This Munich Show sees the arrival of the wider digital elements in the Leif 3 range, with the arrival of dedicated BNC, USB and Ethernet designs in the Blue Heaven series. Nordost will – as usual – be demonstrating the musical impact of the new cables and it will be interesting to hear just how big an influence even a modestly priced but properly specified digital cable can have.
Peak Consult – H4, U08/V01
The Peak Room promises to be a veritable cornucopia of audio delights. The company will be showing the new, heavily revised version of their popular El Diablo speaker, which will also feature in the CAD room. A major step up in performance over the earlier version, it’s very much a baby incarnation of the impressive Dragon Legacy. But what should also put this room on your radar is the driving system, particularly some of the infrastructure, which is new or rarely heard. It will feature:
CH Precision 1 Series electronics – The D1.5, C1.2, L1, M1.1 and X1 combination is a familiar sight at shows, offering benchmark performance that can be relied on. But it is also a system that responds to set-up and tuning, making the ancillaries used in this case, particularly interesting.
Chord Music cables – The Chord Co. flagship cables, with their unique, phase-stable Taylon dielectric, are a rare sight. In this case, they will be wiring the entire system, from wall-sockets to speaker terminals – possibly for the first time ever. Under exposed, these cables are also seriously underrated. They’ll be used here along with a complete suite of GroundARAY components, giving listeners a rare chance to hear the impressive results from the Chord Company’s, complete cable solution.
Reiki Audio SuperSwitch and JundoStream – There’s one exception to the ‘All-Chord’ cable loom: network wranglers Reiki Audio will be supplying not only their SuperSwitch and Optical Bridge to deliver files to the C1.2, the final link in the network chain will be their new JundoStream ethernet cable. Although the JundoStream is being officially launched in Munich, it is already out and about in a few systems and causing some serious ripples on the internet. For once, it seems like there’s some solid logic behind its unusual construction, underpinning its excellent performance. Which pretty much makes it the same as the other Reiki network components. Our own experience with the cable suggests that if you are big into network replay, this could be the most significant product at the show.
Andante-Largo Grand Tower racks – I suspect that very few of you will be familiar with the Andante-Largo name: we certainly weren’t. But we are familiar with the excellent Silent Mount SM3-tx, which is made by – you guessed it – Andante-Largo. These Japanese built racks offer a distinctly different approach, with beautifully machined alloy lugs joining critically damped titanium tubes in a construction that will be familiar to cyclists of a certain age. Stainless-steel hardware and birch-ply shelves with central cut-outs complete the structure, which is as beautifully finished as it is elegantly distinct.
