Swix, swax, swox, the fox has the pox – I haven't a clue how to pronounce brand SW1XAD from Essex. Their equally mouthy MTR963 is a new nearfield monitor of the single-driver whizzer-coned and crossover-less sort. Like Cube Audio, there are multiple whizzers. Unlike Cube, the driver geometry isn't round but oval. The standard motor is AlNiCo. A forthcoming option is a field coil. The cabinet is 35mm thick Birch Ply. The bass ports too use this material. Sensitivity is 94-96dB depending on motor, claimed response 35Hz – 20kHz. Dimensions are 70 x 50 x 30cm HxWxD, weight is a considerable 45kg/ea. This speaker's obvious targets are listeners with medium to smaller rooms who groove to flea-powered SET amps.

Lady Thalia the 2nd – Actually it's the Erzetich Thalia v2024 Edition, a €699 open-backed dynamic headphone tailormade for portable use. The current upgrades include a lightweight carbon-fibre headband to replace heavier steel; resin cups with more intricate internal shaping in lieu of the prior wood; softer larger comfier pads; and 8-core silver-plated OFC cabling. Beyond the stock black or silver finishes, custom-coloured options are just €749 so get your lime green gumption going or rave to raspberry rage. Doing the sonic splendor are 40mm titanium drivers, cradling the cranium in comfort are just 280g of wear weight.

The axis of Axxess – Audio Group Denmark's entry-level brand leverages tech from Aavik, Ansuz and Børresen at lower pricing. Expanding that portfolio now are the L1 and L3 loudspeakers, a 2-way monitor and 4-driver floorstander respectively, both with a Kapton planar tweeter and tri-layer spread-tow carbon fibre 4.5" dynamic drivers with an aramid core and double copper-cap pole rings. The new Axxess cable loom includes a power cord, interconnect, speaker cable, digital cable and Ethernet link. For resonance control, Axxess raid the Ansuz Darkz drawer to trickle down the Noir ball-bearing isolator. Pricing for the novelties starts at €175 for a 1m BNC digital cable, goes to €900 for a 4m pair of speaker cables, hits €2'500/€5'000/pr for the speakers in black or white satin (add €1K for the monitor stand) and €550 for a quad of Noir.

Telos 800 – It's Goldmund's latest class AB wide-bandwidth stereo amp capable of 300/390wpc into 8/4Ω powered by a 3'200VA transformer. The Telos 800 retails for 75K Swiss.

Power your zone – Gryphon Audio re-enter the power-conditioning segment with their new €14K PowerZone 3.10 and $17.5K PZ3.20 shown. Each packs 8 outlets, those of the 2.0 split across two independent banks of four each. The core tech revolves around Paul Hafner's Quantum Acoustics conductor modules by way of crystal-optimized wiring inside resonance-tuned chambers without any filtering or active signal processing. With the potted modules encased in dual-layer steel cores inside aluminium enclosures, there's also an application of Meneta Group's SmartStack™ rubber tech, a compound until now only used in the automotive industry for mechanical resonance suppression.

Final words? – Right now Final's new D7000 [$3'500] is their current say on a planarmagnetic headphone. This 50Ω 437g 89dB effort gets a new diffusor, a sort of waveguide between thin-film membrane and ear canal perhaps related conceptually to the Audeze fazor plate. It's a modular build for easy in-field repairs and continues to use a machined aluminium-magnesium alloy housing. The ear pads now exploit Japanese washi paper. The included cable is 3m long and delivery occurs in a hard flight case.

Swedish 3-way – Qln bow their Reference 9 [$42K/pr], a 91dB/4Ω 3-way tower of 105 x 30 x 65cm HxWxD dimensions and a solid 65kg of mass. The latter reflects 4cm thick Qboard composite panels. The drivers are a 25mm tweeter, 7" Kevlar midrange and 9" carbon-composite woofer. The -3dB LF point is 25Hz. Available finishes are matte walnut or gloss rosewood.

Brama 1, Brama 2, lift-off – It's Vinnie Rossi's next-gen 3-deep Brama range of integrated [$48K], 300B preamp [$39K] and monaural power amplifiers [$60K/pr]. "Each component features several updates and refinements over the previous generation including a chassis machined from a solid block of aircraft-grade 6063 aluminum for low resonance, maximum heat dissipation, enhanced shielding from EMI and a seamless aesthetic appeal. There are new switch-mode power supplies for lower noise, improved transient response, higher output power, significant EMI filtering and active power factor correction. The integrated and linestage now include a matched pair of WE 300B. The class AB Mosfet power stages now have more output power yet a lower number of output devices. Power and signal paths were further optimized, too." Consult the website for further details.

