Robert Jorgensen - Some thoughts on Munich High End 2007

      

I find myself in agreement with Clement’s observations of the “best sound” at the show coming from Behold and Podium Sound.

Behold has, as we all have remarked earlier, the ability to take professionally and industrially used standards and apply them to audio products in such away that the technically right solution also is translated into a musically superior solution.

I am quite exited about the Gentile 192 integrated amp since it really offers great sound at a much lower price point than the big Behold system. It’s about 10% of the cost of the big amps alone. The ability to hook into networked disk drives and replay of various compressed (lossy and lossless) formats makes it one hot option in my book, since it can single-handedly be a whole system when you add speakers.

It exhibited a bit less bass control when directly compared to the bigger amps, but this could easily improve (remember this was the first time it really played) and it did take some effort to even notice the difference. But I suspect this is a speaker/room dependent thing and not an absolute.

With its multiple connections and the built-in computing power, I think it has the potential of being a killer product. It also demonstrates, in a very convincing way, how an increased use of computing technology does not necessarily compromise the audiophile qualities of a product, but actually can go a long way in creating products of audiophile quality with a set of facilities that in no practical way would be possible without the computing aspect. I think Ralf Ballman and his happy cohorts have a real winner here.

        

Podium Sound flat panel loudspeakers are interesting because Shelley Katz has taken a kind of technology that I personally had despaired off as ever being capable of producing high quality sound and gone on to seemingly work around the weaknesses that can be observed with NXT-based products. These usually suffer from a distinct lack of treble, but that is not the case with Podium Sound at all, and it must be said that although NXT and Podium Sound have common technological ancestry, they are not the same.

Podium Sound speakers provide a very balanced frequency response, though as some have remarked, not the most thunderous bass. I don't believe that lovers of acoustic music will find any lack, but if you like a bit of head-banging, I might suggest adding a quality subwoofer system.

What it does magnificently, is play with a total lack of boxy colorations. Most of us are so accustomed to these colorations inherent in box speakers that we might consider them natural. Well they are not and you really realize this when they are gone. Many will perhaps feel that the music lacks weight, but my personal take on many examples of weighty bass is that it’s more like delayed resonances in the system overemphasizing the bass more than relaying into the room the actual signal presented to the speaker.

If Podium Sound can overcome the hurdles of being a small company with a VERY INTERESTING product I expect we will hear much more from them in the time to come.

Haniwa was a name I had not come across before (above is a CES photo due to poor lighting). The stand was in a corner of Hall 4, so it was easy enough to just slip by. I actually did this a few times. I picked up the documentation that was provided in the press room and after just glancing it over, I new that I had to have a closer look and listen. This I did, several times in fact.

The reason I had to visit and listen was that the press material, so to say, “pressed an awful lot of my audiophile buttons.” Here was a system with digital crossovers, impulse response correction and integration of multiple speaker drivers, horn speakers and a host of other goodies.

The Haniwa system is produced by the Japanese group Kubotek, and in fact the president of the company, Dr. Tetsuo Kubo is the driving force and designer behind the audio system. Kubotek has many technological resources available to them from working with medical electronics, vision processing equipment, and factory automation. The Haniwa audio system is an absolute tour de force.

The musical signal flows from their own specially designed moving coil cartridge, through a “phase controlled” RIAA equalizer, into a front-end where every input - analogue or digital - is brought up to 192kHz/24bit and then through a digital crossover with impulse correction. Power amps were Haniwa tube amps and rounding out the system was the magnificent 3-way horn system using the Tractrix shape. It cries out for a MUCH longer review that digs into the many details of it.

Oh yes! About the sound. MAJOR GOOSEBUMPS is all I can say. The exhibit was in one of the not-so-nice box rooms out on the main floor, but still. For me, there was no doubt whatsoever that the enormous effort that had gone into preserving the waveform paid off big-time.

We heard LPs played using the Haniwa cartridge or from a not so high-end Pioneer multi format player and it gave us a real kick. From gentle baroque music through Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite in all its thunder and glory to gutsy blues from Hans Theesink we just wanted to hear more. This was truly one of the stand-out experiences on the show and I sincerely hope to listen much more in the future.