After more sonic and commercial triumphs, Sanders sold MartinLogan in 2005 and took a long sabbatical, then returned to critical accolades a few years ago with a new company, Eikon—and a…
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When Gayle Sanders designs a new speaker, I go out of my way to hear it. Sanders is the co-founder of MartinLogan. In the second half of the 1980s, he spawned the CLS (curvilinear line source): a full-range electrostatic panel, made with a single sheet of Mylar, that so excelled in speed and midrange purity that it made many highly-regarded traditional speakers of the day sound plodding and gray.
In addition to exhibiting a plethora of "classic" hi-fi gear, MoFi Distribution introduced a modern lifestyle system in Suite 340: the new Piega Ace Wireless series.
The Piega Ace 50 Wireless active tower speakers ($4495/pair) utilize class-D amplification, each driver powered by its own module. An AMT tweeter handle the high end, and four woofers handle the mid and low frequencies. The midrange gets its own enclosure. There's a streaming client built in (Chromecast, Spotify connect). The Ace 50s are Roon Ready.
If you want more low-end extension, there's a…
Audio shows are great for hearing new components and systems—of course they are. But they can also be good for encountering new ideas. Over two days at AXPONA, I encountered the same curious idea from two manufacturers.
First came the Aurender suite, with a passive display of many of the company's server/streamers and server/streamer DACs, which range in price from $6000 (plus the cost of storage) for the A 200, one of three new A-series models ("A" denotes Aurender products with an onboard DAC) up to $24,000 for the N30SA, Aurender's flagship server/streamer that comes with 8TB…
T+A elektroakustik GmbH & Co. brought the A-team to the 2022 AXPONA, including American rep Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations David Schultz, Chief Operations Officer (and heir apparent) Conradin Amft, and Founder and CEO Siegfried Amft. During a light Saturday breakfast in the big T+A room, the elder Amft briefed the Stereophile team on T+A's status and plans; expect some big announcements at High End Munich later this month.
At AXPONA, T+A had most of its lines (perhaps all; I'm not sure) on passive display—the massive, impressively constructed HV series…
Exciting. Engrossing. Exhausting. Enjoyable. Nothing but e-words from me. I could go on, but not without breaking out the thesaurus. —Rogier van Bakel, Stereophile's newest Contributing Editor
Numbers are one thing. At AXPONA 2022, those numbers included 7498 unique visitors, plus 98 incontrovertibly unique members of the press, 138 active exhibit rooms, and a large number of Ear Gear and marketplace exhibits. 220 showgoers attended Friday's 8pm Blues Night with Toronzo Cannon, and 300 defied expo burnout to enjoy Lori Lieberman on Saturday at 8.
But numbers mean only…
A large, almost loft-style suite on the 16th floor housed a big, all-out system presented by Bending Wave USA, the Florida-based distributor/dealer for Germany's Göbel Audio (among other brands); their name nods to Göbel Audio's bending wave drivers. At the end of a no-holds-barred chain, a pair of glossy black Göbel Divin Marquis speakers (see John Atkinson's review; $90,000/pair) pumped out soundwaves. Their bold geometric form with all its angular surfaces kind of resemble a robot; I mean that in a good way: They're neat-looking.
An AMT tweeter—a heavily modified Mundorf…
The MoFi Distribution classic gear fun continued in Suite 346, with two pairs of Wharfedale Heritage Linton speakers ($1799/pair), stacked, with the one on top inverted so that the two tweeters were in the middle. One Wharfedale Linton stand ($399/pair) supported each side's stack.
MoFi showed so much that it'd be nearly impossible to cover it all, but I want to mention a few new introductions from Suite 346. I wrote about the MoFi Electronics x Fender PrecisionDeck turntable ($3495) in the December 2021 issue's Industry Update, and I had seen photos of it, but the limited-…
Dealer/distributor Verdant Audio's room included a few important debuts, including the new Wilson Benesch Geometry Discovery IIIZ standmount loudspeaker ($31,000). The speaker updates the English company's Geometry lineup, and it's the second model with its monocoque enclosure incorporating the recently developed A.C.T. 3Zero material, a "greener" carbon-fiber alternative that's said to be almost entirely free of petroleum products: Even the resin has been replaced by a "bio resin," Verdant Audio Founder Scott Bierfeldt told me. It's also said to require about half the amount of energy to…
The week before Christmas, I invited my artist friend Joe to visit my studio to see my 2021 paintings. To spice the invitation, I told Joe that while he was looking he could audition the newest flagship DAC from Denafrips, the Terminator Plus.
Joe is an all-in Denafrips guy (footnote 1) who currently uses an Ares II in his bedroom system and a Terminator in his big studio system, to which he listens while he works, typically for 10 hours per day. He paints his car, dog, and horse pictures while listening through a pair of dusty, paint-spattered Klipsch La Scala horns sitting on cement…
When I played Music for the Qin Zither for Vlad and Li, Li exclaimed, "I can see the qin! Look! It's right there!" as she pointed to a place between the speakers. Li was responding to one of the Terminator Plus's most dominant traits: its high acuity-factor.
Hoping to impress Vlad with the Terminator Plus's ability to express the qin's full harmonic spectrum, I played Xia Fuxi performing "A Fisherman's Song" from Chinese Traditional and Folk Music: Guqin Vol.3 (16/44.1 FLAC, China Record Corporation/ Qobuz), a demonstration-quality guqin recording. The sound was so ridiculously tangible…