Nagra sales and marketing manager René Laflamme, who's also a mastering engineer, gave a couple of playback presentations of his and (if I remember correctly) Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath's recordings.
Part of the buzz was…
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There was buzz about many rooms at the High End Munich show but perhaps few were as talked about as the Nagra/Wilson Audio Specialties setup in Atrium 4.1 F130. It seemed to be among the more packed ones, a tough room to get into. I passed by twice before I was able to poke my head in, then was only able to return briefly near the end of the show.
DS Audio's Tetsuaki Aoyagi, known casually as Aki, was at High End Munich introducing his new DS Audio Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer ES-001 device. The next-gen (read: young) designer attended with his parents—something seldom seen at hi-fi shows. (That said, my father attended AXPONA again this year.) And families do attend the High End Munich show, perhaps more regularly than others.
Anyway, Aoyagi's new Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer ES-001 (estimated MSRP $6000) performs a few cool functions and has a touchscreen display on top. It essentially acts an LP centering…
While walking through the aisles of Halle at Munich High End, heading for my last couple of assigned rooms (or areas), I came across designer Michael Børresen, who, with Lars Kristensen (above), gave me a quick run-down of his latest gear. There were new speakers at both the entry and extreme levels from Børresen, and new amplification at the top end from Aavik. The three brands on display—Børresen Acoustics, Aavik Acoustics, and Ansuz Acoustics—were consolidated under one umbrella company, Audio Group Denmark, in 2020.
Two new pairs of Børresen Acoustics speakers were on demo:…
The Harman room at Munich High End showed a wide array of products on active and passive display. Several Classic JBL designs revamped with modern tech and materials took center stage in a long lineup display of speakers.
The retro-modern JBL SA-750 integrated amplifier was shown alongside them. The "class-G" amp takes inspiration from the vintage JBL SA600 model but contains a DAC with UPnP streaming and built-in Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast. Its initial "remake" had had teak side panels as a décor option; it's coming soon with walnut veneer panels as standard for its $…
Triumphing over multiple pandemic-enforced cancellations and postponements, the "is it really going to happen?" four-day event drew 9472 trade visitors from over 80 countries and 9878 consumers from 69 countries. Among them were 450 exhibitors from 40 countries and a grand 417 media representatives from 36 countries. Audio brands topped out at a whopping 800! Thanks to the customary high level of organization that has made Germany's High End Society such a central part of the audiophile industry, Munich High End 2022 was a resounding success. The industry-organized show attracted 19,767…
Heading Photo By Ebet Roberts
When an icon drops her first album in six years, you sit up and take notice. Bonnie Raitt made her earliest record a half-century and more ago, in August 1971. She was 21 and could easily have been carded; the face on the cover of Bonnie Raitt—that first album—has yet to shed all its baby fat.
Eighteen albums followed, through 2016's Dig in Deep, before Raitt took time off to rest, take stock, then wait out the pandemic. In summer 2021, she put the call out to her longtime band, and work commenced on her 20th album. Like its predecessors, Just Like…
#5: "Nick of Time" (from Nick of Time, 1990)
Scherman: Let's jump ahead to your commercial breakthrough. What was the impact of being sober on the making of the album?
Raitt: Well, it wasn't like I'd been hammered all the time. I didn't record my records drunk or anything. It was more like having a better lifestyle and more self-awareness. I mean, I'd been sober a couple of years. I was in a really good place physically and emotionally and mentally and was happy to have a record label that was excited about me.
Scherman: From the first time I heard this song,…
Ken Micallef wrote about the Mola Mola Tambaqui in June 2022 (Vol.45 No.6):
When Herb Reichert reviewed the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC ($13,400) in his December 2021 Gramophone Dreams column, his praise for the Bruno Putzeys–designed processor was effusive. "Mola Mola's Tambaqui did not whisper—it declares loudly: 'See! The truth is more beautiful than you thought it would be!'" "The Tambaqui seemed to expose the core, or body, of recorded sound in a way that upped the intensity of my listening experience." "Transparency, detail, and purity were off the charts." "I heard—and saw—previously…
Jim Austin wrote about the Pass Labs XP-32 in June 2022 (Vol.45 No.6):
I recently replaced my two-box Pass Laboratories XP-22 with the three-box XP-32 from the same company. I had been quite happy with the XP-22, but when JA1 reviewed the XP-32 very favorably, I decided that the review sample should not leave New York City without a listen in my own system. Pass Laboratories was happy to let me hang onto it for a while.
As I already wrote, I've been happy with the XP-22. If you'd asked me to describe its deficiencies, I wouldn't have been able to answer. It's a transparent, very…
Playing records is a delight-filled chore. The simple, quiet act of lowering a tonearm places one's mind at the ready for something marvelous to happen. Surely, this gentle ritual initiates a higher mode of psychic connectedness than poking absentmindedly at a side-facing equilateral triangle on a piece of cheap plastic.
Every time I play a black disc, I am aware that I am participating in a rite that's been passed down through generations. This feels especially true now, as I use Linn's new, flagship Klimax LP12 record playing system. I've been using it now for several months.
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