Enjoy The Music Show coverage
http://enjoythemusic.com/RMAF_2018/weaver/page4.htm
Greg Weaver's take
Finally, we come to the system that has set a new standard for achievement at an audio show, the Maroon Peak room, sponsored by Marietta, Georgia's, The Audio Company. This stunning room had no less than two world premier products; Kevin Hayes' new Valve Amplification Company's Statement 450i iQ integrated Amplifier ($150,000), and Von Schweikert Audio's second flagship launch, the ULTRA 9 ($200,000/pr.).
The Audio Company's tour-de-force; Esoteric digital, Kronos analog, VAC electronics and Von Schweikert loudspeakers, RMAF 2018's Best of Show, and by no small margin.
Make no mistake, this was an all-out assault on the senses, and the pocket book! Fronted by either the exemplary Kronos Pro turntable, with Black Beauty tone arm, carbon fiber arm board, and SCPS-1 power supply ($51,500), fitted with the Air Tight Opus 1 cartridge ($15,000) or the Esoteric Grandioso P1 transport ($38,000), Esoteric Grandioso D1 monoblock DACs – you need two ($38,000/pr.), the Esoteric G-01 rubidium clock ($20,000), and the Esoteric N-01 network audio player ($20,000). All the equipment was centered between the speakers and sitting on a Critical Mass Olympus Luxury rack ($61,500). This system uses Masterbuilt cables throughout and the room was treated with Acoustic Sciences Corporation (ASC) Tube Traps.
Stunningly sexy, in its world premiere, the VAC Statement 450i iQ left no doubt about its abilities or heritage.
As mentioned, making its first public appearance anywhere, amplification came at the pleasure of the
über sexy, sublimely versatile, and unflinchingly powerful VAC Statement 450i iQ integrated amplifier ($150,000). Essentially this is an attempt to combine the performance of the VAC Statement Phono($80,000), the VAC Statement Line ($75,000), and the two-chassis VAC Statement 450iQ amplifier($120,000), into one very large, frightfully beautiful integrated amplifier. Spoiler alert – this beastie offers to-freakin'-die-for performance.
The latest in the VSA Flagship series, the ULTRA 9, shown in a stunning red, is essentially the bottom half of their current flagship, the ULTRA 11.
Where the ULTRA 11 employs 14 drivers per side in a concentric array, the ULTRA 9 is essentially the bottom half of an ULTRA 11, using two 9" reinforced ceramic mid-bass drivers, a 7" reinforced ceramic midrange, a beryllium tweeter, and a 5" aluminum ribbon super tweeter on the front baffle. The back features a 15" sealed subwoofer powered by its own 1,000-watt amplifier near the base, a horn loaded Magnesium tweeter and a second ribbon super tweeter, identical to the one used on the front baffle, near the top. There is also a suite of controls to manage the subwoofer's level, frequency, and phase, the front tweeter and super tweeter level, and the rear ambience driver array level control.
To "decode" the original soundfield, VSA uses a unique crossover approach called the Global Axis Integration Network. In following their basic philosophical design approach, that it is, after all, the microphone's voltage signal that is recorded, not actual music, this crossover network is engineered to recreate a dispersion pattern that simulates the pickup pattern of an omni-directional microphone. Von Schweikert Audio has used this unique crossover methodology, which includes that integral ambience retrieval system (fed a specifically derived signal for a driver, or group of drivers, on the rear baffle of the enclosure) since the original VR-4 was released in 1993. Even before that, with the ongoing development of the original Vortex Screen, Von Schweikert has continually advanced this technology, which it has termed Acoustic Inverse Replication.
This pair of the Von Schweikert ULTRA 9 loudspeakers ($200,000/pr.) were shown in a stunning looking metallic flake red that just happened to match the top plate color of the VAC 450i iQ! Serendipity rulz! This system also used two Von Schweikert V12XS Shockwave subwoofers in the rear of the room that were phase adjusted to manage room loading. ($23,000).
Over the past 18 months, on three separate occasions, The Audio Company has been kind enough to let me program the room during the traditional after-hours listening sessions on Saturday nights. I show up with some of my favorite recordings, and they just let me play. It was during this extended listening session that I was able to draw these conclusions.
This system brought me closer to the sensation of live music than any other system I've ever heard, save perhaps for a very similar collection of gear that these same cats have previously taken on tour over the past 18 odd months, starting at AXPONA 2017. The big difference was that previous system featured two pair of the VAC Statement 450 iQ Monoblock Power Amplifiers ($120,000/pr.), and the 7' 6" tall, 28-driver, ULTRA 11 ($300,000/pr.) loudspeaker system.
Honestly, in this room and configuration, save for the ULTRA 11's incomparable sense of dynamic prowess and unrestricted, utterly unhindered ability to accurately scale with any music I've heard them recreate, and at
any volume, this pairing was more expressive, even more realistic and engaging.
The first thing that stood out for me was an unfettered and unrestricted sense of immediacy; an otherwise enormous and indefinable degree of emotional connectivity, of unrestrained musical expressiveness and communication. This level of emotional engagement and involvement was well above and beyond what I had heard with any previous iteration of this system, or of any other for that matter, in memory.
One of the many enthralled visitors to this room, retired San Antonio Spurs David Robinson is rapt in the music during one of his repeated visits to this room.
