Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2004

Thanks to the kind folks over at Musical Surroundings (kudos to Garth, the analog setup king, as well as Mike!) our vinyl playback section featured a Clearaudio Master Solution turntable with Graham 2.0 tonearm and Benz Ruby 3 moving coil cartridge, set up on the top level of ISIS Rack #2, a four-level unit with deep black anodized legs and hardware (every ISIS rack system is completely modular and can be configured at any time to as many levels as desired). Below the turntable, on level three of the rack, is the Aesthetix Rhea phono preamp which drove the Epifania line stage through Siltech FTM-4 Gold interconnect.
The Clearaudio features a 70mm thick acrylic platter and a stainless steel subchassis - which matches perfectly with the ISIS' stainless steel top layer, for excellent acoustic damping and drainage. Graham tonearms are world famous for state of the art performance- and the Benz Ruby 3 faithfully transcribes the impressive dynamics and transparency of great vinyl discs.
Aesthetix, famous for their truly awesome Io two-chassis phono preamp (as one Symposium customer who owns an Io once warned us: "Don't listen to one - you'll want to have it!"), offers the Rhea phono preamp as a mid-level solution for those who want top quality tubed phono playback at a lower price. And, for us couch potatoes, the Rhea features remote control of both gain and loading, quite convenient for fine-tuning your listening experience.
The very first time we played a disc with this setup, we were frankly surprised by how good it sounded. Great quality like this is why vinyl just won't "go away," and instead seems to grow stronger year by year.

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