Scott Dalzell of Viva HiFi was demoing some very, brand new, sweet stand-mounted monitors from Daedalus Audio, the $4,600 Pan. Sensitivity 95/96dB, -3dB at 40Hz, and yes, they’re heavy — Scott says they’re maybe 50lbs each. The drivers and crossover come directly from the rest of the line (mostly poly). The front baffle is angled, like it is on the Argos, giving some non-parallel surfaces to help with sound. Lou calls the Pan a “point-source” as opposed to a “line-source”, like his other designs, so using them in near-field is most definitely encouraged — and that front-ported design gives some serious placement flexibility.
A ModWright KWI-200 integrated ($5,000) was paired with the the highly modded Oppo BDP-105 that I’ve been drooling on curious about. Price as configured, with the ModWright “Truth” mods, is now $4,350 (including the player, purchased separately).
Kanso Audio Furniture held everything upright. As configured, the Kata series rack is $6,412.
WyWires Platinum cabling makes a debut here at CAF (prices start at $2,299 for speaker cables), and was matched with a mix of power cords from the Silver and Gold lines. A Daedalus/WyWires joint effort produced the Power Broker ($2,499), distributing all the power to the system. You might remember seeing this recently, here on Part-Time Audiophile.
Here’s the skinny on the sound — sign me up. I’ll take it! The Pan is smokin’ hot, and the combo with with ModWright and WyWires is “keeper” class audio. I’m a fan.
For some reason, I preferred this setup of the smaller Pans and ModWright integrated over the larger, more expensive Daedalus/ModWright setup in the lobby. Maybe it was the tubed Oppo or room dynamics, but the Pans got my vote on that one.
Seconded! This is something you can actually envision taking home (and paying for).