Special features. Being a temporary member of the BBC plus having Nemo's fecund blackness on hand was bound to snuffle out certain trophy truffle tracks which came off particularly impressive. One was Jacques Loussier's typical 'Play Bach' makeover of a non-Bach track, Satie's famous "Gnossienne N°1" from Loussier's Beyond Bach album. With the since departed pianist taking a special interest in recording quality by running his own studio during his later years means that this queen of instruments—her royal hubby would be the church organ—is well produced. It's obviously a very big powerful instrument which here seemed to go the extra mile backed by Nemo's high-current reserves.

Another ace was Django's dream realized by one of his heirs, Patrick 'Romane' Leguidecoq – fronting a first-rate Big Band with a Jazz manouche guitar. With music's hara or center of vitality the upper bass where Nemo was especially potent, the propulsive joy of this hard-driving swing was superbly well served.

So was the refined elegiac brassiness of Caleb Hudson's glorious Baroque trumpet played back at front-row levels.

For power vocals of very different stripes—but only if you've got ten minutes to spare—…

… imbibe this Khyal-style song "Mundari" which Naseer-ud-din Saami opens with a stunning dhrupad alaap. Peruse YouTube for Coke Studio and Nescafé Basement concerts to get hipped to more fantastic contemporary music from Pakistan which you can then chase down on full-resolution carriers. This kind of music begs for higher SPL to set up that contact high for a quasi trance. Here is another which Fareed Ayaz & Abu Muhammad build up to an astonishingly lengthy arc quite like a Rock opera. Nemo's own lungs were clearly equal to these maestros.

Then I remembered a track which no matter what betrays what I think is intermodulation distortion at 4'08" and 4'53". It's Dhafer Youssef's "Humankind" where clarinet and power falsetto simultaneously hit the same high notes but ever so slightly pitch-shifted. That always causes audible breakup distortion no matter the transducers or electronics. Would Nemo's ultra-low IMD figures make any difference?

They did not. Is this distortion really baked into the recording? It'd beg the question why the mastering engineer didn't notice to leave it in. This concludes my comments generated with Qualio's IQ speakers. Next up I planned a combined Nordic raid by way of Raidho's new X2t. In the interim, here are four things I didn't like about Nemo. In ascending order of objection, those were its hyper-reflective fascia, its size, its logo brightness and its weight. While it seems silly to complain about banal basics when only the sound matters, to me the weight in particular would make ownership prohibitive. I wasn't looking forward to getting Nemo repacked and wouldn't dream of having to do the schlep repeatedly to swap amps during reviews. Not being a fan of ÜberFi, the sheer size too would take getting used to though with far less grief than the weight. Even during the day the blue logo is very bright. At night it becomes an outright retina sear. It had me look in vein for a trim pot for the backlight. Finally, just as I would never buy a gloss-black speaker which not only reflects its surroundings like a mirror but collects swirl marks each time its lacquer gets dusted, I wouldn't buy gloss-black electronics. But, I'm fully aware that for many, the piano lacquer effect is the cat's meow. If that's you, Electrocompaniet have your measure. That wraps my mini detour into complaints to get back on the straight and narrow of sonics. At this point my UK contact Graham had some education on the matter. "On the lighting-up-logo front, I ought to point out that there is in fact a button underneath the front which turns the logo light off." Ask and ye shall receive? "Alas, I cannot tell you of a button that would fill all cavities with helium to make the unit easier to lift." Not exactly. Of course Electrocompaniet make a number of smaller monos to suit a wide variety of wallets and backs. A flagship simply is a flagship all around.