This year’s exhibition „Klangschloss“ was once again held at Greifensee Castle (on the Lake of Zurich/Switzerland). The focus is on Swiss HIFi manufacturers, Naim was not represented with an own system.
Live sessions in the Ladenberg concert hall are a special feature. The artists’ music is recorded directly (using dual microphones with a Jeklin disc) and recorded directly to analogue Studer studio tape and digitally to Nagra digital recorder without mixing. The recordings are released later as a stream (free download) and on vinyl. They will also be streamed about 30 minutes after the concert to all systems that will be presented at the show. This will enable a live/reproduction comparison. Today I heard “Laret” live (accordion, clarinet, drums) with an exciting mix of folk and jazz. The sound quality in the concert hall was excellent. The reproductions on various systems in the exhibition (each at specific times) were not always convincing. As is often the case with exhibitions, the size and acoustics of the rooms often set limits. This was also audible with other recordings in the demonstration. Even expensive systems with large amounts of material were not all equally effective, the best being those with room acoustics elements.
Of course, there was a lot to see, e.g. the new products from Swiss digital expert Daniel Weiss, new brands such as “Konkret Akustik”, which sounded impressive (no idea how much they cost…) and other swiss brands like DarTZeel, Wattson Audio and others. My favorite this year were the Luna loudspeakers from “Selmoni Speakers” with Air Motion Transformer (very balanced, spatial and tonal to the point) with Electrocompaniet electronics.
I didn’t visit the “headphone kitchen” this year due to time constraints. There, headphones from renowned brands (Focal, Audeze, Stax etc.) can be compared with the same music from the same headphone amplifier. An exciting experience for anyone interested.
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I’m going on Sunday. I’ll post some pictures. It’s always a great atmosphere.
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