February 26, 2012 by Michael

CES 2012 – CH Precision, Magico speakers, Argento cables

This room was interesting. Like the Kondo room, which this year was a perfect example of their sound – I though this room was a perfect example of the Magico sound.

The sound was tight, punchy, dynamic, high energy – enough harmonics and resolution so a person did not feel cheated. To me, this is what most manufacturers think people want to hear when they enter a dealership. This may even be true, especially for non audiophiles, although I cannot remember about the ultimate impressiveness of the deep bass of this system, also a requirement for people walking into dealerships, and which 1) I do not pay all that much attention to unless it is especially well done, and 2) would be really hard to do anyway in these rooms at this show unless a person a) got lucky or b) spent a lot, A LOT, of time on setup.

There was some confusion, on my part – corrected by you all 🙂 – about which amp was being used in this room. As it turns out , the two CH Precision A1 amps here were not being used – in fact they are off – and the Luxman amps were being used instead [as you all can see by tracing speaker cables in this and the following photo].

Because the Luxman amps have sounded soft and laid back and tonally confused in several of the past rooms I have heard them in [and in the Vivid / Audio Aero room down the hall at this show] I can only speculate on whether they are uniquely able to drive the Magico speakers [and there has to be some degree of truth to this, having heard the Soulution and Technical Brain and several other amps fail at it], or perhaps they just do not mate so well with their own Luxman preamps [but do mate well with the CH Precision preamp] – to my way of thinking, anyway.

Another photo of the room setup