Day 3 at the High End in Munich and our last day. We have a good start of the day with Plixir.
Plixir has a new line of balanced power supplies they have named ‘Statement’. The transformer is a new design, ‘truly balanced’ as James Sho puts it. If you place the transformer of the Elite series next to that of the new Statement, it is more than twice the size. Not only is it a bigger transformer, but also in terms of grounding, a mix of star ground and ground plane has been made. We will find out what the impact is on sound in a future review.
The interview with James is worth watching, the man knows what he is talking about. Power supplies with balanced transformers are rare, which makes Plixir interesting.
Continuing the theme of power, we visit Isotek. We know the Titan and Aquarius v5 well, they are part of the Alpha Audio reference set. Meanwhile, many other Isotek products from the v5 series have entered the market. The system link that Isotek has added to its products is the most important feature. It allows several Isotek products to be linked together, so that together they still have 1 star ground. A smart way to make power products expandable if needed.
We want to know the ins and outs of the Hypex Nilai, after our experience with the amplifier. In the Class D DIY kit comparison, the Nilai managed to amaze us and the Nilai was also present in <https://alpha-audio.net/review/a-look-back-at-the-bookshelf-marathon-summary/”>the monitor loudspeaker multitest. We were able to talk to the main engineer, which gave us a lot of understanding on how to relate Nilai and NCoreX. The short answer: Nilai is a further development of NCoreX. If you want to know more about that subject – and given the questions we still get in every week in the email you want to know – be sure to watch the interview on our YouTube channel.
The last interview of the day was with MSB, about the introduction of their new Digital Director. It is a kind of decoupler and isolator to clean the incoming stream of data of any noise before it goes into the DAC.
To conclude this day and also this edition of the High End, a few products that caught our eye.
In the ‘start-up’ corner, a pair of particularly flat speakers called ‘Bend’ caught our eye. A thin, light, upright and exceptionally good-looking speaker. Bend radiates sound to the front and back, filling the room with music. It doesn’t matter much where you place it in the room. Even on a very crowded exhibition floor, it was already audible that the position of the listener doesn’t matter much, you get a room-filling sound that is almost the same in every spot. Of course, this is not without repercussions. The frequency range is limited and placement in the stereo image is diffuse, but for the non-hi-fi music lover, it is a wonderful solution in a living room. It impressed us with its design and attractiveness. We will see next year whether Bend has grown from a start-up to unicorn.
What we did see last year was the plate amplifier developed by Daniel Weiss and this year the Airplain speakers were at the show. We were also able to take a listen to Weiss’s new DAC501.
Aufwiedersehen Munich, see you next year!
