Issue 30, April 2004

Highlights from the 2004
Las Vegas CES
By Roy Gregory (Editor)

If the Ayre room was all about breathy intimacy then Alón were relying on sheer scale and musical authority. They were driving their new Proteus speakers with a serious high-end system consisting of the Lector Strumenti Audio CDP-7T, the new Precision VII turntable carrying a Triplanar (which seemed to be everywhere!) and Miyabi cartridge. Amplification was c-js seminal ART driving HP's favourite ASL Hurricane mono-blocks while wiring was a mix of Pranawire, Soundstrings and Acarian. Hanging on the end of this were a pair of large (but not unmanageably so) composite cabinets. The top cabinet contains a pair of 110mm laminate cone midrange drivers flanking a pair of magnesium / aluminum alloy domes, all on an open baffle, and a pair of 200mm composite carbon coned mid-bass drivers, each in its own sealed chamber. The separate, mechanically decoupled bass cabinet contains four more of the 200mm drivers, firing sideways. Finally, there's a further bass driver, firing upwards in an open baffle behind the main array. So that's 11 drivers per side! However, as Alón points out, there are only three different types at work, and all employ AlNiCo magnets. The crossover is tri-wireable and housed in a separate enclosure. The end result is an imposing 190 lb column, five and a half feet high and two feet deep at the bottom, but only nine and a half inches wide. Efficiency is 88dB.

Image scale is lifesize, dynamics are full range and bass goes down to 20Hz, which makes for impressive scale and impact. Yet the absolute authority of the presentation is a solid foundation for the superb low-level detail and coherence. Microdynamics are incredibly lifelike and tonal range convincingly natural. But, boy, when the music demands power or the grand gesture you don't get much grander than this. At $45,000 this level of carry you off musical involvement doesn't come cheap (or with limited domestic impact) but the Proteus does an awful lot of what the Exotica Grand Reference does (as well as a few things besides, I suspect) at rather less than half the price and physical imposition, so at least things are moving in the right direction.

Alón by Acarian
Tel. (+1)631 2659577
Net. www.alonbyacarian.com