I don’t really have a favorite speaker. Not in brand, not in style, not in design. At this point, some 17 years of managing this site, I’ve long lost track of the number of demos I’ve heard. I’ve heard big speakers, small speakers, horn speakers, electrostats, dynamic speakers with paper cones and ceramic cones, yada yada yada. What I do know is that I don’t know — I am not an engineer and I don’t play one on TV — but I’m still able to marvel at a design that clearly does something different and then clearly does it well. The Clarisys Audio Aria ($195,000/pair), my case in point, prove that I’ve still a lot to learn about the search for great sound. And that’s exactly the way I want it.
To be blunt, I haven’t spent any real time with Clarisys speakers, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for not being the expert in the brand’s design-approach or the sound they make. In fact, and as something of an aside that I’ll return to in the show summary, it was made exquisitely clear at this show that very few “hobby writers” at this show (or any other) are in truth much farther along than I am, even if they choose to argue that point. Let’s just say that there were opinions expressed in Florida that made it pretty clear that what the media do in this industry is somewhat different than what the Associated Press does. Be that as it may, pt.AUDIO is still here, still having a fine ol’ time, and still sharing our experiences. Some of those experiences have been with Clarisys, who got a runner-up Best-in-Show nod from this very show, last year — check out those links at the bottom.
For those of you even less in the know than I am, the Clarisys Audio Aria are “bi-pole” — and while the value of this approach is worthy of discussion, the short-form benefit for most of you will be “less interaction with the room”. These speakers are true ribbons — not just ribbon tweeters — and that confers advantages on speed, coherence, and therefore, on realism. At some point, we’ll go into the details about Florian Wiegand’s designs, but for those of you unable to resist your curiosity, detailed discussion is available on the Clarisys site (see here).
The rest of the system was just as imposing as the massive speakers. On the floor were a quartet of the monstrous Pass Labs X600 mono block amplifiers ($31,460 each), and on the Ictra Designs rack was the Pass XS Pre2 ($56,000), the MSB Cascade DAC ($90,000+ as configured here), a Pink Faun dual ultra music server/streamer ($75,900). Signal Project cables were used throughout.
Florian told me that the Clarisys Audio Aria panels have an unusual amount of travel, which translated here in Florida as “slammin’ bass”, and the ribbons flew their colors with incredibly transparent sound. For my time in the hot seat, I will offer that the imaging was vividly other-worldly, and of the mega-speaker systems on display here at the Florida Audio International Expo, this room was the one that show-goers were giggling about in the hallway. This room was very popular every day I visited, and the supremely adjustable (and extremely massive) sail-like speakers both looked and sounded like “high end”, but I’m stunned no one requested “Come Sail Away” from Styx — though AC/DC did make an appearance!
Another Best-In-Show Contender, right out of the gate.
