MBL had some great sound in their room. Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" left me with goose bumps and Leonard Cohen's baritone vibrated through my being. While a playing of the "1812 Overture" was meant to highlight the dynamic abilities of the system (the demonstration only partially succeeded in this), I still find that these big speakers are at their best with more minimalist music, imparting the human voice, that violin of the gods, with a sweetness and believability that is rarely captured. The system, composed of the MBL Reference line speakers mbl 101E ($46,900 / pr) and monoblock mbls 9011 amps ($73,200 / pr), mbl 6010 preamp ($19,000), mbl 1621 transport ($19,000) and mbl 1611 dac ($21,000), all run with Tara Omega speaker cables ($10K/pr) and Tara Zero digital cable ($6,000) and Zero interconnects ($14,000 / pair). And you need a couple of pair of interconnects too, so this stuff starts to add up big time. You do the math. If I had this kind of money, I'd pay off my mortgage first.