The Absolute Sound November 2022

You're an Audiophile, All Right There is no substitute for listening, as you advise us. We must all agree. Often what is supposed to sound best does not sound best to many of us. First, for many audiophiles it is a bicycle-tire-pump to the self-esteem to believe one can hear differences that we cannot admit to ourselves are so subtle it takes great concentration at the expense of hearing what is in the music itself. I am no professional audio equipment reviewer and could never be one. I might not be a real audiophile. I accept and admit tins. However, there are things I hear when trying out different circuit components in amplifiers and preamplifiers I have to build myself because I cannot afford amplifiers costing tens of thousands of dollars. For example,…

“Good as it was, you'd never mistake the sound I heard for unamplified musicians performing in a jazz nightclub.” In a show with many demos, one demo in Munich stood out for its creativity and ambitiousness: the live With recorded (rather than live versus recorded) sound in the Stenheim/darTZeel room. At a reservation-only event, jazz saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh played music from Ins album No Filter live, while a recording of his band accompanied him by way of top darTZeel electromcs and Stenheim speakers. This is not the first live-with-recorded demo at a trade show. Acora had a convincing one at the most recent Capital Audiofest. That demo was typical of the ilk in that the recording incorporated its own artificial “acoustics,” in the form of EQ and added reverb. Meanwhile, the live…

Every few years, like clockwork, Bowers & Wilkins stages a press event to announce, describe, and demonstrate an update to one of its speaker lines. The agenda, honed over time and set in stone because it works so well, has a comfortable familiarity. The sessions are consistently informative; the new products are unfailingly impressive. This year's rollout of the 700 Senes 3 was no exception. The event took place in early August, when members of the audiophile press convened at Bowers & Wilkins’ parent company Sound United's Retail Experience Center in Carlsbad, California. No less a personage than Andy Kerr, Bowers’ Director of Product Marketing and Communications, flew in from the UK to personally provide the lowdown on lus team's latest handiwork. Wanting some context, I asked Andy winch product line most…

It's been fascinating to watch how Wilson Audio has systematically tnckled-down its flagship technologies into its lower-priced loudspeakers. The latest example is the just-announced Alexia V—a reworking of Wilson's mid-line Alexia. Excluding the WAMM Master Chronosonic (a limited-production model), there are six floorstanders in the Wilson line: the Chronosonic XVX, Alexx V, Alexia Series 2 (now the Alexia V), Sasha DAStJ Yvette, and Sabrina X. Wilson Audio's current wave of innovation began in 2017 with David Wilson's magnum opus, the $850,000 WAMM Master Chronosonic. That speaker was a reimaginmg of Wilson's first product, the groundbreaking WAMM from 1982. But it was the Chronosonic XVX, designed by Daryl Wilson, that turbocharged tlie company's recent creative burst and is now informing the redesign of the lower-priced models. The XVX introduced more innovations dian…

Magnepan Mini Maggie System $1490 The Mini-Maggie system is a three-piece, ribbon-tweeter-equipped, planar-magnetic, dipole speaker system intended primarily for desktop use. Featuring small tweeter/midrange panels that sit atop the desk and a stereo mid/bass panel that sits in the footwell below, it is arguably the finest desktop speaker ever made. In fact, in detail, resolution, purity, freedom from grain, sounds tage width and depth, and, above all, coherence, the Mini-Maggie rig sounds for all the world like a pair of Magnepan's exceptional 3.7i's on a smaller scale. (223) Audience The One V4/1+1 V5 $1695/$2960 The One is a single full-range driver shoehorned into a small box. The driver itself is the same unit, the A3A, that Audience uses in its $2960 1+1 V3. According to Audience, the A3A has exceptionally flat response, claimed to be…

Naim Mu-so 2 $1799 It may be a similar size and shape to a “boom-box,” but once you hear what this compact system (with three smallish cone dnvers per side, 75W on tap for each driver, and integrated preamp, DAC, streaming, and DSP) can do, there will be no mistake. It is a different creature entirely. Its best qualities compare favorably to those of systems of separate components up to about twice its pace, though it will not play super-loud (an expected result for amps and speaker drivers of tins size) and won't give you the kind of wide, deep sounds tage that you get from individual speakers. Highly recommended. (306) T+A Caruso $4450 Tins tabletop system measures just under a foot in each dimension yet is packed with seven drivers (including a down-firing 6.7”…