Reviewer: Edgar Kramer 
Financial Interests: Click here 
Source: AMR CD-77.1 CD player, MacBook with BitPerfect player and AIFF files, DEQX PreMate as DAC and preamplifier  
Preamplifier: Supratek Reference DHT with Bendix rectifier tube; NuForce P20 
Amplifier: Gryphon Antileon EVO; NuForce Reference 18 monoblocks
Speakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia 
Cables digital: ZenSati Seraphim; Cerious Technologies; Harmonic Technology Magic; NuForce digital cables analog interconnects: ZenSati Seraphim RCA & XLR; Bocchino Audio Morning Glory; Cable Research Laboratory (CRL) Gold with Bocchino XLR and RCA; Cerious Technologies; DanA Digital Reference Silver; ETI Quiessence Reference; Exakte IC; Harmonic Technology Magic; MIT Giant Killer MPC; NuForce IC-700; PSC Audio Monolith AG; PSC Audio Pristine R30 Ribbon speaker cables: ZenSati Seraphim; Cerious Technologies; ETI Quiessence Reference; Exakte speaker cable; MIT Giant Killer GK-1 loudspeaker cables; NuForce SC-700 power cords: Cerious Technologies AC; Eichmann eXpress AC power cables; Exakte AC; Harmonic Technology Fantasy; PSC Gold Power MKII; Shunyata Research Diamondback 
Stands: SGR Signature racks 
Sundry accessories: Burson Audio Buffer, Bright Star Audio IsoRock Reference 3 and BSA IsoNode feet; Bocchino Audio Mecado isolation diodes; Black Diamond Racing cones; Stillpoints ERS paper in strategic positions, Shakti On Lines; Densen & IsoTek CD demagnetizer; Auric Illuminator CD Treatment 
Room size: 6.4m wide by 7.1m long with high ceiling and narrow cavity behind speakers. Room has been professionally measured and found to be extraordinarily flat and neutral 
Review component retail: $22'500/pr


Music making of course has prehistoric origins going back to times when, newly emerged from the primordial soup, an innate rhythmic reflex compelled us to bang sticks and bones in compositions of ever-growing complexities. Placed on a relative time line, the advent of recorded music would be nigh but a newborn with an auspicious future. Continue this parlance and the high-end audio industry would not even be a couple's sexual impulse let alone a fertilized ovum.


But despite high-end's relative youth, its life cycle has been long enough—some would say its genesis was in the early 1970s—to have seen many a distinguished designer come and go. In the Australian scene, one such luminary was our own Colin Whatmough, a true gentleman of the business with a talent responsible for many outstanding speaker designs over decades. Sadly, Colin left us unexpectedly and way too early back in 2011. However, his legacy lives on within the annals of the greatest Australian loudspeaker designers. 


Back in 2008, seemingly just the other day, I awarded a Blue Moon prize for Outstanding Tonal Splendour and Musicality to the company's P33 Signature floorstander [see review here]. Indeed, that speaker's musical flow and superb tonal coherence and 'rightness' rivaled more pricey competitors that have graced the listening space; and there have been many. Although not Whatmough's definitive statement in loudspeaker design since that honour rests on the flagship Paragon and its downscaled younger sibling the Progeny, the subject of this review, the P33 Signature brilliantly summarized Colin Whatmough's desire to produce a communicator with the key qualities of tonal accuracy, listenability and connection to the music.


These same qualities with further expansion in terms of scale, bass power/depth and dynamic envelopes were the mandates in Colin Whatmough's mind when he set about designing the Progeny, a speaker he finalized and signed off on only a short time prior to his passing.