Robert Koda interviewed
CODA: OED. …typically forming an addition to the basic structure; of Hi Fidelity! …and of possible greater interest – Coda. “While the musical term was on my mind when naming the brand it is in actual...
View ArticleAn afternoon with Franck Tchang
I had a pleasure to visit Franck Tchang in his studio in Paris. He is a real personality who has a totally different view to audio from rest of the crowd. Many have been really enthusiastic about...
View ArticleFifty years of tube amp making
Pannari did a nearly fourty-year career at Finnish telecom. Now retired, Pännäri turns today, on 3th of April 2014, 65 years. He’s still making his designs. Hi-fi has been Pännäri’s hobby from the age...
View ArticleMcIntosh: “…for the love of music…”
The lavish hardcover, 315 page coffee-table book is a result of two-and-a-half-years exhaustive writing project by Ken Kessler. He exhibits here the same writing qualities (or even betters them) than...
View ArticleGradient 1.4 – NEW
According to a famous anecdote, the founder and head designer of Gradient Loudspeakers, Jorma Salmi, was once approached, at a cocktail party, by a known graphic designer who was keen to find out what...
View ArticleStockholm Highend 2017
It was a good year. No long predicted death, no crash. Just masses of folks, folks and exhibitioners. More than year before. The Stockholm Highend 2017 Show, HEM (High End Mässan 2017) was held in mid...
View ArticleHighend by the airport
Concurrently with the Show in Rome in March, thirty or so hifi importers/dealers gathered at a hotel not too far from the Helsinki/Vantaa airport in Finland. The event was continuation of similar shows...
View ArticleThe year of tape recorders
After an absence of two years, I returned to the Munich Highend Show in 2016. The event was as megalomaniac as ever, fun from one angle, crazy on the other. The supply was stupefying. There were a...
View ArticleMunich Highend 2017 – amplifiers
Here’s the second set of pics from the Show in vernal Munich. Covered are some of the audio amplifiers caught on my camera, and to begin with, the ones with vacuum tubes and output transformers. Chez...
View ArticleHighend Helsinki 2017
The major hi-fi show in Finland, Highend Helsinki (Hi-Fi Expo) has suffered from the severe identity crisis in recent years, not knowing exactly where it belongs. It has attempted to attract more...
View ArticleMunchen HE 2017 – the best
No such thing as something being unadulteratedly “good”: no such quality that all good things would have in common as opposed to things that are not good. And if that’s true there’s no such thing as...
View ArticleReaching for the moon
Reach for the moon, boy! Do what you’ve always dreamed about. Go for it! Be what you’ve decided to be and become. – Boy, do what you’ve always trying to attain, but don’t reach for the moon. Keep your...
View ArticlePassionate about the sound
Roughly estimated, there are six or seven hi-fi dealers in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, who might be classified as dealers of true hi-fi or highend gear. With just over 1 million inhabitants...
View ArticleHigh End Stockholm 2018
What makes something a highlight at a HiFi Show? Sonus Faber Serafino together with Audio Research electronics, would that qualify as a highlight? Martin Logan & Anthem? KEF Blade &...
View ArticleHigh End Vantaa 2018
This show may not be the grandest one in Finland but year after year it attracts importers and dealers to come up with carefully thought-out combinations of hardware. The show was held at a Hotel...
View ArticleA brief history of Gradient Labs
Long time back, the head designer and founder of Gradient, Jorma Salmi, worked for a major Finnish consumer good company Lohja Corporation Electronics. He was assigned the responsibility to manage the...
View ArticleDefending the objective approach
In the corner of Gradient’s large, still deserted exhibition hall sits a lonely table-tennis table. Numbered prints of paintings cover its surface. The images, mostly of landscapes drawn with a...
View ArticleJorma Salmi (1948-2018)
The story he kept telling me almost every time we met was how he remembers me, attending the Paris HiFi Show in 1994 and while auditioning the then brand new Gradient Revolution loudspeakers, having...
View ArticleMunich Highend 2018
Seen from the supply side, the world’s most significant Hi-Fi fair, the mid-May Munich Highend, was as megalomaniac and exhausting as always, but less explicitly taken, and especially when filtered...
View ArticleMunich Highend 2018 – 2
I was so delighted to see that Audion is still alive! The history of the brand is an interesting one, and involves several countries. The significance of Audion is that it was among the first...
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