Aretai, founded in 2018 by Jānis Irbe and Edgars Zvirgzdiņš, showed off their Contra 100S Stand Mount Loudspeakers ($7500/pair) that do a wonderful job of incorporating a horn-loaded tweeter, both aesthetically and sonically, with front and rear firing 6″ woofers.
The Contra 100S’ supporting case mostly hailed from Benchmark Media and included the company’s AHB2 Monoblock Amplifiers ($2999/each), LA4 Line Preamplifier ($2599), and DAC3 B ($1699) fed by an Aurender N200 Caching Music Server / Streamer ($6000).
The company claims the little (H117/W27/D37 cm) Contra 100S can reach down to 32 Hz with 87dB sensitivity. Woof! I would have liked to spend more time with this system as it did a good job of filling this room with an effortless sense of nicely nuanced sound.
