Warsaw Audio Show 2024

"At last, a fine midrange!" scribbled I with relief after visiting one too many rooms where any semblance of midrange warmth had been exiled to Siberia.

It felt like a homecoming, albeit a strange one—in that just as I began to sink into or groove on what was playing, the track abruptly shifted to another. Such demos, alas, always strike me as more about sound than music. Even with that reservation, the sound on Camo & Krooked's "Witch Doctor" and Hugo Barriol's "Hold My Hand" was sufficiently engaging to make me wish I could have heard far more.

By the time we got to Heilung's "Svanrand", it became clear that the Cube Audio folks favored interesting vocals surrounded by electronically hyped landscapes. Be that as it may, the universe of "Svanrand" was a welcome alternative to some of the Wagnerian Brünnhildes and Walkyries I've encountered in and around Valhalla over the years. More to the point, the musical choices worked wonderfully with Cube Audio's relatively new Jazzon v2 10" floorstanding loudspeakers, which hail from Poznań, Poland.

Feeding the speakers were a Lampizator 3 DAC from Poland and a Tektron Audio Neptune amp from Italy. This is the second consecutive year in which I've left Cube Audio's room wishing that I could have stayed longer.