As always when I enter an audio showroom, my eyes fall first on the speakers, as they did in the Corby’s Audio room. And the speakers there looked stunning. I would put them in my living room even if they made no sound. But they did make a sound, a glorious one.
The speakers were Coherent Audio’s Modular 15 Trio speakers ($38,000/pa), ‘modular’ because they’re composed of Radian drivers in separate enclosures mounted on top of each other. The rest of the system included a Saturn Audio solid state 701 integrated amplifier ($6500), a Saturn Audio 201 DAC ($4800), and a Baetis Audio Reference 4 Mingo Edition streamer ($14,800), with cabling by Allnic and equipment racks by Tough Nut Audio (both $various).
First song I listened to was Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Tin Pan Alley (AKA Roughest Place in Town)”. The system sounded completely relaxed, as it should with this track. And it produced the longest decays I’d ever heard from this recording. Next up was Aisyah Aziz’s rendition of “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and the sound—organic, warm, detailed—impressed me even further.
The most pronounced characteristic was how well the bass was integrated into the whole frequency range. It was never in your face like it sometimes is with other systems, even with much pricier gear. The room delivered the music coherently, as promised in the name of the speaker company.
As an audiophile and a voracious listener of all kinds of music, Jonson believes that the experience of being immersed in music is often something spiritual. Born and raised in Korea, he cut his teeth on western music mostly through the music of the 80s and the 90s. As of today, names that make his heart beat a little faster include Vladimir Horowitz, John Coltrane, Youn-Sun Nah, Francis Poulenc, Leonard Bernstein, Tannoy, and Magnepan. Jonson also runs a podcast and a YouTube channel about language learning, called SpongeMind.
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