Raven Audio Tube Amps & Speakers + Mytek Digital
Florida Audio Expo 2019 show in Tampa, Florida.
Report By Steven R. Rochlin

  Raven Audio, widely known for their excellent vacuum tube amplification and cables, always pleases at shows. Here at Florida Audio Expo 2019 they brought their new line of loudspeakers! The front soundscape was lovely and deeeep, with the system being "overall fun to listen to" says my show report notes. Considering I listen to music over eight hours a day, it's crucial that an audio system not just be accurate, it also needs to be comfortably listenable for hour after hour.

Raven Audio's Elite Silhouette 125 Watt monoblocks ($25,995) are strictly hand-built to order and were joined by their Avian Blackhawk Mk3 integrated 20 Watt per channel stereo vacuum tube amplifier ($3795, red color on middle shelf above). Raven Audio's Silhouette is the company's pursuit of the ultimate in sound. Built without constraints or compromises as every aspect of its unique design includes hand-wired point-to-point with silver-plated PTFE-coated conductors. In fact there are three types of solder and a 99.999% pure-copper buss bar to bring every nuance of sound to reality.

As a very special event here in Florida, Raven Audio brought all three of their loudspeaker prototypes that are expected to launch in mid-2019. Their floorstanding Corvus Reference Monitors ($7995) were joined by Raven Performance Towers ($3995). As you can see in the photo below, driver configuration has been optimized depending on the cabinet size, plus special attention has been paid to the tweeter output dispersion and in controlling cabinet reflections.

Raven Audio's Blackhawk MK3 integrated vacuum tube amplifier as seen above is set to ship the first quarter of 2019. A variety of options are available depending on the tube types (standard, NOS, etc) you desire. For front-end duties, digital source were handled by Mytek's Manhattan II DAC ($5995) feeding Raven Audio's Elite Silhouette preamplifier ($10,995). All interconnect were by Raven Audio and included their Soniquil Power, XLR, RCA, and speaker cables (starting at $149).

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