Adjustments. To favour Widor's power attributes, I needed a hardware reshuffle. This wasn't about speakers needing more power than the Liszt monos dispatch. It was about speakers whose driver complement and personality would widorize ideally; according to my personal biases. Enter our Accuton-fitted Albedo Audio Aptica, 85dB transmission lines. Their ceramic drivers would benefit from extra density. Their two-way concept would love whatever extra weight Widor could throw at their bottom end for this bigger space. Any potential nervousness from greased transient reflexes but less tonal bloom should be well served by Widor's gravitational influence. And so it was.

The Apticas now moved stately across time like showboating swans on a lake. Their lit-up potentially front-heavy aspect had relaxed onto the back foot. With it, any sizzly undertones or sharp-edged attributes evaporated. With time-aligned 1st-order speakers on a minimum baffle driven by very wideband amps, soundstaging was entirely liberated and sorting very specific. Driven by Widor, the speakers simply behaved more settled, grounded and fleshed out than they do on their usual Job 225 upstairs. Eyes wide shut, listeners wouldn't have latched onto any trademark 'ceramic' fingerprints. For my sentiments, this combination of amp+speakers was now ideally balanced between speed and weight, detail and body. It also managed that particular elegance and ease which tend to be very difficult to pursue strategically—what, exactly, causes those qualities?—but easy to recognize when they do show up. They did here.

Unlike the big Goldmund Telos 590 NextGen integrated or our former Crayon CFA-1.2, Widor's attendance in the same school of DC-coupled ultra-bandwidth circuits didn't mean their glossy shiny textures. Here all LinnenberG amps play it more matte. No hosed-down tarmac prior to a photo shoot to get that reflective Film Noir look. To me that seems closer to live music which rarely is as explicit and turned up in the treble as certain 'hi-rez' modern hifi notions.

Flagship. In most competing catalogues, high-power monaural amps sit at the pinnacle. Not with LinnenberG. For once it's a stereo amp which positions above them to crown a portfolio. Here it's not really about more power per se but essentially twice the hardware for reliable 2Ω happiness. Whether your speakers benefit audibly to outshine the half-priced Liszt option is something best trialled. As my experiment with the svelte Italian two-way towers showed, it's not just about low-gear torque. Widor also behaves heavier, denser and slightly darker and more grounded. That voicing and posture alone could make it a better match with your transducers and taste. If we drove big Tidal/Vimberg or Mårten ceramic speakers as scaled-up versions of our Albedos, I'd certainly favour today's super-robust stereo amplifier. To write from that perspective in the thrall of the actual experience was simply beyond what I had on hand except for these petite 2-ways. That will be for a reviewer colleague with the right statement speakers elsewhere…