I am a fan of Sonist loudspeakers. They’re efficient, (relatively) affordable, well-made, and most importantly, sound great.
At CAF 2011, the Sonist speakers were teamed up with Mapleshade. The room dimensions were … ah … challenging, so some creativity was called for. What the Mapleshade folks settled on was an extreme nearfield approach to eliminate room acoustics from the sound quality of the system as a whole.
For what it’s worth, the approach worked a trick. The sound from these speakers, which I’d last heard at Axpona 2011, was the best I’d yet heard. Well done!
The gear used to push the sound out all came from Mapleshade. When I came through, that was a heavily modded Scott amplifier, though a Fi was standing by.
Everything was on maple. Of course. With tons and tons of brass. Of course.
Cabling was all Mapleshade as well. The pics won’t convey the sound in the room, which was quite good, so I can’t even make a snarky comment about the cable contribution. Oh, wait, I don’t have to as John Atkinson seems to have taken care of that. Fine, then, I’ll have to content myself with some photos. Enjoy.
While I used to own a Mapleshade Samson rack (and quite liked it), what I really go to their online store for these days is music. They do fantastic recordings. I picked up 5 — more on those soon.
