Together, these new Reference components delivered impressively tight and solid sound. The system threw a terrifically involving soundstage on Agnes Obel's "Stretch Your Eyes…
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At High End Munich, Burmester launched an entirely new Reference system—except for the BC150 Reference speakers ($218,000/pair). Debuts included the Reference 249 modular preamp ($55,000) with optional MC phono stage ($5000) and DAC ($10,000); the 257 turntable ($55,000) complete with an arm, cartridge, and a sensor that constantly adjusts speed; and the 259 stereo amplifier ($90,000, bridgeable to mono).
High-end speaker and audio electronics maker MBL—best known for its groundbreaking Radialstrahler loudspeakers—has hit a financial rough patch. The Berlin-based company filed for insolvency on May 27, 2025, and is now actively seeking investors.
The court tapped restructuring expert Frank Brachwitz of PLUTA Rechtsanwalts GmbH as provisional insolvency administrator. MBL says it's business as usual: manufacturing and sales are ongoing, and the roughly 50 employees across its two German locations are still getting paid thanks to Germany's insolvency fund. MBL's U.S. branch isn't affected…
As I type these words, an Innuos Nazaré music server/streamer ($50,000) with 8TB of internal storage is en route to my home in Port Townsend for review. The Portuguese company's new flagship, named after the deepwater canyon off the coast of Nazaré that generates some of the world's largest waves, made its official debut at this year's High End Munich. The unit is expected to begin shipping in September.
According to the press release, Nazaré features a deeply customized PreciseAudio mainboard with new PreciseUSB and PreciseNET boards, each independently powered and directly…
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The reborn US brand KLH debuted its Model Seven loudspeaker ($5998/pair) at High End Munich, proclaiming it the first of its kind: an acoustic suspension speaker with a 13" woofer.
KLH and acoustic suspension designs go hand in hand. Co-founder Henry Kloss helped introduce the concept in the mid-50s and established KLH in 1957. The key principle is to use the spring effect of air in a sealed cabinet to control the woofer's movement.
Although the Model Seven was shown as a prototype at AXPONA 2023, what I heard in Munich is the finished, ready-to-ship iteration.
Weighing in…
Photo By Katie Sikora.
In 2010, the funky-eclectic New Orleans band Galactic—known today as much for being the owners of the city's storied Tipitina's club as for their music—cut their song "Heart of Steel" with singer Irma Thomas for their album, Ya-Ka-May. The band noticed that Thomas soon included the same tune in the sets that she played with her band. In 2022, Galactic decided to revisit the Thomas connection and came up with the idea of collaborating with her on an entire album of new music.
Thomas, now 84, cut her first single, "Don't Mess with My Man," for New Orleans–…
There are things that make me feel so unpleasantly lightheaded that some days I worry my cranium might float away like a helium balloon. Like baby animals generated by AI that I can no longer distinguish from real ones. Skin care for tweens. Headlines about American politics that read like headlines about Turkmenistan. The music of Charli XCX.
And being middle aged. Even the term is a con. At 54, I'm not in the middle of anything, and given the way my back feels in the mornings, the thought of living to 108 fills me with terror. There are things about this stage of life that arrive…
This may sound like a small thing that I'm inflating into a larger one, or even a case of audio-reviewer sophistry, but I'm beginning to think this may be the most important thing there is to discuss about a hi-fi component. Many of us equate peak listening experiences with peak sound. This suggests that nothing short of a mind-blowing hi-fi can reliably hold our attention, which if you think about it for even a moment is a pretty miserable predicament. So anything that allows a reprieve from the endless tweaking, optimizing, fussing, and comparing—activities that sometimes occupy more of our…
Stemming from the foundation of Kondo Audio Note of Japan, Peter Qvortrup's Audio Note UK is, for many, a custodian of the definitive audio heritage. The debut of each Audio Note piece sparks obsession among adherents—ardor that outstrips mere fandom.
My first high-end purchase, in the mid-1990s, was from none other than Spin Doctor Michael Trei, who at the time was a dealer for Audio Note UK. (His partner in that venture was another Stereophile columnist, Herb Reichert.) The component was the Audio Note M2 Preamplifier. That exceptional piece was so dynamic and revealing that rolling its…
Understanding field coils
"Field-coil drive units—in laymen's terms, powered drive units, which use an electromagnet to generate the magnetic field with which the voice coil interacts (by Lorentz Force)—date from the earliest days of electrical music reproduction." That is from the Audio Note website. "Not long after the turn of the 20th century, permanent-magnet technology was not sufficiently advanced to make a conveniently sized, and priced, speaker drive unit."
Field coils reportedly offer a calmer, more relaxed and graceful sound, delivering more information and improved…