This was one of the most interesting rooms of this year’s Munich show and had a strong Italian flavor with speakers from Albedo, electronics from Audia Flight and Music Tools racks.
Albedo is not the typical Italian speaker, it is not mellow warm and overly smooth in its presentation. In fact it is a much more modern concept and on the elaborate scale of 0 to 100 it comes pretty close to that 100 being among the most sophisticated ones. The Acxentia now in the Mk II version is a transmission line design with an incorporated Helmholtz resonator, a concept named by Eng. Costa Helmholine. The use of a resonator inside the cabinet eliminates secondary peaks inherent in transmission line speakers thus lowering colorations and by using Accuton ceramic drivers the end result is even more pronounced, fast and detailed is how I would describe it. The looks are definitely Italian though, with the wood and metal cabinet finished in exquisite manner.
Transmission line designs have their weak spots and sometimes end up in long decays in the bottom octave. This was not the case with the Audia Flight huge Strumento No. 8, a 500W/8Ohm, 3000VA power transformer and 48 output devices per channel monoaural amplifier capable of controlling perfectly the Axcentia speakers while offering a bit of their own character with the overall sound coming from the Strumento No. 1 preamplifier-24/192 DAC being on the warm side of neutral.
The whole was put together thanks to the impressive black pythons Golden Sequence cables by Signal Projects which vaunt industry low capacitance and resistance for a level of transparency that very few can match. I gave the system a run with music standing in the antipodes, the Thunder and Lightning polka by Strauss and Oh Yeah by Yello. Deep bass without the use of sub-woofers and credible string passages made up for a very convincing presentation.
