Pacific Audio Fest 2022 Fab 5 Picks
Greg Weaver chooses the Best Of PAF 2022.
Show Report By Greg Weaver

Four
I was more than pleasantly surprised when I stepped into room 1352, hosted by both the Canadian electronics company Infigo Audio and New York loudspeaker manufacturer, Alta Audio, two companies I have had little or no exposure to prior to this event.

Here the source was the Infigo Audio Fluvius streamer ($1,750), playing files from locally attached Solid State Hard drives, connected to the Infigo Audio Method 4 DAC ($35,000), which directly drove a set of Infigo Audio Method 3 Class A Monoblock Amplifiers ($50,000/pr.). Loudspeakers were the very attractive Alta Audio Adam Speakers ($18,000/pr.) in Lexus Silver. Cabling included the Infigo Audio Sparkle Series USB interconnect ($1600), Signature Series RCA interconnects ($4,000), and the Signature Series bi-wire loudspeaker cables ($4,500/pr.).

While I know a lot of people who run the opposite direction the moment they hear Nils Lofgren's "Keith Don't Go," there is a reason the track is so routinely played... it represents a known commodity. I cannot begin to tell you how many different systems I have heard demonstrated with "Keith Don't Go," but it has been on so many, and for so very long, that it has become an indispensable and valuable reference.

This system immediately grabbed my attention with its very nice texture, rich, dense tonal color, and harmonic bloom, especially with the way it presented the guitar, and its remarkably SOLID low-frequency extension. The nuanced capabilities revealed with microdynamic expressiveness were exemplary, as was the sense of effortlessness and extension of the uppermost frequencies.

Not only did I get more of the same when we switched to large-scale classical compositions, but that music also served to only intensify the overall sense this system conveyed of a very fluid dynamic expressiveness, and its very good scaling abilities. The gear in this room simply disappeared, leaving only a very nicely portrayed sense of the space, pace, and impact of the music, with very good detail and resolution.

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