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Analog lives! Andreas Kühn of Analog-Audio in Spiez is keen on getting it back into the recording studios. He specializes in complete restorations of professional Studer equipment for private and professional collectors. But preferably, he works with actual users, ideally those on the professional side whose labors can be enjoyed by many.






The machine above is all tube—"not a single transistor in there"—and exactly what Abbey Roads used for the famous Beatles albums. The engraved decal of this unit read "Willi Studer, Regensdorf-Zürich, Type C37, Nr. 541, 200V, 50Hz, 250W". Andreas has quite a list of primarily American recording studios which have returned to fully analog recording equipment which he furnished for them. Playing us over Quad and then Klangwerk speakers with Weiss electronics a rare 1962 cut which Deutsche Grammophone did of a famous tenor was our tastiest musical treat of the show. A CD of this recording exists, too. Punned Andreas: "You hear it and think to yourself, not bad considering its age. Until you hear the tape. Then you cannot believe just how bad the CD is by comparison. More important perhaps, you understand that age alone is never a valid predictor for sound quality. There is some fabulous stuff in the tape archives nobody ever gets to listen to." If you want a Studer machine in perfect working order, contact Herr Kühn. Buying, fixing and selling is what he does.

Audio Research Corporation's new Definition Series includes this DSi200 all-transistor 200wpc stereo amplifier [CHF7.350].


Arcus from Germany specializes in media servers and a promised review unit of their smaller Music Station turns out to have been delayed merely because Bluetooth functionality was added.

While the display screen isn't part of the 1TB fan-less MediaServer, many customers—particularly females we were told—ask for it. A server without a screen is useless of course. And yes, those are reflections of yours truly and his better half....


Fischer Hifi is a Swiss online and storefront retailer who put on a big display with behold and Esoteric electronics and German Ascendo loudspeakers. I shot the room from this angle to show the room sizes certain fortunate—deeper walleted—exhibitors had to work with.





One of Ascendo's main researches is into room acoustics/corrections and this laptop display showed the results, enabled here by behold I believe. Size and complexity of the Clearaudio table with stand below will raise eyebrows not just for conspicuous consumption but also question the innate necessity when Alvin Lloyd's Grand Prix Audio Monaco deck has proven top performance with a far smaller and more living-room friendly form factor.

Famous British pro company ATC showed with French Isem Audio components...



...while their own ATC electronics were on the silent sidelines below.



A hallway sample of one of their speakers meanwhile invited a close-up of that famous dome midrange.
Audio Block shown by importer Marlex follows the designed-in-Germany, made-in-Asia recipe for electronics like the below Series 100 CD player whose sticker of CH 570 is nicely outrageous in an inverse fashion to Clearaudio's monster.


audiodata elektroakustik gmbh from Aachen in Germany showed their Avancé model below with a 145mm coaxial main driver based on a custom SEAS platform while two 220mm aluminum-cone woofers in a bass-reflex loading can be supplied with the optional 4 x 180-watt electronic module of the top Sculpture model to become a semi-active concept.


Thiel Audio in the US thus isn't the only company championing dual-concentric point-source inwalls. With its Carré model, audiodata offers their own.



The really hi-tech offering here is their AudioVolver II digital room-correction device [starting at €4.750] which only sells by personal installation and calibration to insure that the results are as good as this technology can achieve in the hands of a proper expert. Frequency response can be optimized to 0.6Hz resolution which corresponds to a conventional 32,000-channel equalizer. Time correction up to 22µs is possible and this machine offers digital and analog inputs with RCA-XLR outs.

Audio Physic showed off its comprehensive lineup in a solid black 'n' white scheme throughout.