Tempe Front Entrance — System

Sonus faber's Lilium anchors the entrance — a Reference Collection design that splits into two cabinets: a lyre-shaped front enclosure carrying the forward-firing array, and a separate rear chamber decoupled at ninety degrees, handling infra-bass through a 260 mm driver working against a tuned passive radiator. Deep Low Control on the rear panel sets infra-bass level and damping to the room, which is what allows a loudspeaker flat to 20 Hz to sit in an open reception space without overloading it.

A pair of Burmester 218 power amplifiers drives it. The 218 is the Reference Line's compact stereo amplifier — the same fully balanced X-Amp topology as the 259 above it, run in high-bias Class AB so the first watts operate in Class A, at 240 watts per channel into four ohms. The Lilium asks for 100 to 800 watts of undistorted power at 92 dB sensitivity; a pair of 218s answers that without strain.

Both front ends are Linn, and both sit at the Selekt tier — that is the point rather than a coincidence. The Selekt DSM Classic Hub handles streaming and switching, with Space Optimisation room correction standard. The Selekt LP12 handles records on a Kore subchassis and arm board, Arko tonearm, Lingo power supply and Kendo cartridge, fully upgradeable toward Klimax specification one component at a time. Neither format is treated as the secondary one.

Transparent Plus cabling runs throughout, with a Transparent PowerWave conditioning the mains. It is a complete system rather than a display, which is rather the point: the room where people arrive is also a room where they can sit down and listen.