Munich 2022

Perhaps the folks at Estelon were being intentionally tongue-in-cheek when they wrote, on their website, "By elevating the act of listening to new heights..." about the new Estelon Extreme Mk.II flagship loudspeaker (€200,000/pair) whose mechanical system enables multiple height and tweeter depth adjustments to ensure stable imaging. (It also intentionally isolates the upper drivers from the speaker's bass units.)

What was anything but droll was the sound which, thanks in no small part to power and digital supplied by MSB through Kubala-Sosna cabling—internal wiring is Kubala-Sosna "pure" copper—inspired me to write, "Sounds like real music." I'm not sure what was playing, but the sax and well-controlled double bass sounded remarkably lifelike, with markedly differentiated colors. "Everything is tight and in place," I scribbled in my notes about sound that was mostly stellar.

In an extended presentation, Estelon's soft-spoken co-founder and chief designer Alfred Vassilkov augmented information in the Estelon press release by noting that the Extreme Mk.II has a new 7" Accuton ceramic-membrane midrange driver whose large diameter voice-coil is "more dynamic and more sensitive to nuances." The 1" Accuton diamond-dia[hragm tweeter is claimed to reproduce sounds up to 60kHz "with no distortions in the human hearing range." (What does that mean, I wonder?) The midwoofer is manufactured by Accuton for this speaker alone. The cabinet, which has no parallel walls, is a marble-based composite. Two-tone high-gloss finishes include Midnight Opera, Bronze Royale, Lunar Eclipse, and Nordic Emerald.