Jason Victor Serinus

As much as these blogs mainly focus on products from Polish companies that, for the most part, have–or are en route to having–a presence in the U.S., a few premieres from companies headquartered elsewhere demand attention. Hence, I took a short trip to Paris for the premiere of the second generation of Devialet’s very first product, the Astra integrated amplifier.

As I leisurely strolled through the lobby of Warsaw’s Radisson Blu Sobieski two mornings before the start of Audio Show 2024, it seemed impossible that, shortly after I awoke on October 24, truckloads of gear and audio show personnel would descend on the hotel. What now was a very quiet lobby and restaurant—I rarely rode the elevator with anyone else in it—would soon be packed with distributors, dealers, company heads, press, and visitors.

Is audio reviewing a futile pursuit? As much as we reviewers may strive, through subjective observation and objective measurement, to accurately describe how a component looks, sounds, and performs, we frequently find words and numbers inadequate to communicate the mysteries that abound in the transcendent realm of music. How can we fully share what we feel when a component allows us to experience, sometimes afresh, often in a new way, sounds that elicit joy, sorrow, terror, or more subtle emotions? How do we encapsulate in words and measurements the sonic equivalent of the wide-eyed wonder that shines through a baby's eyes as she discovers something new?

Such emotions—hence such questions—can arise when we move from one music server to another, or even between different software running on the same server. They are particularly intense in the case of this review of the Ideon Absolute Stream meta edition (2024) ($24,000) and its optional add-on, the Ideon Alpha Wave LAN Optimizer ($6900), considering that the review lacks measurements.

Less than two weeks before the start of Munich High End 2024, I spent several days in Faro, Portugal (footnote 1), touring the modern 1000-square-meter headquarters and manufacturing facility of digital-audio company Innuos. My hosts were Amelia Santos, chief executive officer, and and Nuno Vitorino, chief technology officer.

As much as I tinkered with a little crystal radio as a child and started reading stereo magazines in high school, it wasn't until my early 30s that I half-stumbled into the higher end of the hi-fi sphere. As I progressed from used Advents to used Spicas and began to experiment with speaker cables, more and more names of high-end brands entered my consciousness. Burmester (founded in 1977), and some of the other higher-priced components from overseas whose looks seemed commensurate with their prices, held an outsized fascination for me. What about them, other than their visual appearance, accounted for their vaunted reputations and cost?

Beethoven: Triple Concerto; David Lang: Composition as Explanation; Yunchan Lim: Chopin Études; Urlicht: Songs of Death and Resurrection.