Celebrating 50 years in business, FM Acoustics of Switzerland will host hourly closed-door demos at the Marriott Hotel. With limited seats available, make your reservation upfront.
Focal of France will bring their new Theva range [€399 – €1'698] in three finish options. Models include center and surround channels so intended applications span both classic stereo and home theater listening.
Connections specialists Furutech from Japan will bow their first spade and banana connectors featuring their anti-static anti-resonance nano crystal formula aka NCF² compound with set screw and solder contacts, pure copper rhodium-plated center conductor, nylon, fiberglass, carbon powder and nano-sized crystalline piezo-ceramic particles. Furutech will also launch their V1-T NCF silver-hybrid tonearm cable with detachable shield to join their flagship V1 power cord in the Project range.
Gai-Tech of Taiwan are about glass and acoustics. "Glass diaphragms are at the forefront of speaker technology offering a bandwidth upgrade, waterproofing and illumination aesthetics. We select glass from the world's leading manufacturers and process it using our advanced ultra-thin glass processing technology which allows for diaphragms thinner than 0.4mm." At the show the company will premiere its 6.5" glass diaphragm speakers from the GlaXfi collection.
It lives! That would be Goldmund's Gaïa which last year merely prototyped but now popped out of the Swiss oven. At 6'8" tall and 380kg/ea., it'll take some commitment to accommodate. Expect cost in the neighborhood of half a million. The five stacked enclosures contain one super tweeter, one standard tweeter, two 4" mids, two 6" lower midranges and dual 12" woofers. Each driver is fronted by 300 watts of Telos amplification except for the woofers which get 50 watts more. Inputs are digital coax or wireless; and the doubled-up drivers are used both fore and aft.
Gold Note of Italy will bring their flagship Mediterraneo X turntable, DS-1000 Evo next-gen streaming DAC and IS-10, a new half-sized streaming integrated amplifier. Even the compact 75-watt PA-10 stereo amplifier bridgeable to four times running a switching power supply and gallium-nitride transistors is getting its own Evo upgrade.
The latest 'Max' attack from Grandinote's maestro Massimiliano Magri is the Solo [€14.4K], a 60wpc class A integrated with 2Hz-240kHz bandwidth, twinned RCA/XLR inputs, zero feedback, capacitor-free signal path, 0-60dB volume control and selectable displays for spectrum analyzers or VU meters. Max will also bring his Volta DAC/streamer and Mach 8XL speakers.
Grand Prix Audio of Colorado Springs will show their new Monaco 3.0 turntable with battery power supply in the Living Voice room.
Graphite Audio of Poland will share an exhibit with AudioNec, Riviera Audio and Esprit Cables. Szymon Rutkowski's novelties will be his Classic line of isolation platforms. Their main building block is ultra-fine Plywood with each layer just 0.5mm thick. Footers use his signature polymer. The Classic 40 and Classic 40 Ultra are 40mm thick meant as rack shelves. The Classic 100 and 100 Ultra are 100mm thick and meant as floor-based amp stands. The Ultra versions upgrade the Ply board to full polymer. Finish options include the RAL palette and sundry real-wood veneers. Pricing starts at €1'999 and tops out at €6'629.
Grimm Audio from the Netherland will bring the MU2 which is the above MU1 streamer with a built-in DAC.
Gryphon Audio of Demark have announced "almost back-to-back active demonstrations" at their usual location so visitors should show up on the full or half hour to get in. Their show novelty will be the Diablo 333 integrated [€21.8K] with optional phono [€4.8K] and DAC [€6.1K] cards.
hARt Lab of Greece will bring components from their Reference and Superior lines
Hifistay of South Korea will have their Mythology racks in the Vitus Audio exhibit with Focal Scala Utopia Evo speakers.
hORNS of Poland will demo their Overture, a 3-way Avantgarde Duo lookalike hornspeaker with 1" polyester tweeter, 2" beryllium midrange and dual 12" aluminium woofers. Filter hinges at 350Hz and 2.7kHz feature 1st and 2nd orders slopes. Co-exhibitors will be Audio Hungary's Qualiton A75 tube integrated and David Laboga cabling again from Poland.
New luxury brand Houchmand of Germany hopes to make a golden impression with their systems approach of active speakers and control unit with integral streaming clients and room EQ DSP. Signal transmission is 24/192 wired or 24/96 wireless, there's remote control, an iOS/Android app, three remote-controlled tuning presets and an optional subwoofer. One design objective was time fidelity for linear phase, constant group delay and low jitter which the firm dubs Pure Path Technology. Being a luxury product, mirror-polish finish options include 24ct gold, 18ct red gold, platinum or ruthenium combined with genuine piano lacquers.
HSE of Switzerland have a new phono cable, the AC-300 outboard power supply and the Masterline 8 preamp, a fully balanced class A affair with selectable EQ, balance control, headphone socket, 8 x XLR inputs and 2 x XLR outputs. Sharing this exhibit will be Brandt Audio cables and Stenheim loudspeakers also from Switzerland.
China's Fiio will show their new FT3 [€349] full-size headphones to compete directly against a perennial crowd pleaser like Meze's 99 Classic. Under the masculine shuriken-styled ear cups hide 2.4" N52-powered dynamic diamond-like carbon drivers with beryllium-plated gaskets, 0.035mm voice-coil wiring and 350Ω load behavior. At 391g, the FT3 will wear somewhat on the heavier side. It'll ship with 3m 23-gauge 3.5mm mono-crystal copper cable, 6.3mm adapter and both pleather and suede pads for some tuning leeway.
The UK's iFi Audio always bring the kitchen sink which this year will include their new LAN Silencer [€89], a self-powered inline galvanic isolator and noise stripper for networked audio. There's also their new GO pod to turn wired IEM into wireless wonders [€799 – €1'399 depending on bundle]. iFi collaborated with 64 audio, craft ears, Meze, Symphonium and Westone to bundle with select IEM. After the first 1'000 combos, raw GO pods will sell with "loops for MMCX and 2-pin IEM, Pentaconn, T2 and A2DC connectors" to mate with other IEM. There's a charging case with rechargeable 1'500mAH battery. A pair of pods is said to last for up to seven hours on a charge whilst the case will refuel them multiple times for up to 35 hours of total go juice. Qualcomm's Snapdragon handles Bluetooth 5.2 with QCC144 processor. Supported codecs are LDAC/HDC up to 32-bit/96kHz. The Cirrus Logic MasterHifi DAC has five user-selectable digital interpolation filters. The volume control is analog, the built-in mic augmented by Qualcomm's cVC noise suppression tech. There's true wireless mirroring and the analog output stage is balanced and discrete.
Belgium's Ilumnia have a new version of their 'mostly omni' Vocalis monitor called simply Vocalis MkII. While the firm's trademark 8" driver with electromagnetic suspension so no classic spider or surround remains as does the stalk-mounted bullet tweeter floating above it, there are new adjustments including neutral/thin/warm voicing by toggle switch plus separate rotary controls for each driver.
Davide Dellasca of IO Design hopes that we find his new Naked to represent Italian elegance at its best. It's notoriously difficult to dress up open baffles. Some of the best solutions are from Diesis and sound|kaos. Bucking trends, these opt for leaving nothing to the imagination.
IsoAcoustics of Canada will show their new Aperta SUB XL model [$190] whose footprint of 36x40x3.7cm WxDxH can support subwoofers up to 160lbs to prevent structural resonances from floor coupling.
Jadis of France will show their novelties with equally French Davis Acoustics speakers and celebrate their 40th year of operations.
