Axpona 2022: Cabasse The Pearl Pelegrina Wireless Active Loudspeaker (a Favorite)

Speakers that don’t look like every other speaker can be polarizing—some people like ’em, some don’t. Which is all well and good until some nitwit with a keyboard believes they get to decide for everyone.

The Pearl Pelegrina Wireless Active Loudspeakers ($29,990), on active display in the Upscale Distribution room, house everything you need to play digital music. What’s more, the fine folks at Cabasse, founded in France in 1950 by Georges Cabasse, have equipped The Pearl Pelegrina with DSP and room correction tricks that allow for a seamless room-filling fit all the way down to a claimed 10Hz. As in, ten hertz.

The Pearl Pelegrina, which comes in black or white, houses four drivers in each sphere including a 12″ woofer, driven by 3,700 Watts of power (that’s a lot of power). Digital inputs max out at 24-bit/192kHz and include Ethernet/WiFi, Bluetooth, Coax S/PDIF, and Optical plus a line-level RCA input for you turntable (or whatever).

I got to hear a number of tracks, with some offering sub 20Hz bass that was as fully fleshed out as I’ve ever heard/felt, and I can say that the Pearl Pelegrina reproduced music with superb control, a speaker-defying expansive sound image, and finely textured and richly saturated Earth-shaking sound. Color me impressed.

Here’s looking at you, kid.