The Story
Unassuming, modest, not drawing too much attention to itself. That’s how I would describe this room upon my entry. For personal regards I hold, spying RAAL tweeters from across the room, my interests are now peaked. The music begins, and ironically I’m guilty of the assuming. This room is down right spiritual. I say spiritual because the sound is cleaner than Vancouver and illuminated. Bass isn’t and shouldn’t ever be considered overwhelming, but I feel no detail in that area is missing. The word association games I play in my notes say “clever bass”, but I’ll come back to those auditory superlatives in a moment.
As I sit at center I get the feeling that I’m being seduced. Audio Vault USA has supplied the room with a stunning custom single width rack from their reference line, priced ($6,000 USD) as optioned for the show.
Exogal perfectly throned atop this rack, is exhibiting their Comet Plus DAC (with power supply upgrade) ($3,500 USD) along with their 100 watt per channel Ion Amplifier ($3,850 USD). Where is the preamp you might ask? In the DAC of course, the Comet DAC series features a 32-bit digital volume control, that is actioned by Exogal’s own Remote App which is compatible with just about any Android or iOS device you can find.
Holding court are Vehement Audio’s Brezza Savant loudspeakers, to which I am informed are a collaboration designed alongside Vapor Audio. What has resulted of this partnership is quite special. Utilizing a dense acrylic front baffle, the Brezza Savants convince me of their purpose, to disappear. The slot loaded port sits higher in the tower than I would have expected, and being to the front of the layout, it shows less audible interference than I also would have expected. Bass is clean but not overcooked, and loads the room with detail more than weight. Charged with shackling all of these components from one to the other is Verastarr cables.
Of special note were some of the components in the room that I proudly didn’t hear. Core Power Technologies Equi=Core 1800 ($2,000 USD) power conditioner tamed the electricity, along with Artnovion Acoustics sound panels ($2,500 USD worth), which wrangled those pesky first reflections into submission.
