AXPONA 2022 Show Report
Final Update Featuring The First Floor
Audio Expo North America 2022 Show Report
Show Report By Rick Becker

  I've seen all-Burmester rigs before but the rig in Schaumburg A was by far the largest speaker and monoblocks I've heard from them. The wild, complex jazz LP that was playing was finely resolved and very transparent as you might expect from the AMT driver in the speakers. Stylistically, Burmester is synonymous with bling but looking at the form behind the shine, it is also very well designed — especially the speakers. The literature was scant but I believe most of the active rig was from their Reference Line. You can go one level up and two levels down to a more lifestyle presentation. Of course, if you don't like shiny objects, this was not your room.

The metal grilles on the BC150 speaker ($150k) concealed side-firing woofers. The customizable wood finish in this instance was apple wood. The model 159 monoblocks ($350k/pr) run in A/B and weigh 400 lbs. each.

The top-mounted controls on the model 808 preamp ($57k) above allowed extensive control. The #175 turntable ($60k) with arm and cartridge also has a built-in phono stage and separate power supply. On the shelf below was a #111 Media Server ($55k) with 3TB storage, streamer, DAC, transport, preamp with three analog and three digital inputs, as well as a headphone jack.

As I said, you can scale your Burmester rig down if you wish. The big rig above totaled $672k plus cables and stands, but even a single piece of this gear would make a declarative statement in any system. In the photo above you see a power amp on the left and an integrated amp on the right.

And an even larger power amp. My thanks go to distributor Robb Niemann, C.E.O of Rutherford Audio Inc., who has offices in Englewood, Colorado, and Richmond, BC, Canada. This room garners one of the Best Rooms awards, which was no small feat in this large, cube-shaped room with tall ceilings.

Schaumburg B was an unusual room in a couple of respects. It was a rare opportunity to hear the huge Klipsch Jubilee speakers ($35k, or $36k as I was told), first of all, and to see them used out in the room, rather than tucked into a corner as the originals were designed to be, was rather strange. I've seen them placed like this once before in Montreal, and I was not impressed with the placement there, either. But in a large room like this, it can work.

From this side, it almost appears as an open baffle speaker, but for a compression driver such as this, being mounted on an open baffle is relatively meaningless. Corner placement would have improved the WAF.

It would seem appropriate to team these speakers with McIntosh gear as both of these companies have deep roots in American audio history. But the electronics here were from Michi, a relatively new upper-tier brand from Rotel. Seen here are their P5 preamp with phono stage ($4300) and two S5 stereo power amps ($7500 ea.) that put out 500 Wpc into 8 Ohms in Class A/B. I expect they were using these to bi-amp the speakers as the speakers have an external electronic crossover and they were using AudioQuest Firebird BASS speaker cable ($21.4k for 15' pair) and AudioQuest Firebird ZERO cables ($7.6k, 15' pr.) for the horns.

Getting to see the Fender x MoFi turntable with the Mobile Fidelity MasterTracker cartridge ($3500) was a treat. Qobuz was the digital feed to a Roon Labs Nucleus ($1459). AudioQuest cables were used throughout, including Thunderbird XLR ($3900, 1m, pr.), Firebird XLR ($6900, 1m pr.), Diamond Ethernet ($1k 0.75m), and USB ($649, 0.75m), Hurricane High Current AC ($1750 1m), Firebird Source AC ($3k 1m) Firebird High Current AC ($3500 1m) and Mistral bulk power cable at $120/m. AudioQuest Niagara 5000 Low-Z power conditioner cleaned it all up for $5500. And Solid Steel HF-4 rack ($3600) held the components while the HY-A amp stands were $500 each.

All-in-all, this was an interesting listening experience.

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