High End Society Frankfurt 2000
Audiophile Show
Sunday
Seen above is the new Sonus Faber rear channel called the Wall Home
loudspeaker (800 DM). This is from their newly introduced Home Series. A solid aluminum wall mounting bracket is
also included at no additional cost. The Wall Home loudspeaker employs a 1" soft-dome tweeter and a
12cm mid/woofer driver in a ported cabinet. Available in white or as shown in black.
Burmester's new integrated CD player 001 (13,000 DM) offers
high-quality digital to analogue conversion while also having the ability to eliminate
your preamplifier. A top-loading Philips CD Pro drive is used for accurate
reading of the digital data within the CD software. 24-bit/96kHz DAC chipset
is used for decoding the data to analog. There are both analog outputs and
digital outputs if one desires to use an outboard DAC. Availability is for late
August delivery.
There was a whole lotta T+A going on at the Frankfurt. T+A is
a popular electronics line here in Germany. Their promotional information
shows a woman in the left half and the end parts of a car on the right. While
i felt it cut, the Politically Correct of America are possibly a bit too
conservative to allow such things.
McIntosh big mac attic!!! From top to bottom, their MV831 DVD/Video/CD Player, MX1322 A/V
Control Center, MC7205 Power Amplifier and MC202 Power Amplifier.
Well, this American should add a bit of Classé to this report
after all the above T+A and the big mac attack. The Classé room was
featuring their DVD-1 DVD player, SSP-20 preamplifier, and more goodies than you can shake a schtick at.
Wilson Audio loudspeakers had a basic static (non-playing) display of their Watt/Puppy and Cub
loudspeakers.
Cayin seemed to be yet another Chinese-made reface of some manufacture i seem to not recall at the moment. Seen here is their model 500 that uses four USA made JAN 3E29 out tubes.
In the same room is the cute and snuggly Houston MINI 1998 (2,800 DM) that uses two 12ax7 and
four EL84 tubes to produce 13 wpc. The negative feedback is adjustable by the knob on the left while the volume
control is to the right (see photo below).
Looking ever so gorgeous is the SJ audio line of products.
From top to bottom is their CD player/transport, their DAC, preamp and at bottom,
their amplifier. The complete electronics system is 7,200 British Pounds (speakers extra).
My "Little Loudspeakers That Could" award goes to Totem for their Mite
(1,349 DM). They make sound that belies their small physical size. Well worth
checking out if you need good sound from a very small package.
Mørch, makers of world renown tonearms, was in full force
with their DP-6 gold 12" (2,300 DM), DP-6 Chrom Precision Arm (2,3900 DM), and UP-4 Chrom
Standard (1,200 DM). The ability to change arm tubes has made the Mørch a
choice of many a cartridge reviewer.
In the Infinity room they were playing their large Epsilon (30,000 DM) loudspeakers
to good effect with Mark Levinson amplifiers.
Mordaunt-Short went for the full home theater he-man rig with
their 904 loudspeaker (250 British Pounds, seen left) that uses a 1"
aluminum dome tweeter and two 5.25" aluminum alloy cone mid/woofer plus
they had their complete five loudspeaker kit 502THX Power Tower (6,000 DM).
The honorable Air Tight were showcasing their ATM-300 amplifier (15,500 DM). AXISS Distribution,
the good folks who bring these products into Germany from Japan, has recently been
awarded exclusion distribution of the legendary Western Electronic tubes.
AXISS Distribution has also finally found proper distribution on Germany for Koetsu cartridges.
Good things are happened in Frankfurt indeed! The photo above is of a prototype for the
Air Tights new 211 monoblock power amplifier. This design was chosen by their exclusive UK distributor,
Andrew Craig of GT Audio. This is an Enjoy the Music.com
scoop!
High-Performance Audio Reviews
