Munich 2017

Each year, Silbatone Acoustics shows up at Munich High End toting (container'ing?) a lovely mix of the (very) old and new; speakers of various vintages from Western Electric, their own electronics designed by J.C. Morrison, and analog front ends from Thomas Schick and Frank Schroeder. And each year I fall in love. But this year was different.

Let's take yet another walk around Munich High End and see what we can see...

I like new, and kinda quirky, and the NEM D-DAC 2 ($TBD) is new to me because the Russia-based company, manned by aerospace engineers, premiered it here. The D-DAC is a R2R DAC offering a USB and AES-EBU input capable of handling up to 384kHz PCM data. There are 5 separate power supplies, proprietary in-house custom NEM output transformers, and tube rectification. I will be learning more about (the quirky) and listening more to the NEM DAC...shortly.

Let's take another walk around Munich High End and see what we can see...

For all of the ins and outs on the CanEver Audio ZeroUno DAC ($7990), read thee Art Dudley's review in Stereophile (I think he liked it). I'm going to review a newer incarnation that includes a few upgrades including, but not limited to, MQA.

I first encountered Sound Galleries at Munich High End 2015 where I was, um, impressed. In the intervening two years a lot has happened.

The juggernaut that is ELAC keeps on chugging. Pictured are the new Adante AF-61 loudspeakers ($5,000/pair) driven, and I say driven, by Peter Madnick's Audio Alchemy transformed into ELAC's Alchemy Series.