Two friends whose taste and hearing I respect—and who visited every room at this show—told me they thought the $35K/pair MC Audiotech Forty-10 loudspeakers made the best sound at CAF. No question, these almost five-feet tall decorator-friendly midcentury-modernᡃlooking beauties sounded even better they look, and they look very nice.
At first, I thought they sounded like electrostatics, or maybe a planar-magnetic. Even after listening at some length and talking to the designer, I did not yet understand that the Forty-10 did not use electrostatic drivers.
I kept quizzing MC Audiotech’s Mark Conti. He said they were made in North Wales, Pennsylvania. He said they were very “efficient” at 96dB/2.83v/1m. He said the high frequency “spaced array” went down to 100Hz, whereupon it was crossed over to two (powered) 18" “high-efficiency” woofers. He said the speaker’s impedance was a “resistive” 4-ohms. But Mr. Conti would not tell me what was behind the grill cloth. He said they were “proprietary transducers” they fabricated themselves. In my mind, I am thinking: some variation on air-motion-transformers. Or?
The Forty-10s sounded sweet, fresh, detailed but far from etched, easy-flowing, and musically engaging.
Also in the system: a VPI HW-40 turntable with Fatboy tonearm, a Luminous Audio Arion phono preamp, a Pass Labs XP22 preamp, a Wolf Audio Systems Alpha 3 music server, a PS Audio DSD DAC, a Parasound A23+ power amplifier, a Symposium Foundation rack and Ultra Platform, and Audience AU24 SX Series cables and powerline conditioning.
