Audio Esoterica

German Physiks loudspeakers, which are still entirely hand-built in Germany, are once more available in Australia. All the speakers in German Physiks’ range are unique because they use a distinctive inverted ice-cream-cone-shaped ‘DDD’ driver that st

The Rolls-Royce Ghost was engineered for internal silence, with Rolls-Royce’s acousticians tuning interior components to a specific resonant frequency and using 100kg of sound-absorbing material “to create a sense of serenity”. They then added a low

The Gryphon Essence stereo power amplifier is a very, very unusual audio amplifier. Which, if you know anything at all about this proudly Danish high-end audio specialist or its recently-retired founder, Flemming E. Rasmussen, should not come as a su

When Yamaha announced its 5000 Series of two-channel audio, one choice was fascinating — it would be all-analogue. There is no digital source for the system, although of course Yamaha has other products in its ranges which could do the job. But in pr

A fascinating story. If you look at the rear of the Pilium Elektra DAC – Divine Line, you’ll find a label that says ‘Made in Greece’ and the founder and owner of Pilium Audio, Konstantinos Pilios, is certainly as Greek as Greek can be. But Pilios lis

Krell Industries reached its 40th anniversary on December 1st, 2020, and after four decades the company name still reverberates through the audiophile cognoscenti as a near-synonym for high-quality, high-power amplification. Named after the aliens in

Krell was named after an extinct race of advanced beings that lived on the planet Altair IV, as depicted in the classic 1956 genre-defining sci-fifilm ‘Forbidden Planet’, which among its many charms introduced Robby the Robot, one of the first mechan

It would seem that Marantz’s engineers have made the most of the COVID crisis and the factory shut-downs by developing two totally new models which not only have new internals, but also a brand new exterior ‘look’ as well, and it’s a very classy, goo

Famous French loudspeaker manufacturer Focal has released the Aria K2 936, a limited edition loudspeaker that combines the classical architecture of the Aria 936 with the dynamic, powerful nature of the K2 cone. “As you’d expect of one of the world’s

Trade secrets and proprietary materials are de rigeur in Hi-Fi, nowhere more so than in loudspeaker drivers and cabinet construction, but there are few materials over which such secrecy has been established as Wilson Audio’s X-Material, now in its th

NAD is a company that made its name in solid and relatively affordable Hi-Fi separates — the classic CD, amp and speakers ‘student’ system. Yet it has also been at the forefront of two of hi-fi’s most transformative technologies in the last decade: s

The golden-eared souls who review high-end Hi-Fi components are, as you’d imagine, rather protective of their hearing, so when I fired-up the newest arrival in my listening room, I wondered just who had it in for me. The APL Hi-Fi DSD-AR, you see, ha

Do you know what would improve Musical Fidelity’s new M8xi integrated amplifier immediately? Feet. Four of them. Four big large feet. Oh, and handles. Four of them too. But I’ll get to grips with those issues a bit later in this review. Probably the

Krell’s Foundation 4K processor is a pre-amplifier with surround functions, going beyond the Digital Vanguard’s stereo processing into true multichannel support. And it has a remarkable 10 HDMI inputs, four supporting 4K, while HDMI ARC on the HDMI o

Wilson Audio Specialties introduced the Sabrina five years ago, as the company’s ‘entry-level’ floorstander, though of course one must bear in mind that what is ‘entry-level’ for Wilson Audio Specialties rises rather above the highest achievements of

The design brief for the new K-300i was to bring Krell right up-to-date in terms of the level of connectivity that’s required in this modern, digital, streaming world, without sacrificing the performance levels for which the company became famous. It

“Audio is engineering and science,” declares Alan March of March Audio. “There’s no magic to it. I know a lot of audiophiles think there’s ‘something that we don’t really understand’ about these things, but no: It’s engineering. And I’m an engineer r

AUDIO ESOTERICA: Your description of yourself as an engineer makes sense given your resume — how did it all begin? ALAN MARCH: I have always had an interest in electronics and audio from… well, from the age of 10, I suppose. I’ve always played with t