Visually the arguably most interesting display was by Sun Audio. Amongst exotic fauna and 'dangerous' critters like snakes and giant spiders hid novelties from Bryston, Mark Levinson, Revel, Lexicon… and Thiel. We reviewed and subsequently acquired their model SCS4 which now has grown legs as the 103cm tall  €3.500/pr SCS4T tower. Retained are the coaxial concept and shallow filter slope (except for compensation circuits). Obviously changed is the reliance on extra stands and bass reach should be more expansive.

Bryston debuted the squared amplifier range whose models are identified by a ² after their name. The 28B-SST² monos abolish all hookup wiring, cost €16.000/pr, put out a kilowatt and promise extremely short signal paths and custom transformers with built-in filtering. As Sun Audio’s Philipp Krauspenhaar explained, special windings and an unusual core material eliminate high-frequency distortion.


Uncompromised high-end goods were visible also in various Danish booths. Densen Audio’s team from Esbjerg introduced their €7.500 B-275 preamp with separate triple-tranny power supply.


One transformer supplies the microprocessor board, the other two split channel duties. Filter capacitance is  a colossal 500.000µF for optimal signal amplification. Herr N. Thomas Sillesen, designer and boss at Densen, doesn’t fancy fully balanced circuits or XLR sockets, claiming that "the counter-phase signal is never perfectly inverted" to merely add distortion.


Danish firm GamuT from Ikast showed its 50kg €12.500 M’intent 7 floorstanding loudspeakers. These three-way efforts sport a DC-coupled midrange filter for phase coherence and minimal distortion and eschew separate internal chambers. As GamuT chief Lars Goller explained, those would provoke resonances at higher and thus more audible frequencies. Here both the highest and lowest drivers cover bass in parallel. The upper woofer’s precise height is claimed to compensate for the usual floor reflection response changes of the lower one. The company's preference for Viva’s ring radiator tweeter continues unabated.


Smaller but no less interesting was Nubert’s preview of the nuVero3. Based on the Nubert nuVero 4, the 3 retains user-adjustable response via filter switches but adds dipole dispersion to the company’s catalogue. For the rear-firing tweeter Nubert’s amiable marketing manager and boss Roland Spiegler [left in the photo] promised enhanced spaciousness. Perhaps to make up for the planned fall release, the treat bowls at Nubert were attractively jumbo sized.


Remaining with smarter pricing, we next went south to Italy and company Audia Flight which is based out of the harbor town Civiatavecchia. Their amplifier and CD offerings have been augmented in the lower reaches. At €2.250, there’s the 75wpc class A/B Audia Flight Three integrated with input naming and XLR sockets, the latter unusual in this price range as is the all-metal remote.

For an extra €325, there’s an MM or MC phono board. The €1.890 Audia Flight CD Three deck is fully balanced and sports the matching XLR outputs. Despite protestations, we snapped Audio Flight’s Massimiliano Marzi and his German importer Uwe Klose from Applied Acoustics.  Say cheese.


To swing the price pendulum the other way, the joint exhibit of Ascendo, Behold and Convergent was next. Here we saw the €12.000 multi-tasking Behold G-192 integrated with DSP, four mono amps and optional media player and hard disk - and Convergent’s €65.000/pr The Statement monos. Those tube amps beckoned with special transformer cores, ultra quality filter capacitors and 140 watts per side. These poster children for extreme audiophilia were apparently the very first export samples outside the US.