Michael Garner of Tweek Geek, the best named Colorado dealer, used RMAF to demonstrate his first house-brand loudspeaker, the BMF-1 ($20k or so if they ever produce them). I don’t need to explain those initials, do I?
He was joined by John Young and Hillary Russ of Acoustic Imagery. John was excited to tell us all bout his Jay-Sho balanced, passive, autoformer preamp ($9k), which bears a shocking resemblance to a fully kitted out Slagleformer preamp from Bent Audio without all the hideous DIY case work. That fed a pair of his don’t-call-them-cute Atsah nCore monoblocks ($9k per pair).
But back to that Big Mother… err… Funker? It was designed with the aid of Mike Galusha, whose name should be familiar to anyone who haunts the DIY section of any audio forum. It features a horn-loaded AMT driver over a 12″ mid-bass. The bottom sides of the cabinet are stuffed with 12″, opposed, and powered subs. It is a monster.
A monster.
The ubiquitous Auralic Aries and Vega were the source. Precision, speed, and freight train power were the order of the day, here. So was a taught leanness that made it clear that Auralic’s signal was well honored. While the overall presentation style is not really my thing, the easy detail and ambience these folks managed to wring out made it clear that the Vega is, if anything, a completely underrated source.
And isn’t that really the point of having all that other hardware?
Love the Ikea bamboo “shelves”. That’s an effective tweak!