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By this stage of the Munich show, I was frazzled but still hungry for more. The Thrax/Ramar room delivered, with Thrax's Rumen Artarski and Ramar's Rangel Vasev presenting a compact, well-executed system and a set of ingenious vinyl accessories.

This compact rig included a Thrax Yatrus turntable ($17,000) with Frank Schröder CB tonearm ($6000) and MySonicLab Signature Diamond cartridge ($15,000), feeding the new Thrax Cotys phono stage ($9,300). An XACT S1 Evo server ($16,000), via an XACT N1 Network Switch ($6,000), fed a Thrax Maximinus Mk2S DAC ($34,000).

Amplification…

To oversimplify, her career can be divided in two periods. The first, which received most of the attention in obituaries, was in the 1960s, when she was a face of the British Invasion. In the mid-'60s, with her soft, folky voice and very…

Contributing to this effect was the remarkable sonic density produced by the Royal N. I'm talking about an intensely palpable physicality, or, put another way, a heightened sensation of sound being a mechanical wave that needs the medium of air to expand. For me, this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of musical reproduction and is another calling card of the SPU.

The cartridge's frequency response is a thing of beauty. On "Mount Harissa" from The Far East Suite (RCA Victor LSP-3782), Duke Ellington's late masterpiece from 1967, the orchestra's blasts sounded robust and…

Around the time I bought my first SPU, I wrote my first article for the New York Times. It was about a Baltimore man named Leon Kagarise, a TV repairman, audio engineer, and avid collector—well, hoarder—of records. Crammed into his little ranch-style house, tens of thousands of LPs not only turned his rooms into canyons but found their way into his bathtub and bed. Secreted among the vinyl were stacks of reel-to-reel tapes marked with the names of the biggest country and bluegrass stars of the last century. Leon…

In 1957, the grease-bearing Schedule 1 301 was replaced by the Schedule 2 version, which introduced an oil bearing with oil-retaining sintered bushings, minimizing user maintenance. There is spirited debate among 301 aficionados as to which bearing sounds better, but as often happens with vintage gear, the earlier and much rarer Schedule 1 grease-bearing models have more value to collectors.

To build a 301 Advanced, Garrard starts by removing every part from the vintage donor chassis. The aluminum is then stripped to bare metal, partly for safety reasons—the original used lead-…

Being an audio reporter definitely has its perks—like when you're in a spacious Munich room, listening to top-tier systems deliver music with astonishing scale and precision.

Managing director Robert Sikora of J. Sikora, the Polish turntable manufacturer, showed two products, including the Standard Max Supreme ($33,800, all prices approximate when converted from Euros) with a KV9 Max tonearm ($10,800) and a DS Audio Grand Master cartridge ($15,000). I also took in the world premiere of the J. Sikora Aspire ($6400) with a KV9 tonearm ($4600) and DS Audio DS-W3…

Danish loudspeaker maker Storgaard & Vestskov, a relatively young company, operates from Bornholm, a small island in the Baltic Sea. Their 150,000ft² production hub handles everything in-house: R&D, milling, varnishing, and final assembly.

S&V engineer Jens Posselt, a veteran of the Danish audio scene with more than 40 years' experience, now works alongside CEO and designer Casper Vestskov Poulsen and co-founder Kim Storgaard, the company's VP of sales.

Despite its short history, S&V offers multiple loudspeaker models,…

Reporting on High End Munich is like navigating a blizzard. As I pushed from room to atrium to hall to lobby, products seemed to whiz by me, their presenters vying for attention in this international maelstrom of hi-fi. Amid my mad dash, a small speaker manufacturer from Sweden caught my attention: Guru.

Recalling Epos and early KEF, Guru—an offshoot of People Audio AB—produces visually distinctive speakers with matte and woodgrain finishes, slatted ports, silk-dome tweeters, and a range of mid/bass driver materials, including polypropylene, reinforced paper…