Tenor Audio, the fine manufacturer of amplifiers based in Montreal, was featured in one of the first rooms I visited, and Robert Lamarre of Tenor pointed out to me that I needed to go across the street to the Four Points Hotel to visit the other Tenor Audio room. And what would I find there, I inquired? The "World Premiere" of Tenor’s new 300 watt hybrid amplifiers, M. Lamarre suavely intoned. Well! Based on what I’d heard of Tenor’s 15Wi design, I scurried right across the boulevard and sought out one of the larger rooms at the Four Points Hotel, where drawn by the sound wafting down the hallway, I was able to quickly locate the new Tenor Audio "300Hp" monoblock hybrid amplifiers driving a pair of Kharma "Grand Ceramique" speakers.

Tenor Audio 300Hp monoblocks & Kharma Grand Ceramique

I quickly fell into attentive conversation with Bill Parish of "GTT Audio & Video."

(www.gttgroup.com) Based in New Jersey, they have the good fortune to be retailers for both Tenor and Kharma– which means Bill gets to listen to this stuff whenever he wants to! As Bill put it to me in describing the Kharma speaker line: "The size of the room is all that matters; every one is a reference speaker." And judging from what I heard then and there he may well be correct. I would like to hear more of the Kharma line in the future, but was happy to finally hear the "Grand Ceramique," which have been receiving positively drooling reviews everywhere you look.

To be clear, what I was listening to was a pair of Kharma Grand Ceramique GrCe1.0 4-way floor-standing speakers, driven by a pair of brand-spanking new Tenor Audio 300Hp hybrid monoblock amplifiers. The Grand Ceramiques are a 4 ohm design with a sensitivity of 93dB, which I would never have guessed from just looking and listening. In other words you could drive these speakers with just about anything. The Tenor 300Hps are so-named for an obvious reason– they put out a gigantic sounding 300wpc. This was some real synergy, there is no question about that. And these gems were deployed in a room that was large enough to show this caliber of component to advantage, which unfortunately was not the case for some other fine manufacturers. Words fail, but here goes, from my notes: "Incredible massed strings. Extremely deep and chasm-wide stage. Canyon-deep low-end." Bill Parish played me a few things, and I stood up and exclaimed: "You’re scaring me!" I cannot recall hearing such lifelike orchestral reproduction in a long time. You want width? This combination was producing holographic percussion that simply stared me in the face from way beyond the edge of the speakers. I could have danced all night– if I had been dancing and it had been night, but you get the idea. As it was, it was back to Planet Earth with the reality check; the Grand Ceramiques retail for $47.5k U.S., and the Tenor 300Hp monos clock in at $29.9k U.S. Darn it, I knew there was a catch. Final word from me: Tenor and Kharma are making some heavy mojo– Yeah Baby, Yeah! Find out more at: www.tenoraudio.com and www.gttgroup.com

Taken from http://www.enjoythemusic.com/montreal2003/becker/page3.htm written by Rick Becker