Prices listed in CA$.

At the Montreal Audiofest, there were quite a few rooms with systems costing in the six figures. The system in the Audio Group Denmark / Wynn Audio room wasn’t one of them, despite sounding like it could cost that much. It included a pair of Børresen X6 loudspeakers ($30,000/pr), a 100Wpc Axxess Forté 3 integrated amp/DAC/streamer/headphone amp ($15,000), and several products by Ansuz: an A3 network switch ($5400), an A3 Power Distribution Box ($5000), A2 cabling ($various), and the company’s Darkz resonance control footers ($various). Total system cost? About $65,000, which might not sound like a deal, until you hear the system.

The first thing that impressed me about its performance was the size and spaciousness of it soundstage. Voices and instruments were surrounded by palpable space. The reverberation was rich and realistic. Nothing sounded congested or shapeless. There was a lot of punch and attack as well. It proved to me that you don’t need a giant stack of electronics to achieve superlative, powerful sound. Those days are long gone, in my view—you can now enjoy big, room-filling sound with a simple system like this, with a minimum footprint. By the way, as an experienced tweaker, I knew about Ansuz cables and accessories and can vouch for their quality. 

I listened to quite a few tracks in the room and everything sounded great. But the show-stopper was “Life on Mars” by Aurora (originally by David Bowie). The system revealed such a degree of emotional depth, I was sitting there frozen, long after the track was over.