CES 2010 Coverage

Another newcomer to CES was the Danish company Holm Acoustics. Scandinavia has a plethora of high-end audio companies and Holm deserves to be right up there at the top. They have just established a US distributor for their products who was good enough to set them up with a pair of Mark Levinson No. 53 monoblocks and a pair of Revel Salon2 loudspeakers for their demonstration.

I was given a a detailed run-through of their products by Ask Bojesen, their software designer, who was passionate about their offerings.

The CD1 CD transport (top) and DSPre1 DAC-preamp (bottom).

The CD transport runs on a Linux core with proprietary software to read, and re-read if necessary, the data off the disc into an approximately 30 second buffer, where it is reclocked, and streamed to one of the six digital inputs of the DSPre1. The DSPre1 also an analog input and a USB input for connection to a music server.

The DSPre1 is unique in that it has sophisticated two-channel DSP room correction (0Hz to 300Hz) and speaker correction (300Hz - 30kHz) accessible through a laptop. Unlike other correction programs such as Audessey, all parameters, including target curves, are within the control of the user. The software interface is elegant and intuitive. The results were astonishing as switching the room/speaker correction on and off ably demonstrated. The sound was among the best I heard at the show notwithstanding the small, untreated room.

They also displayed, but did not demo, their AMP1 Class D monoblock amplifiers.

Did I mention that the components are housed in heavy anodized aluminum enclosures with Italian letter trim. All functions are selected using touch sensitive controls?

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