Big room, big speakers + lots of power = hifi fun.
That’s one of two Octave Jubilee Mono SE Power Amplifiers ($80,000/pair) that stand well over 2 feet tall and offer 400 Watts (into 4 Ohms) of power. Woof.
The rack was filled, clockwise from top left, with an Octave Jubilee Preamplifier ($32,000), Brinkmann Balance Turntable ($25,990) sporting the Brinkmann Tonearm 12.1 ($6490) mounted with the AlNiCo magnet endowed EMT JSD Novel Titan Cartridge ($7760), Octave Power Supply for the Preamp, Octave Phono Module ($5600), Moon by Simaudio 780D v2 Streaming DAC ($18,000) atop the 820S Power Supply (starts at $8500), Octave Black Box Preamp Power Supply ($1750), Brinkman RöNt III Tube Power Supply ($6990), and Torus RM Series Power Transformer. Cables from Matthew Bond Audio tied everything together. Whew!
A system like this demands time and I hit it on late Sunday afternoon, with many rooms to go—sigh—so I did not get to trade weird cover versions of classic songs with Dynaudio’s Mike Manousselis, which is always one of my hifi show highlights. Next time. That being said, I did get a chance to smile along with this system’s way with immense scale, drive, and delicacy.