When a brand spawns another named for its designer, one wonders whether engineering talent has migrated. Here we see a stack of new M2Tech and another named Manunta for M2Tech's Marco Manunta.

I had another go at Magico, here with Constellation Audio gear. No joy. I felt the same about Wilson until I heard them with Lamm and now Nagra. Perhaps there's hope for me yet.

Mårten and MSB teamed up for some M&Ms.

ModWright collaborated again with Tune Audio and also VPI. The Greek hornspeakers benefited from newly designed tower subwoofers. Dan Wright had brought both phono and digital to support a VPI table and streaming MacBook. During my second visit on Saturday, the sound here was very good and actually eclipsed last year's. These Tune Audio horns are fantastic. So are these electronics.

Mola-Mola had finally hit full production by finding a machine shop which could execute their swooping chassis to the desired finish perfection. This is arguably the most advanced D-class tech on the market but the company also have a high-end preamp and fully discrete DAC.

Talking of advanced fully discrete DACing the R2R way yet inclusive of DSD, MSB believe they've raised the bar again and hit the mother lode with their newest shown here in the black finish.

Here's what lives inside.

Purely static, the obviously Italian Nime Audio Design presented their take on the audio section of the HR Giger museum at the Gruyère castle of Switzerland.

Octave Audio offered a rare glimpse at the innards of their flagship mono in the window...

... whilst inside their designer led me to the V80SE integrated now with KT150 as his newest and latest. He did admit that these bottles took some taming to rid them of a certain glare and brightness but that he had managed by adjusting his circuit accordingly. A review of his HP700 statement linestage introduced last year with a rare tube-based tone control option is finally on the books.

Once from Turkey showed for the very first time, hence only had a static display. Owner Halit Ergenç is an actor famous for his role as Sultan Süleyman in the Muhteşem Yüzyıl television series. His father was a musician and composer however, hence music is his first love. Crafted by hand from fibreglass, his flower-shaped coaxial speaker stopped many showgoers dead in their tracks and some even photographed their wives right next to it.

There are plans for a dedicated Istanbul Once showroom.

And the alien flower or pod is far from a one-trick pony as these other active models show.

The workers at Vivid Audio might be the only ones to fully appreciate what goes into the creation and finishing of such curvy objects. Next year we'll have a chance to hear them.