The day before I departed for the Florida International Audio Expo, I received an email from Wynn Wong of Wynn Audio, the North American distributor of a whole bunch of tasty brands, asking me how I was making out with the Thales TTT-Compact II turntable (review forthcoming on SoundStage! Ultra). “Are you attending the Florida show?” Wynn asked as an aside.
“Why yes. Yes, I am,” I replied. Some more back-and-forth revealed Wynn Audio’s equipment list for the show, and it sounded juicy. I made a mental note to stop by.
Friday was pleasantly quiet at the show—much quieter on a work day than any other show of my experience. It was a pleasure to walk the halls without being assaulted by body odor and bad breath. I sauntered into the Wynn Audio room and took a front-and-center seat.
This was a purist system with a CD player as the only source. Actually, the Métronome Technologie AQWO 2 ($24,300, all prices in USD) is also an SACD player and a streamer, but Wynn Audio was using it as a dedicated off-line device. It was odd to see the player’s display listing simply the track number and advancing time—no album art or artist information. As “Autumn Leaves” from Jazz Music by Wang Wei began to play, I got slapped with a perfectly sized and imaged piano. It was so thoroughly three-dimensional that it made my shoulders drop as I relaxed into it.
The Vimberg Mino speaker ($40,000 per pair) is a muscular floorstander with equal parts tuxedoed elegance and supervillain menace. A straight-up vertical tasting of Accuton drivers per speaker provided a careful grip on the music. It was all sophistication, with a Tiger Okoshi track demonstrating appropriate bite on the bell of his trumpet, but without trying to gouge out my eyes.
I want to say that this system sounded warm, but that might seem pejorative—an injustice to the wonderful sense of detail in the midrange and highs. Let’s just say the sound was totally grainless, smooth as silk, maple syrup on quality ice cream, with images as deep as the lacquer on the cabinets.
I’ve heard Karan Acoustics electronics before, having encountered them at the Warsaw Audio Video show in Poland. Each time I’ve heard these components, I’ve come away impressed. Doug Schneider reviewed the LINEb preamplifier ($29,000) on SoundStage! Hi-Fi in April 2021, and he liked it very much. I had to wonder how the Wynn Audio folk shoehorned the POWERb stereo power amplifier ($43,000) into the narrow Critical Mass Systems rack—the amp weighs in at 178 pounds.
These carefully curated components fit together with a symmetry that did justice to the individual components. Well chosen, Wynn Audio.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
