RMAF 2016 Show Report
Alta Audio, Aqua Acoustic, Clones Audio, AntiCables, And Well Pleased
Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest & CanJam 2016
RMAF 2016 Show Report By Kemper Holt

  I followed my plan of taking the elevator up to the 11th floor, turned left to start at one end of the hall and literally bumped into Mark Sossa of Well Pleased AV who also traveled 1800 miles to Denver. It was early Friday morning and Mark handed me his tablet to find some music, the show was starting out perfectly. Mark was showing a pair of Alta Audio Rhea speakers, ($4500 per pair), driven by a CLONES front end consisting of the new HOST Music Server w/1 TB SSD, ($2300), AP2 Preamp, ($1200), and a pair of 55PM mono amps, ($1,500/pr), an aqua La Scala II Optologic DAC, ($6600), and Paul Speltz's Anticables for all wiring duties and introducing his latest speaker cable, the Level 5 using the same metallurgy as the Interconnects, ACElectrum, a mix of gold and silver and a price to match, $2800 per 8' pair. The aqua La Scala II Optologic has the new discrete ladder section and a beefed up output stage still sporting two glowing bottles sounding outstanding, and this upgrade is available to all La Scala owners, contact Mark for details. Not to be lost in the shuffle, the new CLONES HOST server could be a real steal with a 1TB SSD included, and it's Roon ready to boot.

Scanning the tablet I played "The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn", and "Crazy Faith" from New Favorite by Alison Krauss + Union Station, the system captured the initial sounds of the strings being plucked and made it easy to pick out what stringed instrument was being played, Alison's voice was clear and she stood front and center, and an Alta trait the Rhea's produced a strong bass line and had solid impact on drum whacks. I selected YoYo Ma playing a Bach composition and enjoyed the rich string tone and natural ambience. While I had the chance I had Steely Dan's "Hey 19" pulsing loudly and Led Zeppelin's "Bring It On Home" brought in a bunch of other early attendees from the hall to see what all the ruckus was, just some fun music on an affordable and good sounding system.

---> Back to RMAF 2016 show report home page.