This could have also been entitled Horns the European way mk3, as I have already covered Cassaro and Tune Audio for this year’s Munich show. Aries Cerat comes from Cyprus and they offer cost no object electronics and speakers for an almost complete system. Cables came from British/ Greek manufacturer Signal Projects while Rui Borges of Portugal chimed in with a big turntable and a Top Wing Red Sparrow MC cartridge mounted on Thales tonearm, the only non European component was the cartridge. Aries Cerat produces exquisite ladder DACs, in this case it was the Kassandra Signature II which was fed by Pink Faun‘s streaming computer. Stacore of Poland offered their tremendous air isolation rack. I won’t go into details regarding the price of the components, this is a system retailing above $ONE MILLION with cables and everything.
So the question here is rather simple, is it worth a MILLION? No. I mean yes, well, depending on who you are.
Leaving aside the ridiculous retail price, and in Munich there are even more expensive systems with cables alone costing in the hundreds of thousands, a few notes from a more technical point of view. The Symphonia three-way horn speakers with Erevus bass horns were amazingly well blended. I have an allergy for big horns as they usually fail to disappear from the room and one can easily locate from where the bass comes, especially when from a separate cabinet. Not in this case. Chapeau.
The Achilleas Legend series single ended triode power amplifiers were a six chassis design, three per channel and each was huge, and already sold. Which means that someone can afford this system and went on and bought it. Good for him, this was a very, very good presentation of what horns and tube amps can do with the only caveat being the price. Apart from that there was not much more to expect from an audio system.
