Rogier van Bakel

If I have a bias toward Magico, it's because I've never heard a Magico speaker I didn't like. Even so, when I listened to the company's M6 towers ($185,000/pair) in a large demo room at AXPONA 2022, my brain broke.

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?

The all-in-one stereo component occupies the same territory as those Italian restaurants that also serve sushi and Texas barbecue. Every instinct says it's a dubious overreach: Few chefs master two or more distinct cuisines. But then you experience that rare eatery that somehow nails the California roll, the carbonara, and the brisket, and you realize that dismissing it on principle could mean missing something that's genuinely excellent.

On my way to the Revox room in Warsaw's Sobieski Hotel, my mind wandered/wondered: If a voracious reader is a bookworm, is a tape enthusiast a tapeworm?

Earlier this year, it occurred to Robert Lucskai that he could combine his life-long love of high-end hi-fi with his expertise as a real estate agent. Thus his startup business Costa Soniqa ("Sound Coast") was born.