ALMA Music & Audio, an audio retailer in San Diego, brought a serious system to T.H.E. Show starting with a pair of YG Acoustics Sonja XV Jr. speakers that will only set you back $189,600. They were driven by the D’Agostino Momentum M400s monoblocks at $65,000 per pair The preamp was an Audio Research REF 10 at $30,000 and a D’Agostino Momentum Phono stage, which cost $29,000. The analog source was the Technics SL-1000R, and the digital source was the wonderful Aqua HiFi xHD DAC at $17,000 paired with the Innous Zenith Statement Network Music Server. The power supply was the Stromtank S5000 massive battery power sine wave unit that goes for a whopping $39,000. The system was wired with Kubala-Sosna cables.
I was fairly familiar with the sound of most of this system except for the amplification, cables, and the power conditioner. I don’t know if it was the room or if the transistor amps were not broken in yet, but the sound just didn’t come together. I gave the same YG speakers a Bongo Award at AXPONA, and I’ve also heard the Technics SP1000R sound great at both at an Audio Vision customer event in San Francisco and at AXPONA. I’ve also heard the digital source sound great at AXPONA. At this show, it just didn’t happen, much as I would have liked to report differently.
I went back Sunday afternoon hoping to hear a big improvement, but I just wasn’t 
hearing what I had expected from this system. I think this is always a possibility at shows when you are in a hotel for the first time and showing with equipment that may not work well together.
The product on the left was new to me; it is a Stromtank S5000 massive battery power sine wave unit. This two-foot-square battery power supply is made in Germany and is supposed to get your system100% off of the electrical grid. The Stromtank is distributed in the USA by Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems. Its purpose is to remove your system from the power grid and supply a system with a pure 110 Volt, 60 cycle AC sine wave of lithium battery power.
The man behind the creation of the Stromtank is Wolfgang Meletzky, founder and former chief designer at MBL. If the batteries charge is depleted during operation the Stromtank will automatically go into charging mode, but you can still enjoy music during the charging process. This is the beauty of the Stromtank – even when connected to the AC power for recharging, the current that comes from the Stromtank is not taken from the grid, as this power is absorbed by the batteries.
I stand by my AXPONA show report about how great the YG speakers sounded in that system. Sadly, this combination didn’t sound nearly as good.
