Have You Seen?
Shows-Events
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
The Golden Tulip is another trendy hotel just across the way from the Radisson Blu Sobieski, which is where we stayed and where the majority of exhibitors at Audio Video Show 2024 were located for the previous three days. It’s a much smaller show area, but it’s disproportionately packed with gems, especially since much of the exhibition space is divided across conference rooms that are large enough to really show the capabilities of an ultra-high-end system. Destination Audio didn’t reserve one of those huge spaces, though I kind of think they’re better off for it, frankly.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It seems that every audio show you go to will have at least one manufacturer who completely sideswipes you. It’s usually the local guys, folks who are at only their first or second show and seem a little bit nervous about being on such a big stage. It goes like this: you enter half a dozen rooms that have you leaving after four or five minutes, saying, “Hmm, yes, very nice.” And then you wander into a room that knocks you on your ass. This time, it was ElinsAudio’s.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It’s not often I find a vinyl-related product that intimidates me. Turntables, no matter how large or complicated, generally distill down to simple components with known operating principles. Perhaps the most complicated products out there are air-bearing turntables and tonearms, but even these are fairly easy to understand and operate. The air-bearing platter floats like a hovercraft, and the air-bearing tonearm is a tube that rides in a sleeve. Not that hard to understand, right?
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Over the past few years, Pro-Ject Audio Systems, the Austrian manufacturer of turntables of all sizes and types, has focused on affordable ’tables, seemingly at the expense of its higher-end models. Who can blame the brand? The vinyl revival has undoubtedly been a goldmine for Pro-Ject. Churning out thousands of affordable turntables just has to be more profitable than a slow trickle of high-priced audiophile models.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It’s so very true that many audiophile speakers can’t rock out. Oh sure, a well-designed speaker should be able to play any kind of music satisfactorily, but audiophiles seem to value the dainty attributes of speakers over sheer muscle.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
We got ditched for dinner. SoundStage! Ultra’s senior editor, Jason Thorpe, and I were left to our own devices by SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider the other night. “Not coming,” he’d texted us. “Dinner with this Norwegian brand.” We didn’t think much of it till we wandered into a room put together by someone we’d never heard of here at the Radisson Blu Sobieski, one of the three Audio Video Show 2024 locations. “You know these guys?” Jason asked in a text to Doug.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
As the boys and I—and by “boys,” I mean SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider and Ultra editor Jason Thorpe—finished our survey of PGE Narodowy, we wandered into Polish distributor SoundClub’s room. Though it wasn’t a part of the Super-System Alley we’d just checked out, the EgglestonWorks loudspeakers displayed were brain-meltingly good. They are also wallet-meltingly expensive. As the distributor is based in Poland, all the prices that follow are in zlotys.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
If you’ve read some of my output on SoundStage! Hi-Fi, you’ve probably picked up that I’m quite fond of DIY audio. I’ll cop to regularly visiting the DIY Audio Forum, North America’s premier message board for building amps, DACs, speakers, and more. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Poland has a DIY forum of its own, and then multiply that by about a billion when I found that the moderators of the site had ponied up for a room at this year’s Audio Video Show.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Here at SoundStage!, we would never write up an audio manufacturer in exchange for favors like fancy dinners. To do so would be a serious breach of journalistic ethics, would call into question our authority on the subject, and worst of all, would place at risk the trust our readers have in us, which we’ve worked for years to build. Anyway, after a tour of its facility in Pruszków and a dinner of traditional Polish dishes, culminating with a prime cut of top sirloin, grilled to a perfect medium rare and served with a peppercorn sauce, here’s what you need to know about Ferrum Audio.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Matt Bonaccio and I opted for a top-down approach to the exhibits at the Radisson Blu Sobieski location at Audio Video Show 2024. So we climbed up the stairs to the seventh floor and walked to the far end of the corridor.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
The Dark Side of the Moon has become a parody of itself. I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I don’t tend to listen to DSOTM because it’s been so ridiculously overplayed. I originally sat down in the Homogenix room intending to bide my time until I could get some information about this brand-new company’s line of cartridges. But “Time” rocketed out of these dramatic, odd horn speakers with such authority, and at such high levels, that it made me giggle. These horn speakers and this cartridge made me sit through the entirety of side 1. That’s saying something. There was huge power here, with minimal horn colorations. Deep bass, perhaps missing the ultimate extension, but tight as a fish’s ass. These are huge speakers in a small room, but my stars, did it work as a whole.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
If you want to go to Poland’s annual Audio Video Show—or any trade expo, for that matter—it’s wise to plan your trip to avoid the crowds, if at all possible. Doug Schneider, Jason Thorpe, and I judiciously chose to focus our first day on PGE Narodowy, Warsaw’s huge sporting stadium and event center. As I entered the concourse dedicated to exhibiting all things ’phones, I recalled the throngs filling this space at last year’s event, and silently thanked Doug for pushing to go here first. The hall was still nearly empty; I’d have full access to brand reps and distributors as I tested out the latest offerings. Here’s what I found. Take note of the prices, as they are presented here in both US dollars and Polish zlotys.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
There’s a hallway in Warsaw’s PGE Narodowy Stadium that houses several rooms designed for recording television broadcasts at sporting events. These rooms are acoustically treated, large in size, and typically locked down yearly by exhibitors showing the largest, most expensive systems.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
On the first day of Audio Video Show 2024, Doug Schneider, Matt Bonaccio, and I walked into the main entrance of Warsaw’s PGE stadium, and the first room we saw was the Marantz suite, which featured the new Model 10 integrated amplifier (zł63,999, all prices in Polish złotys), SACD 10 player (zł34,999), and Link 10n streamer (zł39,498). This was oddly coincidental, as just that morning, we had reached out to Marantz to request review samples of these tasty, sexy components.
