[Excerpts From]
Le Festival Son et Image
de Montreal 2003

Show Report

by Rick Becker

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Merlin VSM loudspeakers have a well-earned reputation, and are frequently heard with Joule Electra electronics at shows. At Montreal, we were given a different treat. The rig was set up on the diagonal of the room--an orientation that frequently works quite well, but has been seldom seen as of late. In addition to the Naim CD player, on which I played "Steamroller Blues" from James Taylor's Live CD, they also had an intriguing DPS turntable with an acrylic platter with a plinth composed of twelve or so layers of birch with a layer of lead sandwiched in for good measure. Add to that three cones and a granite base. With a $2,400 US arm and a $2,600 US Allaerts cartridge, the analog playback was pretty special. Below the front ends was a seldom-seen (on this side of the pond) Tron pre-amplifier from England. And below that was a $4,500 US Berning ZH270 OTL amplifier from Maryland putting out 70 wpc from ten tubes that were mostly visible through a large window on the faceplate, should you have been as curious as I was and dropped down on your knees and elbows.  Draped over the top of such things as the BAM modules of the Merlin loudspeakers were these strange sheets of what looked like hand-made paper. I was told this was recently declassified military technology used to shield RFI. I was given two pieces of the material totaling about 9" x 12" and invited to play around with it. When the dust in my life settles down a bit, I intend to do just that.

The only familiar components in the system were the Naim CD player and the Merlin speakers, and even the loudspeakers were the updated Millennium version that I was hearing for the first time. For whatever reason, this meticulously composed and laid out system was the most transparent and dynamic of the 6 to 10 that I have heard using the Merlins. And it was easily in the top handful of systems at the Montreal show this year.

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