Suncoast Audio
Featuring Magico, Luxman, Lumin, AudioQuest, Critical Mass, Avantgarde Acoustic, Viva, Aurender, AVID, And Shunyata.
Florida Audio Expo 2019 show in Tampa, Florida.
Report By Steven R. Rochlin

  Suncoast Audio is a lovely store located in the heart of Sarasota's ever-growing Lakewood Ranch area. Store owner Michael Bovaird offers a wide variety of gear to this affluent area of Florida, and his exhibit rooms wonderfully reflect that. With two rooms, there was a lot of gear to cover here!

That marvelous Magico magic was in full swing as this system had wide dynamics, extremely accurate instrument portrayal, and instrument solidity. Magico's A3 were being driven by Luxman's cool retro look 509x integrated amp and Luxman D-08u CD player plus Lumin T2 network streamer. Cabling / power conditioning was by AudioQuest, with Critical Mass Soto Voce racks and CenterStage2 Feet rounding things out nicely. None other than Peter MacKay from Magico was running that exhibit room and have a feeling he wasn't all that appreciative of me saying nice YG Acoustics speakers (ok, that was a reeeeally bad joke and Peter should have slapped me for that one).

The new Viva Classico Integrated ($16,000) uses 300B power tubes that send the signal to their latest generation of transformers, which are custom-built to achieve "the full sonic potential of the 300B tubes". Producing 10 Watts per channel stereo, tube compliment is two 300B, two 5U4GB, a 6N1P and 6SN7.

Suncoast Audio's other room was manned by Michael Bovaird and included the Avantgarde Uno Fino X being driven by Viva Classico 300B integrated amp, which was a show debut! For front-end duties, Aurender's excellent  N10, MSB Premier DAC and AVID Ingenium Plug & Play ensured the room was immersed with great tubes. All Shunyata cables and power conditioning, plus once again Critical Mass Soto Voce racks and CenterStage2 Feet.

As for sound, these are truly epic hornspeakers by Germans and tube amps by Italians combined with a first-rate digital front-end. If you know, then you know because sure thing it had incredible dynamics. Sure it had a big soundscape. And yes the harmonics were glorious. Many audiophiles know an audio system is just that, a system. Bravo and kudos to Michael for knowing what gear works best together, as a system should.

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