There is a nice simple system that plays music in this room, but face it, many rooms like this are primarily setup for us to ogle at the gear on static display. And there will be a lot of opportunity for ogling before this post is done.

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable and Concept cartridge

T+A Music Receiver

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 speaker

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 monitor speaker

On a table against the wall as we come into the room, a bevy of Clearaudio phono stages…

List of Clearaudio cartridges and… what looks like bearings…

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner – the front view

The Clearaudio Double Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio ‘Concept’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Performance DC’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Ovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation Compact’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable tonearm

The Clearaudio High Precision Level Gauge. Looks like this would work quite well – and this table on static display is not level. For shame… 🙂

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Accu Drive’ BPS turntable power supply

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Took several photos of this new table. The table is $27,500. The stand $8,000. And the linear tracking TT-2 tonearm $10,000

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Cool the way the platter lights up…

The Clearaudio ‘TT-2’ tonearm

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Every show there is always someone who walks up and plants themselves in the photo background. This show… this is that guy.

Onda Systems makes cables. They used this system consisting of the Vandersteen 5a Carbon speakers, Aesthetix Janus preamp and Atlas amp, and 2 Accustic Arts CD Player 1 players. The 2 players were going to be used to do quick demonstrative comparisons [shootouts] between various of their cable = but one of the players was having issues when I was there.

Onda cables are similar to the Acapella Silvercables in that they are solid core silver. You can bend them with your hands fairly easily but they are thick – so it ain’t THAT easy.

What is cool about these cables is that the spades, for example, on the speaker cable are molded as one piece with the cable so there is no seem, no discontinuity between cable and connector.

Sonically, the cables sounded very nicely clean and rich in the midrange. I did not listen long enough to test for leading edges and micro-dynamics, sometimes problems for solid core cables.

The Vandy 5a Carbon loudspeaker

The rear of the Vandersteen 5a Carbom speaker

A close up of the rear of the Vandersteen 5a Carbom speaker and the Onda speaker cable integral spades.

The Accustic Arts CD Player 1

The Accustic Arts CD Player 1 closeup

The Aesthetix Janus full-function preamp (with phono stage)

The Aesthetix Atlas amp

A pile of Onda power cables

Onda Crybaby and Rush interconnects

This room featured some of Musical Surroundings own gear as well as gear they import like Fosgate.

In this room they were running the AMG turntable through a Fosgate photo preamp into Aesthetix electronics and using a Magico Q1 speaker. This was all sitting on a HRS SXR rack. There were several things on static display, as we’ll see below. I did not spend much energy listening here – sometimes I just space out I guess.

This room used two 4-shelf HRS SXR racks instead of a side-by-side (double-wide). Not sure why.

A couple of shots of the Magico Q1 monitor (stand-mounted) speaker

A few more shots of the AMG (Analog Manufaktur Germany. Used to be Benz-AMG) turntable which we saw in the last room as well

Anyone else think the LPs on the AMG turntables in these rooms look kind of dirty?

The Fosgate Signature phono stage

The Aesthetix Pandora USB DAC. Guess they used this when not playing the turntable.

Aesthetix Rhea phono stage. Seems redundant given the Fosgate phono stage. Backup I guess.

The Aesthetix Calypso linestage.

On static display they had an all black AMG turntable. I like this look.

This is what the AMG plinth looks like with nothing on it. Very solid looking metal construction.

I think this is the AMG motor, a belt [the belt must be hidden underneath the platter during use] and what may be an arm pod.

The Fosgate Signature phono stage on static display

The Fosgate Signature Tube Headphone amp on static display

Musical Surroundings Phenomena II and NovaPhenomena Phono preamp on static display

Musical Surroundings Supernova II preamplifier on static display

The Musical Surroundings Fozgometer.

So… I guess this is used to determine if a mono source has an image directly between the two speakers like it is supposed to [instead of using one’s ears]?