News

Bose Corporation announced today the acquisition of McIntosh Group, the parent company of high-end audio brands McIntosh and Sonus faber. The move aims to broaden Bose's offerings into the high-performance and luxury audio markets.

So there I was, in the parking lot of the Rockville Hilton, cigar smoke curling into the crisp autumn air, grilling Gary Gill about his brainchild, Capital Audio Fest (CAF). This East Coast audio extravaganza has grown into a monster, bursting at the seams of its Rockville venue.

German audio manufacturer beyerdynamic has launched updated versions of its premium studio headphones: the DT 1770 PRO MKII and DT 1990 PRO MKII. These models feature the newly developed TESLA.45 driver, designed to improve sound quality and reduce distortion.

Polish company J. Sikora belatedly premiered in Warsaw what they had unveiled at Chicago’s AXPONA six months before: their new Standard Max Supreme turntable. Only one table below the company’s top of the line, Standard Max Supreme reproduced music with the help of J. Sikora's Kevlar tonearm and an Aidas Mammoth Gold cartridge from Lithuania.

A new Polish turntable brand, BennyAudio, is poised to enter the United States via the Supreme Acoustic Systems distributorship. Given what I heard in BennyAudio's room at Audio Video Show 2024, aka The Warsaw Show, my audiophile buddy Scott might have gone to heaven and back if he’d been able to join me.

The cynical amongst us might say that I began my coverage of Warsaw’s Audio Video 2024 with Polish audio company Ferrum because they were also taking me (and a huge bevy of other press people) out to dinner. While I won’t deny that one of many ways to an audio critic’s heart is through their stomach, my gut reaction to Ferrum has far more to do with its “amazing for the price” sound than its perks.

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.