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Living in neighboring Uster, Daniel Weiss was practically in his own back yard participating here. He teamed up with Daniel Müller from Wetzikon's Wave Control, an established speaker house I'd not heard of before.

The first Daniel showed his accoladed digital gear including the Castor monoblocks attenuated by a prototype passive preamp while the second Daniel introduced the Cheetah, a ca. €18,000/pr rear-ported luxury monitor with customized Mundorf air-motion transformer and Thiele & Partners/Accuton ceramic midwoofer.

The trapezoidal 2-way with its swooping cheeks in solid gloss wood and black fascia, top and back cut a very agreeable figure indeed. The matching stand even sported an integral bubble level.

For front-end duties, Weiss had the Minerva Firewire DAC and Vesta Firewire interface. Shown upstairs with Klangwerk and Avantgarde Acoustics he also had his prototype server called Roma.

The newest Minerva version includes a 4-position gain switch (roughly covering 1.3 through 4 volts out) while two of its front buttons can be reprogrammed to activate a 250 x 0.5dB step digital volume control. Frederic Beudot on staff will shortly receive a review sample from the latest and greatest Minerva batch.

This room was one of those whose presenters did not (know how to?) engage the audience as real salesmen would. If you enter an empty room at such an event, you want to be greeted, talked to, tickled and titillated. To simply set up the gear, then stand quietly in the corners isn't sufficient. While engineers are arguably the wrong folks to do the shmoozing and proselytizing bit, just showing up won't do. Excite and impress us. Plant the seeds of future sales.

Back to Wave Control. Their lineup spans various Twig and Stick models including a Twinstick (I kid you not, those are the names) plus subwoofers. Prices range from CHF 1,280 to 5,640 to belong in the value sector. This makes the new Cheetah a first foray into the no-holds-barred sector for them. When Ivette cued up a Bebo y Cigala Blanco y Negro track from a compilation burn we'd brought, one visitor immediately approached me asking who we were listening to. Something similar happened again later, proving that unfamiliar but superior music played back at involving levels always does the business. It really isn't rocket science.