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Trenner & Friedl Ra loudspeakers with Bakoon's AMP-12R played it analogue with a Nottingham Hyperspace turntable and Bakoon EQA-12R phono stage. Prefer digital? Try the Lumin streamer. The couple in the photo express the essence of our hobby: listening to wonderful music on a great system without any hoopla. This Moje room really nailed it.

Tellurium Q sounds like unobtainium but rest assured, the British cable make is available. Designer Geoff Merrigan was present to demo his Iridium 20 power amp with Amphion Argon 7 towers. Even our short visit made clear that the class A Iridium is a very special amplifier and like Srajan's review described. Our notes say clean and wickedly fast.

Next we encountered Audio Solutions loudspeakers. Lithuanian designer Gediminas Gaidelis had brought samples from his Euphony and Rhapsody lines. On active display was a pair of Rhapsody 80 powered and fed from Onix Audio components like the new M35 network streamer.


Sound Art is a Polish company who demonstrated their new Blues SA 150 loudspeakers in combination with their own Rock CD player and NU Rock amplifier. Sound Art’s design is almost architectural. The Blues loudspeaker suggests a high rise ready to reinforce a big city skyline. Most intriguing was the Rock CD player with its bare spinning disc and tone-arm lookalike. So far we haven't divined what that was nor its purpose.




Wojtek Szemis of the eponymous company surprised us last year with a system composed of as many Kondo products as possible. The price tag of that dream system had been suitably immense. This year he went overboard the other way and composed a far more affordable setup with Sugden electronics and Audio Note speakers. The purely analog system sounded stunningly good no matter where in the room. Even 180° off-axis it exhibited a well-defined stereo image. How that was possible will be revealed in a moment. First the turntable. Wojtek brought a Helius Design Alexia. This turntable did not exactly match the price level of the Sugden gear but was too special to ignore. For more budget-oriented analog spinnsters he also had an Audio Note turntable.


The Alexia has an unique damping system based on techniques designer Geoffrey Owen uses in his day job building telescopes for high-tech medical and military systems. How this damping works goes beyond a show report but when the spinning platter was roughly forced down with a finger it sank a few centimeters and then slowly rose back to its original level without any—any!— audible effects. It would not surprise us if the Alexia were used aboard a luxury car driving down a bumpy road. James, ready the Aston Martin. One of the albums we really liked playing here was Stockhausen’s Stop Ylem with the London Sinfonietta from 1973. Now on to the truly astonishing imaging.

Wojtek showed us a rare no longer produced device between his pre and power amp. It was called an Interchannel Time Delay Compensator. A small box with RCA i/o and some settings compensated for the tiny time differentials between stereo channels caused by sources, preamps and cables. Here we learnt why some equipment sounds so much better than others. Thank you Wojtek.

We could have stayed far longer on the 7th but the floor below was calling. The first room here was the Zontek & Linnart. Last year we were blown away by the sound Pawel Zontek created. Unfortunately a review of that system did not come to fruition. This year’s system was a variation on last year’s. Of course this meant the Zontek Reference turntable but now with a single 14” Delta arm. The phono stage and pre amp were Linnart minimalist tube designs. From here the signal hit KBL Sound monos.


These started life as Leak TL12+ amplifiers and were fully overhauled and tuned into the amps they're now. Tuner/modder KBL Sound also took the Snell E 1 loudspeakers completely apart and rebuilt them to current status. Yes, these Snell designs are still the base for very costly Audio Note speakers today. All cables too were from KBL Sound. Once again we wondered why we've skidded so far off the golden path in recent decades. How could equipment discarded for being old-fashioned sound this good?


With the KBL modifications admittedly not minor, the sound blew away most modern kit. Think about the fact that KBL used old gear as a starting point rather than begin from scratch. We had a fantastic time in this room and our visit will get a due follow-up by way of a formal review.


Another Nottingham turntable showed in the Mediam room combined with an Ortofon cartridge. Amplification was by Audion pre/phono amps into their Silver Night 2A3 monos. Loudspeakers were Living Voice OBX RW with huge external crossovers. Next to the gear the main attraction here were lectures on cartridge setup. They were held in Polish so we moved on.

The GFmod room welcomed visitors with a brightly lit traffic-red pair of Zingali Home Monitors. On active display sat a pair of Zingali Twenty Evo 1.12+. Amplification was in the hands of the small but powerful Burson Timekeeper. All cables were Entreq including the Word Clock USB cable connecting laptop to M2Tech Vaughan DAC.



We all know how our ears are a rare commodity given out only once. Break it and too bad. There are no replacements or spare parts. Proper care is important. With mobile audio earphones—or even worse, earplugs—are the standard. Look in the streets. More than 50% of passers-by wear some type of ear gear. The bigger the better, the louder the cooler. One easy way to blow your birth gift to smithereens is an ill-fitting earplug played at too high a volume. At the show Audio Magic demonstrated LimeEars' custom-fitted IEMs. These offer great sound from a perfect fit cast to each individual ear plus high-class drivers. Because the monitors fit 100%, there’s no need for additional decibels to overcome leaks. Great sound = longer lasting hearing for a true win/win.

Not all rooms attempted to be replicas of the standard living room. Yet there was no lack of visitors to the MJ Audio Lab den where Bryston electronics played PMC loudspeakers. Acoustic enhancement was attempted with Vicoustic panels and traps.

Next an all-white display found itself backed by acoustic panels in beige. You can’t have 'em all white when you are (in) Heed. This Hungarian brand offers a full line of small kit also in black and worked well with the Dynaudio Excite X34 speakers.

Extreo is a Polish firm who demonstrated their cost no-object Scene loudspeaker. Its six Scanspeak drivers are divided into two sections, each with its own compartment and port. Yes the slot under each section is a port not horn mouth. At 115kg each, the 9-driver 3-way sat 111cm high, 55cm deep and 48.5cm wide. The other product on demo was the more conventional looking M1HB stand mount. Just as with the big Scene loudspeaker the designer emphasized attention paid to the crossover and driver matching and their efforts to keep cabinets resonance free.