeed fantastically impressive and kind of distracted from the song – probably be fine if it wasn’t all being played back in such a small space at a hi-fi show at some significant volume [I thought it was fine, but I was in the front row, kind of between the bass horns].