Over the last few years, I’ve taken a less visible role in our show-coverage team. Instead of focusing on writing articles, I take most of the photos and edit all of them, and I also create show-based social-media posts. Doing so has freed me up to do more listening, because I’ve been relying on Jason Thorpe and Matt Bonaccio to do the time-consuming, tedious work of gathering detailed product information.
But my changing role doesn’t mean I can’t write articles like this one. It just means that if I write something, it’s because I really want to—and that’s what happened when I visited the huge display room in the PGE Narodowy stadium belonging to Polish distributor Hi‑Fi Club, which had on display a system comprised of electronics from Electrocompaniet, speakers from Rockport Technologies, and cables from Transparent Cable. The first company in that list is based Norway, the other two in the USA.
Making sound were a pair of Rockport Lyras. The Lyra is currently the company’s flagship model, and it sells for $190,000 per pair (all prices in US dollars). That’s not exactly cheap for everyday folks, but not expensive compared to the stratospherically priced speakers on display at this show—and pretty much every show these days. Upstream from the Lyras were an EMC 1 MKV SE CD player ($6800), an ECM 1 MKII streaming DAC ($6000), an EC 5 preamplifier (price TBA), and a pair of AW 800 M mono amplifiers ($23,750 each), all from Electrocompaniet. Like the Rockport speakers, these are presently Electrocompaniet’s best electronics—and although not cheap, they’re priced far lower than the electronics I saw in many other rooms. Transparent cables and a power conditioner chained the system together.
Electrocompaniet’s Lasse Danielsen played DJ during the two times I visited the room. Danielsen is not only the company’s sales and marketing director, but also a drummer with diverse musical tastes (he’s turned me on to some good music-biography books). Unlike the generally lousy quality of music played in so many other rooms (something Jason regularly grouses about out in his show reports), Danielsen played highly listenable material that really showed off the system’s abilities. He even took requests, which wasn’t common in all the rooms.
What impressed me about the sound? First off, the Lyras aren’t that big, and the room they were playing in was far too large for almost any hi‑fi speaker of any size. But they had no trouble putting out a full-bodied, room-filling sound, with bass that had plenty of heft. And the system never sounded like it was straining, whereas a couple of systems with bigger speakers in similarly sized rooms did sound strained on loud passages. Kudos to the Rockport speakers and Electrocompaniet amplifiers.
The highs didn’t sound out of the ordinary—extended and clean, as you’d expect from speakers and electronics priced this high—but the midband was special. Along with copious levels of detail being revealed, there was a liquidity with a hint of robustness in the region that made long listening easy—I listened to almost ten songs in total. In many rooms, I often bolt for the doors after one or two tracks. The sound of every recording left the speaker enclosures convincingly, not only creating the room-filling sound I mentioned, but also tremendous stereo soundstages with great image placement.
I listened to the system twice over two days. Jason sat with me the first time and remarked, “This system sounds close to perfect.” He didn’t define perfect, mind you, and he didn’t call any other system he heard perfect. He also noticed the same attributes I did, because when I told him what I planned to write in this piece, he replied, “I concur.”
That said, as I finish this article, I’m only halfway through the show, so I could find something I like even better. But if there is a better system at the Warsaw show, it will have to be incredible—and I’ll have to write about it. You’ll know I’ve found one if you see another show report under my byline. If not, this system will remain my pick as the winner.
Doug Schneider
Founder, SoundStage
