RMAF 2019 Show Report Part 4: Sonore, Bricasti, Vivid Audio, Sonus Faber, Audio Research

Plenty of buzz surrounded the weekend inhabitants of the larger rooms on the first floor of the Gaylord Rockies Resort for this year's Rocky Mountain Audio Festival. Music Room photographer Larson Baird and I were walking the halls looking for new products and great sound, and had plans to head downstairs to meet up with some of the PS Audio guys.

As we were nearing the elevators to take us down, the sound coming out of the Sonore room drew us inside like the old cartoon trope of the pie cooling in the window. We had to make a detour, and when I saw it was Bricasti electronics and Vivid speakers I was hardly surprised.

Inside, Sonore was showing off their latest upgrade to the Signature Rendu SE, which is called SystemOptique. It’s a board which goes in the Rendu, and features tons of regulation and high end oscillators in the circuit. The Signature Rendu SE was streaming from a Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter i9, feeding a Bricasti M21 DAC and M25 amplifier.

Commanding visual attention in front, as Vivid Audio speakers are wont to do, was a pair of Kaya 45 floorstanders in high gloss black.

Lovely sound from this room, and we even dawdled a minute or two to enjoy it longer before heading down to see some of the larger exhibitions downstairs.

The difference in room makeup from the rooms on the upper floors compared to the halls on the bottom floors was staggering. Companies downstairs had completely different issues to deal with, for example trying to load a massive room with high ceilings with two speakers.

Apparently part of the solution was to bring big speakers. Large floorstanders dominated the downstairs exhibition rooms, and as we wandered into the well-decorated Sonus Faber area we saw our first mega speakers of the day.

The legendary SE17 monster speakers, to the right of the entrance to the room, were not playing when we stopped by, sadly. Sonus Faber had more important things to show at the moment. In front was a playing demo of the new Olympica Nova line of speakers from the Italian brand, connected as with the SE17s to Audio Research Corp. electronics.

Take a look at those ARC components on the SE17s in our photo. Reference 160M monos on the floor, and a Ref 6 preamplifier and a Ref 3 phono stage on stands looked so big the whole system made the mega speakers look almost small. I wanted so badly to hear these giant floorstanders, which feature a completely separate and isolated rear-firing two way speaker. Mind blowing. But Olympica Nova was the star of the day, and Larson and I both enjoyed the sound from the sweet spot in between the lovely new products.

You’ve got to give it to Sonus Faber for continually offering some of the best-looking speakers in the whole industry, while also consistently appearing on the “best sounding” lists year after year.