Stream Ltd. – The new Denafrips Arcas streamer positions above their Arce. Yet there's still no integration of Qobuz, Spotify or Tidal nor a time line for them. Roon certification is announced for Q2/Q3. An iOS app is in the works. Given this limited state of affairs, Denafrips call Arcas "for customers already familiar with protocols like Roon or HQPlayer who occasionally stream music over DLNA or Airplay." Over Arce the new deck upgrades its oven-controlled crystal oscillator and goes to dual I²S and AES/EBU outputs.

Ugly but swans – Austin AudioWorks feel that behind brick-like no-frills exteriors, their Black Amp headfi amp [$1'849] and Black Swan phono stage [$1'649] are snow-white purist swans. Where Bakoon and Enleum have long promoted high-impedance current drive for headphones, designer Barry Thornton now adds to that proven recipe class A bias, fully balanced operation and zero feedback. The MM/MC phono stage puts all the adjustments on its utilitarian front then pursues the same general circuit topology groomed for wide bandwidth and low noise. Check their website for the brand's genesis story and details. Whilst new it packs a lot of prior experience at other brands.

Voyager – It's Burson's top Soloist pre/headfi amp implementation with up to 10wpc in dual mono pure class A of 80-watt idle current [£2'774 or £3'329 standard or deluxe]. It runs dual buffered Muses 72320 volume controls, three levels of hardware crossfeed, three power levels and even packs a mono subwoofer output. Discrete op-amp rolling is part of the fun as are drive-anything chops. Remote control completes creature comforts in preamp mode. i/o are 2/ea. RCA/XLR in and single RCA/XLR out whilst the front has 3.5mm, 6.3mm and XLR4 headphone ports. The 24V/5A power supply is external.

Gold Note's new CDP – The CD-10 [€2K] completes the half-width range in the Tuscan portfolio around a Stream Unlimited slot loader. Coax/Toslink i/o are complemented on the analog side by RCA/XLR outputs. In typical Gold Note fashion, the optional external PS-10 Evo inductive dual-mono power supply upgrade awaits via multi-prong umbilical. D/A conversion is via AK4493, defeatable volume control is digital. Black, silver and champagne finishes apply as does the firm's multi-function remote control. Recordable and rewritable CD media are supported.

Get yer German move on – With Lindemann's new Move [€3'200/pr], you will. It's a port-loaded spider-less Mark Audio widebander augmented by mini AMT in a monitor sized HDF enclosure with aluminium baffle. Claimed bandwidth is 40Hz-36kHz, sensitivity 87dB. Dimensions are 35x17x30cm HxWxD, weight is a svelte 6.5kg. The grills attach magnetically, the optional low-mass stand costs €295/pr. The only crossover is a super-tweeter high pass.

Mama Moya – Vivid's Moya 1 isn't your usual Mama Mia. Its vertical stack of four 9" woofers on either side of the central 4-way array adds beaucoup cone area to Vivid's previous flagship whilst reducing excursion requirements. The upper mid and tweeter sport a diamond-like coating on their membranes and more powerful motors than earlier Giya generations. The 13-driver Moya 1 rocks 93dB sensitivity, 5Ω nominal impedance, a -6dB bandwidth of 19Hz – 42kHz, measures 166 x 66 x 121cm HxWxD and weighs a colossal 346kg/ea. What the shipping company will drop off at your door thus weighs 1'084kg or slightly in excess of a tonne. The debit to your account could be £400K. Happy days!

Take Heed – Helikon is here. It's Heed Audio's newest preamp/mono set "sold as a matched trio first limited to a special 30th Anniversary production of 30 units using NOS very special matched output devices and the now discontinued and much coveted Nichicon Gold coupling capacitors in a fully-balanced latest implementation of their Nexus topology. That employs a bridge-mode of their proprietary mirrored dual circuits which produces four times the output power of the basic circuit in each of the monoblocks. Price for the Helikon set will be $27'500." Thus sayeth the brief press release.

Support System One – It's not Airforce One but Node Audio's new isolation footer, the SST 1. It includes magnetic and resonance absorption plus offers the shown add-ons to morph into a cable lift, penetrate carpet on 5 spikes or ride the struts of a Spider rack.

A foxy trotter – It's the new Genesis 7 Foxtrot [$13.8K/pr], the largest passive speaker in the G7 range. "To maintain Genesis bass quality without servo-controlled active woofers, we use two 8" woofers in an isobaric configuration to achieve tight, articulate and dynamic bass. It doesn’t look as impressive because one woofer is completely hidden but sounds better than two forward-firing woofers and can fit into a much smaller cabinet." The enclosure material is bamboo ply. The photo shows the size comparison to a rear-aimed Minuet. The 88dB Foxtrot's bandwidth is published as 49Hz-40kHz ±3dB. It features front/rear ring-radiator 'ribbon' tweeters, a 5.5" titanium midrange and the isobaric bass array. Its brightness control has a range of ±4.5dB. The speaker measures 53 x 14 x 16" HxWcD and weighs 86lbs.

