CES and T.H.E. Show 2004
By Martin G. DeWulf

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Every year at the biggest audio show on earth Bobby Palkovic at Merlin puts on his own show that annually distinguished itself as one of the finest there is. Thinking back to his exciting exhibits of years past, what is left for him to do? What is there left for an audio reviewer to say about one of the finest audio products in the industry? Believe it or not, the speaker has been further improved - it has been opened up. Not that it wasn't open already, it was; but what I heard in the Merlin room was a restructuring of tone, timbre, and dynamics. The result is a speaker that builds upon its already impressive resume in terms of coherence, image density, dimensionality, and inner detailing. To understands what his sound was like this year, imagine everything just said, then open it up. Make it more vivid, larger and more exciting. It's like that. The very DNA of this speaker seems changed and energized, and as a result, the speaker has a new moniker: the VSM-MX.

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