Jason Victor Serinus

Three years after finalizing the design of their HQS G 7001 monoblocks, brothers Arnaud and Laurent Fusilier of French company JMF Audio completed the design of the JMF Audio HQS G3 9001 amplifiers ($164,000/pair). Alongside other JMF Audio products, the 9001s debuted at the ancillary HiFi Deluxe show in the Munich Marriott, offering a similar sonic signature as their smaller cousins.

"Our new Octave Jubilee class-A mono amplifier has a slightly different sound than the Jubilee Mono SEs you reviewed three years ago," said Andreas Hofmann. Hoffman is the founder and chief engineer of Germany’s Octave Audio, and he was talking about his forthcoming push-pull monoblock, noting that the amp outputs 160W in class-A lower-power mode and 280W in class-AB high-power mode. The Octave Jubilee’s projected price is $85,000/pair without potential tariff hikes.

The Munich unveiling of dCS’s Lina DAC X network music player ($15,500) drew significant attention from lovers of the Lina DAC ($14,400). The debut occurred alongside a static display of the top-of-the-line Varèse transport, due in June.

You gotta love press releases. “This May in Munich, history won’t just be written—it will be heard.” Thus opened the invitation to a joint press conference of “two Norwegian powerhouses” whose system “doesn’t whisper innovation—it roars it.”

The big news in the Constellation room was not the Revelation 2 Series, complete with its special Constellation Switch-Mode Power Supply (C-SMPS)—we’ve reported on it previously, including at AXPONA 2025. Rather, it was the chance to glimpse prototypes of the higher-level Performance 2 stereo amplifier and preamplifier, both due later this year.

A year without an MBL fix is a year incomplete. Hence, off to the spacious MBL suite I went, to experience a complete MBL Reference Line system ($750,000; price approximate, converted from Euros).

The big news in Nordost land was twofold. First, the company has upgraded its entire entry-level Leif line to the new Leif 3 series. The latest offerings, presented by PR representative Meredith Gabor, include Blue Heaven 3 digital interconnects, Ethernet and USB 2.0 cables, and (soon) a White Lightning 3 tonearm cable.