Constellation Audio brought a pair of Magico Q7 loudspeakers to demo their new gear at CES, so I suppose you could say that no matter what happened, this was going to be a popular room. And so it was … each of my three times through the room only got me to the edge of the crowd. Getting to the sweet spot required me forcibly removing someone, but I did it, and too bad. Ha! Anyway, the long and short — I think the Q5 might have been a bitter fit for the room. Maybe?
Constellation has some of the hottest looking gear currently being made in today’s high-end, with visually entrancing subtleties to the textures and surfaces that I want to touch almost as much as I want to hear. Shown here with a suite of Centaur amplifiers ($28k each in stereo, $56k/pair in mono), bi-amping the Q7s took a stereo amp up top and a pair of monos for the down-below. Fronted by the brand-new Virgo II preamplifier ($24k) that features an all-new power supply and isolation system; visually, it’s still of a piece with the rest of the Performance Series. A Cygnus Digital file Player / DAC ($24k) fed the system.
Lovelovelove this line of gear. Wish they’d let me review a pair, but alas and alack, it doesn’t look like this will ever happen (though they were very nice about the brush off …). 😉
Curious when that integrated they announced is ever going to see the light of day.
Seems to be a bit of press but very little in the way of formal reviews of the Constellation gear thus far. Are there any rumours in “the industry” about their kit and it’s quality?
TAS has done one, I know. Other than that, not sure what else is en route. But from what I see/hear, they’re making SOTA gear.