Behold
All prices are quoted in euros unless otherwise noted.
1 €  is approximately 1.28 US dollars at time of report.

Germany's Behold (whose parent company is Ballman Electronica) used Ascendo speakers with their electronics, and the result was an ear-opening demo. On the electronics side was a rack full of Behold's "digital" electronics. These included the APU768 preamplifier (price starting at 15,000 €) with the ADP192 processor option (featured in our May 26 Daily Coverage), a CDP768 CD player (3300 €), and a pair of BPA768-484 stereo power amplifiers (26,000 € per amplifier) biamping a set of Ascendo System M speakers (30,000 € per pair). Behold employed its room-correction technology through the ADP192 to adjust for frequency-response anomalies.

The sound was first-class -- bold, rich, and exquisitely detailed. We were also impressed with the expansive soundstage and hyper-precise imaging -- things we've heard often from systems using Ascendo's time-aligned speaker designs. All in all, this was a technical tour de force high-end system, but one in which all the technology contributed to the inherent emotion of the musical outcome.