LATEST ADDITIONS

Blue Note's Tone Poet audiophile vinyl reissue series, which has been written about frequently in these pages, was inaugurated in 2019 and has now reached 70+ releases, mostly reissues from the storied label's catalog with outliers from Pacific Jazz/World Pacific and United Artists and a couple of new issues thrown in. The Blue Note reissues have ranged from classics released in myriad editions since their initial LP run to music held back for years and sometimes put out only in Japan or only recently discovered and released on compact disc.

What a show. During its four days in the MOC event center, the first two reserved for industry and press, Munich High End attracted 22,137 visitors from approximately 100 different countries. With 550 exhibitors and more than 1000 brands from 54 nations, they had plenty to hear and see.

In the extremely large, all-sonic-bets-are-off, glass-enclosed Atrium display mounted by Mansour Mamaghani's Audio Reference Munich, Dan D'Agostino, and his indispensable sidekick (aka company President) Bill McKiegan, joined forces with Wilson, dCS, and Perlisten to blow people's minds. When the new Relentless Epic and Relentless Epic 800 mono amplifiers got fired up, it was a case of which dazzled you first, the sound or the sheer enormity and shine of the display.

You read it here first. After aeons of confusion over the Canadian company's name—is it Moon, is it Simaudio, or is it Simaudio by Moon?—our friends to the North are poised to finally resolve the issue. But before their Moon launch, they are launching their first new product range in 10 years, the upper-echelon North Collection. Consisting of three products, two in the 600 range, two in the 700, and two in the 800, all are full balanced designs.

Costa Koulisakis (above), the extremely knowledgeable and articulate public face of whatever they're called, began with the 641 all-analog, 125Wpc integrated amplifier ($11,000) and 681 streaming DAC ($12,000), which has fixed and variable outputs that does up to 32/384 MQA and DSD256.