$12K AUDIO SYSTEM

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ABOUT THE $12K SYSTEM

 

This one is EL34 tube powered by components from Fezz Audio's Tube Electronics Series, essentially combining 35W of unusually potent but also surprisingly refined push-pull power with a high sensitivity loudspeaker of the concentric / non-complex crossover topology -- Frank Fazzilari's Coherent Audio TEN Classic ... sporting very special custom-modified Radian drivers.

 

The front end is the INNUOS Zen Mini MK3 Music Server / Streamer [UPNP & ROON] with a 1TB HDD. DAC duties are catered to by Daniel Frauchiger's exceptional MERASON Frerot DAC of Switzerland .... both musical jewels. The system is suitable for rooms up to about 15ft x 20 ft, and can restitute all Music Genres except very demanding Hard Rock material.

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This system's sound character : The Coherent Audio TEN's 10" co-axial Radian driver delivers a powerful, smooth and balanced full sound top-to-bottom with no perceptible accentuation. It leans towards a full, generous and palpable restitution as opposed to being overly delicate, too polite and laid back. Being quasi-full range, its Phase behavior is ... well ... as its name implies ... COHERENT. This, by the way, applies to all the Coherent Audio speakers.

 

The choice of the FEZZ Audio Silver Luna Legacy Integrated Amp to drive the Coherent Ten takes advantage of the EL34 tube's relatively linear response and its excellent bandwidth through Fezz's top notch "way-oversized" output transformers. These OPTs let through an amazing amount of Current ... a quality that all Fezz amplifiers have in common ... pure bliss. The Fezz Toroidal OPTs ensure a total lack of "muddiness", no "flab" in the mid bass, and excellent "higher" frequency air and micro-dynamic detail. The combination with the Coherent Audio Ten is ideal for Jazz, Vocals, Folk, Soft Rock and Classical music lovers.

 

INNUOS is gaining a reputation as the GO-TO server in terms of both functionality and superb sound quality ... and these qualities are present across their entire line, starting with the INNUOS ZEN MINI MK3. All INNUOS servers include a CD drive for Ripping, their own proprietary motherboards, sophisticated linear power supplies, all manner of gremlin-killing filtration and shielding ... in brief, an all out declaration of war on all the known perturbations plaguing DIGITAL. This design is an all out cutting edge effort aimed squarely at retrieving, ripping, storing, and "serving up" digital media to the next critical digital component in the chain, the DAC.

 

Amongst many other functionalities, the super-intuitive InnuOS operating system software allows the user to select between UPNP, ROON Core or ROON Server. Innuos new SENSE app provides cross-platform and really user friendly "Command and Control" capabilities.

 

The ZEN MINI's character -- YES IT HAS ONE -- is very PRaTy, rhythmic and engaging. Compared to the ZEN MK3, it is more playful and wistfully entertaining in a Mozart-ian sense. The ZEN MK3 has a slightly more laid back Brahms-ian presentation, which is larger and more serene.

 

MERASON is SO VERY typically Swiss ... no uber-hoopla BS promises ... no nonsense ... no hype ... rigorously practical ... clean, understated, elegant aesthetics ... seriously dependable, quality build. Ohhh, and by the way, Daniel must have a very deep love for music. He also unquestionably must have spent endless hours voicing his DACs ... because their "performance" is simply tantalizing. They were made to "Worship on the Altar of Music". I guess by now you can tell that I really love the Frerot :=))

 

Like all our system compositions, this $12K system will deliver the musical goods, is right on the money in terms of Value, and is guaranteed to please !

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If your preferred music is less demanding and you have a modestly sized listening environment, then call us and we can recalibrate the system to include a Single Ended Tube amp, such as the Trafomatic Aries Integrated. This amp's two EL34's are triode-strapped into Class-A, and deliver 6W /pc, A custom amp for ~ $4,000.

 

However, and for about $2,500 more, we could modify this system and enter very serious "PSE-Land" with the Audio Hungary Qualiton A35i integrated amplifier. This amp puts out 35W of Parallel Single Ended tube power from its four triode-strapped 6L6s, a tube often referred to as the "King of Jazz".

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