Odyssey Audio

Odyssey Audio products are proudly handmade in the US and sold factory-direct. The system I heard consisted of Odyssey’s Kismet Reference loudspeakers ($3500/pair), Stratos stereo amplifier ($1400), Candela preamp ($1500), Suspiro MC/MM phono stage ($1200), Groneberg cables, and a 15-year-old VPI turntable.

Odyssey’s Klaus Bunge turned out the lights and played Johnny Cash’s heartbreaking version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and the system presented good drama and scale and communicated a very fine sense of space around Cash’s tired, frayed voice. The system also seemed highly resolving, helping me decide that there was too much reverb on Cash’s voice—I would have preferred it to be drier and more honest.

Next up was Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust,” which on this occasion struck me as being one of the most tragic and disturbing songs ever written.

Afterward, Bunge gave credit to the GIK Acoustics room treatments: “I’ve been doing these shows for 18 years, and this is the first time we’ve gotten a hotel room completely under control.”

GIK Scopus Traps ($149 each) “frequency range limiters,” for treating low-end frequencies without damaging highs; Soffit Traps broadband bass traps ($189 each); and Q7d diffusors for taming early reflections ($349 each) were employed.

Source : stereophile[dot]com