GERSHMAN ACOUSTICS/EON ART/ORACLE
Another room that was making exceptional music and wherein the speakers—GERSHMAN ACOUSTICS Grand Avant Garde—were beautifully channeling a much, much larger speaker—was the EON ART, ORACLE, GERSHMAN room. I, literally, had to ask if dual subwoofers had been employed and hidden very surreptitiously in the room. The answer, of course, was, “No, subwoofer, just the Grand Avant Garde.” Suffice to say, that I was greatly intrigued and in dire need of reviewing these rather potent and beautifully musical speakers.
The Grand Avant Garde were one of the most petite, non-invasive, spouse-friendly, impactful, and musical speakers that I can remember.
And coupled with the EON ART—Boson Hybrid Monophonic integrated amplifier—and the first ORACLE source—a second generation ORACLE Delphi Reference MkVI turntable with an attached Reed 1H 9.5 tonearm, and the Oracle Corinth Moving Coil (MC) cartridge—was providing a truly lovely musical experience. The second source—an ORACLE CD 1000—was beautifully sleek. I’m happy to say, that I owned an earlier version of this ORACLE CD player as it was one of the most ‘analogue’ sounding players that I have ever owned.
Now back to the EON ART Boson Hybrid Monophonic integrated amplifier. What you ask is a Monophonic integrated amplifier? Well, I’ll leave that to EON ART and to Mr. Stephané Hautcoeur:
Each amplifier implements a single amplification channel including also the preamplification with the double of the power supply of an integrated stereo amplifier. You connect your sources directly to the Boson blocs. It offers 20% more power and twice the power reserve than its little brother the Quark amplifier; which gives it even more bottom. You can connect many Boson to the same source line with an internal Lundahl splitter.
Yeah, this integrated will take a good bit more research to fully discern its inherent technology, but as far as the music was concerned—Bullseye! The Boson integrated coupled with the Grand Avant Gard and the ORACLE Delphi Reference MkVI provided music that even the biggest and most costly of systems would shrink away from.
ORACLE definitely provided for some incredible turntable eye-candy in static format as well that was impossible not to take many pictures of. Hopefully, we’ll be able to line up these ORACLE turntables for future reviews.
Yes, the Toronto show was small, but the gold of the show was a goodly number of small impactful systems that were making music like they had no right to. Or, at least, one would think that. The synergy of this system was so good that I found myself talking for a long while with each of the manufacturers or their representatives. Suffice to say, reviews of the various equipment are of great interest to us. A great sounding room! In Mr. Hautcoeur’s words:
Music can be defined as the immediate and pure transmission of emotions through sound.
I whole heartedly agree.