Audacious Audio

When it comes to loudspeaker drivers, Dynaudio has earned an enviable reputation for quality and reliability. To use an automotive analogy, they are the Mercedes Benz of the driver universe. If you're a speaker builder, the odds are that you have already experimented with these drivers. And even if you're not a speaker builder, it's quite possible that your speakers use Dynaudio drivers. After all, some of the finest speaker systems in the world do. A case in point is the Duntech Sovereign, which single-handedly embodies almost the entire Dynaudio catalog.

There's something inherently suspicious about most all-in-one solutions. The audiophile brain, trained over decades of mix-and-match rituals, recoils instinctively. Where's the fun in a speaker that arrives with amplification baked in? Where's the journey of pairing, the thrill of synergy discovered at 2am after your sixth cable swap?

I can't resist reading about a company's flagship loudspeaker—the price-no-object product that embodies the most advanced ideas from a company's research and design department. Flagship loudspeakers tend to be large, heavy, and complex, and are designed to perform best in large rooms; often, each part of each driver is hand-built to the highest level of quality, with precisely tight tolerances. The cost? Don't ask. Some two-channel, audio-only flagships cost more than a BMW M5 sports sedan or a Porsche 911.

Big loudspeakers are where diligent hi-fi reviewers really earn their pay. Not only are they heavy and difficult to move, but they also require attention and patience to set up so that they sound their best in our listening spaces. They take time to understand and study. And they all sound quite different from each other.

It doesn't take a genius to appreciate the audacity of naming a company after Albert Einstein, the iconic science and math whiz. Clearly, company founder and owner Volker Bohlmeier knew what he was doing—this German brand of boutique electronics has enjoyed worldwide critical and marketplace success since its founding more than 20 years ago.

Edmund (Ed) Manfred Meitner's name and reputation have long been synonymous with pioneering achievements in the fields of digital audio, especially DSD. In 1971, after designing the first fully automated studio console, Ed identified what he calls "the jitter problem." He worked with Sony and Philips to help create and refine SACD and subsequently designed the first complete six-channel DSD playback system for home use.

In 1998, while developing the eight-channel A/D and D/A DSD converters still used to create most SACDs, Ed founded EMM Labs and became head of design, with the goal of bringing DSD to the consumer realm...

Less widely discussed are Ed's amplifier circuit designs, which are the heart of the EMM Labs MTRX and MTRS amplifiers he designed collaboratively with Mariusz Pawlicki, EMM manager of R&D, and the late Zenon "Zanny" Muzyka.

No grand pronouncements on the state of the industry or the even grander universe. No ruminations about the mysteries of the high end or the ultimate interconnect to immortality. Rather, a single, simple, indisputable fact: I needed a preamp.