Over the years I’ve respected Gershman Acoustics loudspeakers but never really warmed to them. This year I finally came around—or maybe the speakers did. The Gershman three-way Black Swan ($30k), with its ingenious separate sub alignment system, is far and away the best speaker that Eli Gershman has designed. Driven by Red Rock Audio monoblocks and the Exemplar DAC/preamp, the Swan showed very well on a variety of music, with a soundfield that was big and spacious (though darker and not quite as boxlessly open as that of the MBL 101 Es), good transients, rich timbres, and terrific bass. (The Black Swan will be reviewed by Anthony H Cordesman in Issue 168 of The Absolute Sound.)

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