Jeffrey Catalano of High Water Sound in New York always has one of my favorite rooms to visit at any audio show. Why? Well, he knows music, he knows the equipment and he is willing to share his knowledge with anyone. This was as true as ever at T.H.E. Show this year. The room sounded great, I heard LPs that I had never heard before, and the room was full of people talking about jazz, blues and rock music.
The System
Everything in his system was different from what he had at AXPONA except for the turntable, and that debuted at AXPONA. It was the TW-Acustic Raven GT II turntable at $10,000 mounted with two of their 12-inch tonearms that sell for $6,000 each. The cartridges were the Charisma Audio Signature One for $3,800 and the Miyajima Labs Infinity Mono for $3,370. You can see a close-up of the table in our Turntable Eye Candy post here.
The rest of the system consisted of the Horning Hybrid Systems Aristotle Ellipse PM65 Speakers that sell for $18,000 for a pair. They were driven by the Tron-Electric Atlantic Integrated 300B SE amp at $18,000 with their Convergence Signature Stereo and Mono Phono Preamps for $3,260 each.
Jeff was using a Silent Running Audio Scuttle rack with an Ohio XL platform for the turntable. The power conditioning was from Vibex Alhambra and Granada. Cables were from Furutech. Room tuning was accomplished with Shun Mook Acoustics room tuning products.
The Sound
The smaller Horning Hybrid Systems Aristotle Ellipse PM65 speakers sounded like they were made for this space. At AXPONA, we gave High Water Sound the award for the best analog system under $100,000. You can read about that here. The system at T.H.E. Show was more than $30,000 less, and I did not notice a huge drop off in sound from my memory of the system at AXPONA.
The High Water Sound system sounded very much like live music, and it was also emotionally involving. All in all, it was great fun to listen to, and what more can you ask for from a stereo.
Note: You can access all of our coverage for T.H.E. Show 2019 here.
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