Sunday, May 8, 2005
All prices are quoted in euros unless otherwise noted.
1 €  is approximately 1.29 US dollars at time of report.

Nordost's newest interconnects have been designed to move the company's "monofilament" technology that's used in the Valhalla and Valkyrja series to lower price points. Shown is the least-expensive new monofilament model, the Heimdall, which is terminated with WBT Nextgen connectors and priced at $599 USD for a one-meter pair. Also available are the new Frey, priced at $899 USD per meter pair, and the Tyr, which features dual-monofilament windings (a company first) and is priced at $1799 USD per meter pair. Phono cables for each new model are also available. [www.nordost.com]

Arcam showed the new AVP700 surround-sound processor priced at 2100 € and available in June. It is the company's first processor to feature...

...balanced outputs. The AVP700 also features HDMI switching and has an RDS tuner.

We were quite taken with the fine woodwork of Vienna Acoustics' new Concert Grand series of speakers. The models from outside to middle are (all prices are per pair) the Beethoven Concert Grand (3798 €), Beethoven Baby Grand (2798 €), Mozart Grand (1998 €), and finally the bookshelf-sized Hadyn Grand (998 €). All the floorstanding speakers' woofers feature...

...what the company calls "Spider-Cone" technology, which increases the stiffness of the cone.

Lehmann Audio is famous for the Black Cube phono stage, which SoundStage! recognized as a Reviewers' Choice back in 1998. This year the company displayed the new two-chassis Black Cube Decade phono stage, which is equipped with a separate power supply (left) that uses a 30VA toroidal transformer, has Neutrik connectors, and can drive two phono modules (shown right, but obviously not installed in a chassis, which is identical-looking to that of the power supply). The decade is scheduled to be released later this summer, with pricing to be announced.

Germany's LithoPhon impressed us with their three-way Miracle loudspeaker, which features an "air-motion transformer" tweeter and a granite base. The Miracle retails for 13.000 € per pair and sounded so good driven by Brinkmann electronics and an Esoteric digital source that we couldn't help but name the demo a Standout.