Fred Manteghian

Barely a few years old, Lipinski Sound makes great speakers. Now with a 600 watt bridged amp built into the stand, you'll only need to run interconnects out to them if you choose. If the stands seem highish, it's because that puts the tweeters at ear level. The five L707 speakers setup and playing SACDs to incredible effect are priced at $4,590/pr. The powered stand (yeah, it sounds funny saying that) are $2595 each. Not inexpensive, but the sound – a Mozart concerto – was ethereal, deep as the ocean, yet still solid as a rock. Lovely.

Kam M. Leung, designer of the Master 3 speaker from Focus Audio beamed proudly when he I told him music seemed to float between his massive speakers without clinging to them. The center image was stable, deep and just there. At $20,000 / pr, they're not a casual purchase, but if you're at the show, stop in and hear them. Ask Kam to play the cut from Neils Lofgrin: Acoustic Live. It's to die for.

MBL had some great sound in their room. Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" left me with goose bumps and Leonard Cohen's baritone vibrated through my being. While a playing of the "1812 Overture" was meant to highlight the dynamic abilities of the system (the demonstration only partially succeeded in this), I still find that these big speakers are at their best with more minimalist music, imparting the human voice, that violin of the gods, with a sweetness and believability that is rarely captured.

The system, composed of the MBL Reference line speakers mbl 101E ($46,900 / pr) and monoblock mbls 9011 amps ($73,200 / pr), mbl 6010 preamp ($19,000), mbl 1621 transport ($19,000) and mbl 1611 dac ($21,000), all run with Tara Omega speaker cables ($10K/pr) and Tara Zero digital cable ($6,000) and Zero interconnects ($14,000 / pair). And you need a couple of pair of interconnects too, so this stuff starts to add up big time. You do the math. If I had this kind of money, I'd pay off my mortgage first.