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.

AV RoomService's Norman Varney is committed to addressing smaller and smaller vibrations that can affect system performance ways in far less subtle than one might wish. The latest additions to his roster, shown in this admittedly less than sexy photo, includes two chassis lid damping devices. The first, a constrained layer stainless-steel damping strip that attaches internally to a chassis lid, should be affixed at an angle so that it will affect more modes. There are two models: a 12" × 2" strip ($35) or the larger 12" × 24" version ($65).

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.

Meridian's just launched, visually stunning DSP9 digital active loudspeaker (€60,000/pair in black, €65,000/pair in a choice of automotive finishes) is a definite rival to SteinMusic for the Munich High-End 2023 Best Looker of Show Award. With all electronics built-in—each drive unit contains its own amplifier—and controlled by phone or tablet, the speaker includes DSP intended to eliminate all room variables.

"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.

I was dashing past hundreds of exhibits in the four huge ground-floor exhibit halls of the MOC when Lab 12's exhibit caught my eye. On the recommendation of Herb Reichert, my audiophile buddy, Scott, bought the Lab 12 tube preamp shown above with Stratos Vichos, Lab 12's owner and designer, and forever sings its praises.

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.

The folks at Gryphon Audio Designs of Denmark sure are smart cookies. Rather than overloading the public, industry, and press with a ton of words about their new Diablo 333 integrated amplifier ($23,000), they posted an extremely detailed "TECHNICAL TALK" sheet in the front area of their deep glass-entranced showcase.

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.

Welcome to the first GoldenEar loudspeaker completely redesigned by AudioQuest since the cable company bought the speaker company. Re-envisioned and realized by a US/Canadian team headed by Garth Powell, the T66 ($6900/pair in black or $7200/pair in red) will hopefully become available in either August or September. It contains a folded-ribbon AMT tweeter, two MVPP, cast-basket, passive midrange drivers, and two active long-throw, DSP-controlled oval subwoofers powered by 1200W class-D amplifiers. Passive quadratic planar radiators are located on each side of the speaker. It goes without saying that internal wiring is by AudioQuest.