LATEST ADDITIONS

Tubes, tubes, tubes—how we love to bask in their glow, roll them, and take their second-harmonic distortion into our hearts as if it were a child or a pet. Some may put out so much heat that we have no choice but to open a window, turn on the air conditioning, or listen in the garb of Adam and Eve before that fatal first bite. As they and you age, you can never be sure who's at their best. Tubes, at least, can be replaced, albeit at significant expense...

I haven't reviewed much tube gear, but when I have—Bruce Moore and VTL (in my pre-Stereophile days), Audio Research, and in our September 2022 issue, the towering Octave Jubilee Mono SE tubed pentode push-pull monoblocks—I've been enamored of their sound. I waxed ecstatic about the "captivating beauty" and "heavenly" highs of the Jubilee Mono SEs. I can still recall how gorgeous they sounded; every listen was special.

Hence, my enthusiastic "yes" to a solicitation from John Quick, VP of Sales & Marketing for Dynaudio North America, Octave's North American distributor, to review the smaller MRE 220 SE mono push-pull tube amplifier.

What was old is new again. McIntosh Laboratories has been in business long enough that they are able to bring new design thinking, materials, and construction methods to products from their extensive back catalog. Example: McIntosh's first successful loudspeaker, the ML1. The venerable Binghamton, New York, hi-fi company recently released a redesigned "Mk II" version ($12,000/pair, stands included).

In this, McIntosh is not unique; KLH, JBL, Klipsch, and other companies have rethought and reworked vintage products for the current marketplace, employing new approaches and technologies. Think of it as remastering classic hardware.

It has been more than a decade since 2012, when Lyra launched the original Atlas moving coil cartridge as the company's flagship, but in the intervening years, there have been a few updates. First, in 2016, Lyra introduced what they call the SL versions of the Atlas and also the Etna. These cartridges were designed to take advantage of a new crop of transimpedance phono preamps like the CH Precision P1 and the Sutherland Phono Loco, which boast exceptionally low noise levels but work best with cartridges that have very low impedance. Cutting the number of turns on each of the cartridge's two coils in half reduces the moving mass and inertia, allowing the stylus/cantilever assembly to respond more accurately to the tiny groove modulations. This results in improved tracking at the cost of a lower output level, which, thankfully, transimpedance phono preamps are well-equipped to handle.

Then in 2020, both Atlas and Etna versions were updated to new λ Lambda versions, with a redesigned suspension and damper system that Lyra says delivers enhancements in clarity and resolution.

My second press day at Munich High End began with an intimate press conference at the Ideon/Baun loudspeaker booth in Halle 3. Benno Baun Meldgaard, former speaker designer for Gamut, Raidho, and Gryphon, was not on hand to discuss the latest developments in his forthcoming speaker line. I didn’t have time to view the latest prototype of those speakers, which I first encountered at the 2023 Pacific Audiofest, but the first speaker in the Baun line-up is due by the end of 2024. Designed to sit very close to the rear wall, the speakers will range upward in price from about $23,000/pair.

If buying a hi-fi product from an internet retailer is like an arranged marriage, a hi-fi show is like speed dating. Not everyone, I realize, approaches hi-fi shows (or speed dating, for that matter) the same way, and anyway, the analogy between hi-fi and dating is far from perfect. Speed dating is how this year's AXPONA, America's biggest hi-fi show, held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center (above) near Chicago in April, often felt to me as I moved from room to room. Every new system I heard had the potential to become a long-term relationship. Could I live with this one forever?

Speaker designer Karl-Heinz Fink’s Fink Team recently bought British loudspeaker brand Epos. “We have changed the Epos designs considerably,” Fink told me about the company’s three speaker models. “Epos loudspeakers are less expensive than Fink Team’s, but the engineering is nearly the same as the Fink Team’s.”

Será Una Noche: Otra Noche; Bela Fleck: Rhapsody in Blue; Mahler: Symphony No.3 & R. Strauss: Death and Transfiguration; Maya Beiser × Terry Riley: In C; Schubert: String Quartet No.15 in G major D887 • String Quartet No.8 in B flat major D112; Stravinsky: Pétrouchka & Debussy: Jeux, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.