By Richard H. Mak
Just like every other year, Tri-cell Enterprises always have the most number of room. This year, I counted 4 but I was told there was 5. The room that caught my attention featured the Acapella Atlas horns (CAD$ 118,000/pr). The system consists of a Transrotor Orion Reference FMD Turntable (CAD$10,000), a Reed 3Q 12″ Macassar Ebony Tonearm in a Palladium Satin finish (CAD$7,200), a Goldnote CD-1000 CD Player (CAD$10,000), a Thoress Phono Stage (CAD$ 13,750), a Aesthetix Janus Signature Preamp (CAD$ 15,000), and an Accustic Arts AMP II Mark 2 amplifier (CAD$ 18,150).
The Acapella Atlas looks taller than they are in the pictures, and stood nearly 5 1/5 feet tall. They are massive in size and in weight, which will almost take up as much as space as the Everest. There are six 10″ drivers housed in the same cabinet.
Coincidentally, they were playing the exact same song “The Box” by the King Singers which I heard the Acapella’s on a few years back at the CES. I still remember that they were powered by Einstein equipment back then. The sound coming out of these horns are always airy and life like, almost too life like and more euphonic than the real thing, especially with choirs and vocals. Somehow cone speakers simply does not give you this type of sound. You either like it or you don’t.
By the Beard of Odin and the Belly of the Buddha…That is one fugly turntable. Looks like something of an industrial nightmare out of the silent classic, “Metropolis”. I know, I know… Beauty is in the eye and all that, but really now. Fugly goes to the soul. The speakers look like something form the Emerald City, i.e., very Oz-ish. The rest of the stuff is totally bitchin’, fab and gear! I mean that. That CD player looks the tits! Sweetness made metal! Huzzah, indeed!
I freely admit to my having a love/hate thing going on with overly industrial-inspired equipment. For me, one of the best looking CD players out there is the Accuphase DP-560. Gorgeous. Some would ask, “How does it sound?”
It doesn’t. It plays what is on the disc, neither adding nor subtracting from the music. That, my friends, is what equipment should do. Bring you the music and in doing so, take you home. After all, home is where the heart is and while some would say that relationships should have no strings attached I would say otherwise. The only strings that matter are heartstrings.
And what better way to strum them than with music? Oh…And looks matter. Damn straight, my friends.
Sir Richard of Mak, thank you so very much for words and photographs. I know I appreciate them and am quite certain others looking in do as well.
SS