Munich 2023

It had been far too long since I'd experienced a Peter McGrath demo, let alone one in which the master recording engineer and Wilson Audio Brand Ambassador had a full hour to share his recordings. At last, on Sunday at 2pm at Munich High End 2023, Peter followed Abby Fon of Impex Records' packed presentation on Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLucia: Saturday Night in San Francisco 12 • 6 • 80 to spend an hour in the Nagra room playing a generous helping of some of the favorite tracks that he's recorded over the years.

Having debuted his extremely impressive Mach 8XL loudspeaker ($30,800–$33,000/pair, depending upon finish) at AXPONA, Grandinote owner/designer Massimiliano Magri and North American distributor Reinhard Goerner joined forces in Munich to preview the forthcoming dual mono, fully balanced, class-A Solo amplifier ($20,000 + options).

Twenty-five years after their founding, and 16 years after Stereophile last reviewed a Peak Consult loudspeaker, the Danish company released its new 500lb Dragon Legacy ($225,000/pair) at Munich High End. At the same time, Peak Consult, which Wilfried Ehrenholz, former audio of Dynaudio, took over in 2014, is finally beginning to reach out to the US market. After hearing the Dragon Legacy, I'm convinced that Sunil Merchant of Sunny's Components in E. Covina, CA will soon be joined by other dealers in the US.

UK-based Chord is poised to release the new Ultima Integrated (€8500) in September or October. Chord's first new integrated amplifier in some time, it incorporates elements of the company's Ultima P3 preamp and Ultima 6 power amp and utilizes Chord's latest dual feed-forward error correction, said to reduce the noise floor by at least 10dB. A fully balanced class-AB design, the Ultima Integrated will output 125Wpc into 8 ohms at the least and, one would expect, even more bliss.

"We always wanted a distribution bar," Stromtank CEO Wolfgang Meletzky explained as he held the device with Annett Dehmel, Stromtank Managing Director. "So, we developed the SEQ 5 (approx. $4000, if I read my scribble correctly), which contains custom-made outlets with special rhodium-plated pure copper contacts." (Furutech GTX-D-NFC receptacles are available as an option.) The AC inlet, which can receive up to 2000W of 120V power and 2800W of 230V power, includes Nano Crystal Formular contacts and a 6.3 × 32mm Slo-Blo fuse.

There was a "the only way to appreciate this book is to ditch its cover" discovery to be had in the dCS room, but it required reading between the lines. For me, the system was akin to revisiting close and trusted friends: the superb dCS Vivaldi Apex digital playback system ($91,500 without the transport), which has graced the cover of Stereophile and, in my educated opinion, deserves a Product of the Year award; the Wilson Audio Alexia V loudspeaker ($69,500/pair base price), another cover story product that continues to bless me with its riches; Dan D'Agostino Master Systems Momentum M400 MxV amplifiers ($79,500/pair), which I praise in the current, June 2023 issue; and what I believe was Nordost Valhalla 2 cabling connected to Nordost's upgraded QBase (QB8) Mark III.

Although I never managed to meet Daniel Weiss over two days of trying—his son, Joschka Weiss (above), even took me to the company's booth to show me the discrete analog operational amplifier used in the new Weiss Helios DAC ($18,000) and introduce me to his dad, who was elsewhere—I was mighty impressed by what I heard.