James: Bobby Palkovic is a pretty smart guy, too. He loves to educate, elucidate and enlighten those who come to his room at various shows. He has very strong ideas about what speakers should sound like and he voices them passionately. His speakers reflect his passion for music in a very real sense. He is a musician and also has years of studio and sound mixing experience. Therefore he and I have a lot in common. We are even pretty close in age. He’s better looking.

Merlin only makes two speakers – a floorstander and a stand mount. “We can concentrate our efforts to make the Merlins the best sounding speaker possible”, he says.

Bobby was showing his Merlin VSM-MXe speakers in NY. They are beautiful to behold with their glossy piano finish and the added dash of class metal inlays in the lower front. The Merlins were indeed a bit magical as they were able to sonically disappear in the less-than-ideal hotel room. They sounded a lot like mini monitors with added bass extension – down to about the mid thirties. They use a 1’ soft dome from Dynaudio for the top end and a 6.5 inch paper/carbon fiber woofer.

Bobby has spent a lot time on the critical crossover component. He now puts the unit outside the enclosure. Good move. He uses Colleen Cardas’ wire internally. Another smart move. Each speakers comes with its own 26 pounds of sand. Perhaps if you live in Florida like I, you can provide your own sand and get a break on the $10,500 price per pair.

Did you notice the amp sitting between the speakers? I did. When I asked about it, Bobby seemed a bit surprised. “It’s a new product we are working with from Ars-Sonum, hand made in Spain. I really like it.”

Spain? Now that’s different. The Filarmonía is a stereo integrated amplifier with 30 watts per channel at 8 ohms. Its output stage makes use of a pair of hand-matched E34L pentodes in Push-Pull configuration per channel. The E34L is a special version of the EL34/6CA7 tube. The drive and phase inversion stage uses a JAN5814-A (E82CC/6189/12AU7/ECC82) double triode, whilst the input section is driven by an E88CC (6922/ECC88/6DJ8) double triode. One of Filarmonía's most remarkable characteristics is the topology of its output stage, which does not use the typical ultra-lineal configuration, but a special screen-grid regulated pentode circuit with auto-regulated polarization matched for tolerances below 1%. The output transformers and the cathode resistors deserve special mention as they are matched within a 0.5% tolerance.

The power supply includes five sections, four of them stabilized independently for each channel and stage. The passive components within this section have been selected in an unusual way, they say. The Filarmonía sports professional quality filtering and decoupling caps of special series (Aerovox/BHC, Elna and Panasonic electrolytics and Wima and Philips MKP polypropylene film ones). The power resistors are selected at 1% tolerance. The driver and phase inversion stage uses tubes from professional series (JAN 5814A Philips) and low-noise, high-precision components, such as metal film resistors selected and pair-matched at 0.5% as well as special series film & foil top audiophile grade capacitors (Hovland Musicap). This may be the Merlin connection since Bobby uses Hovlands in his Merlins.

The input stage is based on an exceptionally low noise JJ E88CC and metal film resistors from Vishay and Philips and an ALPS Blue Velvet volume potentiometer. The amplifier is built using both point-to-point wiring and a printed circuit board. The chassis is made of die cast steel, folded and soldered and then polished and chrome plated. The lathe-turned, hand-polished, solid aluminum control buttons are exclusively hand-crafted for Ars-Sonum. Finally, the new SE version utilizes high quality, pure copper Cardas speaker terminals. I didn’t see a remote control laying around. Bummer. But for $4,000, that might be easy to forgo.

Bobby said he’d be happy to provide a Filarmonia for review. I hope he sends a pair of Merlins with it. From what I heard at the show, there is a very special synergy happening between the two. I suspect Bobby believes this as well. This combo was definitely one of the top systems at the show.