Audio Video Show 2024: Devialet: From Weird, Confusing, and Mysterious to a Kick-in-the-Astra Reboot
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
To put Devialet’s latest product into proper perspective, I feel compelled to give my take on the company’s history. The beginnings of the French brand were straightforward enough, but over the years, the company became weirder, more confusing, and more mysterious. But let me emphasize, the following history is given from my perspective.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
In his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition, William Gibson postulated that jet lag is the result of the late arrival of your soul as it catches up with your body. Since your soul can’t travel as fast as a jet, you have to wait for it to arrive, like lost luggage.
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- Written by: Jonathan Gorse
- Category: UK Hi-Fi Show Live 2024
The final day at Ascot opened with still a great deal to see and hear. Doug Schneider was staying at a Heathrow hotel with the EISA crowd, while I was ensconced in luxury at the Macdonald Berystede Hotel & Spa, very close to Royal Ascot. The short drive in each day told me all I needed to know about the area: the only automotive dealer enroute sells McLaren cars, which are, naturally, equipped with sound systems from Bowers & Wilkins.
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- Written by: Jonathan Gorse
- Category: UK Hi-Fi Show Live 2024
The 2024 edition of UK Hi-Fi Show Live took place on the weekend of September 22–24 at its impressive customary venue, the Royal Ascot Racecourse Grandstand. As usual, there was a plethora of audio brands on display. This show has had an uneven ride in recent years. It was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID pandemic, and then cancelled again in 2022 due to the death of Her Majesty the Queen—the venue is part of the Crown estate. It ran successfully in 2023, but then, a couple of weeks before the 2024 show, part of the main roof at Ascot blew off in a freak storm. Thankfully, show organizer Paul Miller of Hi-Fi News fame was able to relocate some of the top-floor exhibitors to lower floors, and the show went ahead on schedule.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: High End 2024
You know what I like? A good deal. Call me a cheapskate if you want, but after having heard plenty of uber-cheap audio gear alongside some truly stratospheric systems, I must conclude that deep pockets are not a prerequisite for great sound. Luckily, the folks putting on High End 2024 agree, so they’ve come up with the Soundsclever initiative. Five manufacturers are participating, and the sole criterion is that they must present a complete system that costs less than €5000. I am both excited and surprised to report that the Soundsclever systems presented here are not just competent, but truly impressive—at any price.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: High End 2024
As many of the best stories do, this one started over a beer. Or two. At the tail end of Saturday at the High End 2024 show in Munich, Germany, Anders Ertzeid, Hegel Music Systems’ VP of sales and marketing, mentioned that they had a fridge full of beer that they needed help with. I am always keen to assist—from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Subcategories
Most-Read Last 90 Days
- My Audiophile Neighborhood—Where’s the Bass, Part 2: The Right Subs in the Right Rooms
- Aron Garrecht’s New Reference Room, Part 2
- Audio Video Show 2024: Super-System Alley—Sonus Faber vs. Magico vs. Wilson Audio
- Audio Video Show 2024: Audio Anatomy AA5 Loudspeaker—Home Away from Home
- Audio Video Show 2024: Devialet: From Weird, Confusing, and Mysterious to a Kick-in-the-Astra Reboot
- Aron Garrecht’s New Reference Room, Part 1
- UK Hi-Fi Show Live 2024: Days 1 and 2
- UK Hi-Fi Show Live 2024: Day 3
- Audio Video Show 2024: Get There—Destination Audio Will Take You
- Audio Video Show 2024: Knocked on My Ass by ElinsAudio
- Audio Video Show 2024: Skala Audio—the Bravest Exhibit at the Show
- Audio Video Show 2024: Norwegian Wood, Is It Any Good?
- Audio Video Show 2024: Poland’s Audio DIYers Show Up and Show Off
- Audio Video Show 2024: Jet Lag and the Start of a Show
- Audio Video Show 2024: Homogenix Cartridges—a Totally New Design Out of the Blue
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