Sublimate separation pains – You can with Sublime Acoustic's new K235 active crossover [$1'200, lower intro price]. It allows for 2-way or 3-way operation with 4th-order or optionally 2nd-order slopes. It's a pure analog design executed with Burr-Brown opamps, metalized poly-film and metal-film resistors and Alps metal-film pots. Filter values are set with pluggable cards. The sub channel has mono summing, the subsonic filter sits at 15Hz/4th-order. There's also a baffle-step compensation control. All signal paths are available on RCA and true balanced XLR. The max allowable input voltage is 5.5V, gain adjustments per leg are -9dB to +8dB. The internal power supply is linear. Available filter cards cover 30Hz-100Hz in 5Hz increments, 110-200Hz in 10Hz increments, then 250/275/350 and 450Hz, then 300-4'000Hz in 100Hz steps and 4'500-16'000Hz in 500Hz. The chassis is available with/out rack ears.

Deliricum? – Meze's 2nd-gen Liric is a closed-backed headphone which asks that question with "performance enhancements, a new striped ebony finish and more modularity for easier upgrades. The sonic profile has been tuned up to offer a compelling blend of clear accuracy with a touch of warmth for added depth. A new quarter-wavelength resonator mask of a precision-crafted metal plate strategically covers select openings in the driver frame to attenuate high-frequency peaks above 7kHz for smoother listening. The Liric 2 has also been warmed up with the replacement of the original leather-clad earcups for durable hardwood." The Liric 2 is a 61Ω 100Db load with claimed 4-92'000Hz bandwidth and 427g of weight.

Active Swiss – Goldmund have the new Asteria [80K Swiss], Rhea [125K Swiss] and Theia [250K Swiss]. The smallest Asteria 9" 3-way shown is powered by 600 watts of class AB Telos power, with 175 watts each to the tweeter and midrange and 250 watts to the woofer for a claimed 34.5Hz to 25kHz – 6dB bandwidth. 24/96 DSP handles the crossover, room correction and time correction code. Connectivity is wireless or via digital coax. Dimensions are 35 x 110 x 35cm WxHxD, weight is 70kg.  Rhea's woofer scales up to 12", Theia becomes a 4-way which splits Rhea's 7" midrange into 4" and 6" drivers and increases weight to a whopping 200kg.

Mix yer own – You can with the new Purified 4 speaker from the Netherlands' Sunaudio. Available in black or bloodwood starting at $3'200/pr, this two-way in a non-resonant aluminium sphere combines a 4" Purifi mid/woofer in three different options with a 25mm or 34mm dome tweeter in five options including silk, aluminium-magnesium and beryllium. Where things go further off the usual rails is that we must provide our own crossover. Check out their website for more details.

Genuinely Genuin – It's the new Audio Drive [€19'900] from Germany's Genuin Audio, an all-in one vinyl solution that even puts a top-quality phono stage with dip-switch bays inside the turntable plinth. This hides the triple belts which drive the aluminium sub platter from view. The 22kg enclosure combines aluminium, ply, acryl, POM and CDF. The power supply is external.

Exposure's CDP – Adding itself to the brand's 3510 range now is a CD player with PCM 1704 DAC and top-loading transport with sliding lid and magnetic clamp. For pure transport duty digital outputs are on coax and Toslink

Pimp yer LAN – You can with Computer Audio Design's new Ethernet Control [$1'250]. It's a compact inline RJ45 isolation-transformer based filter. It promises extra galvanic isolation across broader bandwidth than standard such parts. The associated circuitry embeds in an acrylic black case and the load connection is via captive high-quality RJ45 plug to eliminate an extra CAT5/8 cable.

Bigger dog, louder bark – It's KEF's new KC92 subwoofer [£2'499] whose nomenclature indicates dual force-cancelling 9" woofers which run off dual 500W class D amplifier under DSP oversight and come in gloss black or white and can take the optional KW1 wireless module. What's more, the company also rolled out its new Kube MIE line of sealed subs with single front-firing woofers sized from 8" [£599] to 15" [£1'149] with pit stops at 10" [£749] and 12" [£849]. Get yer rumble on? Subwoofers aren't just for movie mayhem. It's why KEF have complex DSP and automated boundary EQ settings to insure low distortion and linearity in a variety of setups. It's why the KC92 even features a selectable high pass to filter the speakers for best frequency integration. What its bigger enclosure doesn't need is the sleeved Uni-Core voice coils of the KC62 so these woofer magnets can classically butt up against each as shown.