ANALOG SYMPOSIUM MOERS

HiFi Pig’s Eric van Spelde visits Moers in Germany for the Analog Symposium.

The yearly audio show by the Analogue Audio Association in Krefeld – close to the Dutch border and not far from the Belgian one – is no more. Over the years, the Analog Forum where analogue audio sources were the focal point, grew into being one of the larger audio shows in Germany with ample support from distributors and dealers alongside the association´s own presentations. Alas, apparently the Mercure hotel in Krefeld was unable or unwilling to reserve the space for the 2022 edition. The Analog Symposium in the Van der Valk hotel in Moers, about ten miles down the road from Krefeld, was not so much a replacement as a ´trial run´ for the new location.

Accordingly, this year there were no fifty rooms with HiFi set-ups to visit and report about. Instead, the Analog Symposium merely occupied two large halls. Below resided what the organisation called the ´label village´ where predominantly producers of analogue music productions – on vinyl but also reel-to-reel tape – would present their wares. But luckily for us HiFi buffs, there were also a good few exhibitors of hardware, some of them even premiering important new products.

Helmut Biermann of MagAudio, whose products are distributed by MHW under the Levar brand name, had brought his latest turntable, the Levar Direct – unsurprisingly given the name, it´s a direct drive model that sits on a massive aluminium chassis that is suspended on air and comes with the equally new Primor gimbal bearing tonearm. At about 9,000 euros including an Audio Technica MC cartridge, the Direct sits below the existing (belt drive) models Canzona and Ultimate in the Levar record player portfolio.

Another new Levar product is the linear power supply which is sure to bring the performance of the turntables that were hitherto powered by a regular switched mode supply, to an even higher level.

While there were no demo rooms as such, there actually were more than a few HiFi systems on demo. Most were using headphones, but newcomer Sombetki had something entirely different on the business end of his HiFi system using his own pre and power amplifiers in conjunction with a Quad phono stage. The ESL Home is something that I haven´t encountered before – a nearfield electrostatic speaker system of relatively modest dimensions that is meant to be placed to the left and right of a single seat (chair or sofa). At the show, the sound in the hot seat was intense, with scale and dynamics to spare and the rest of the world – including room acoustics – was almost as effectively blended out as when using headphones.

Frank and Kim Levin from Levin Design of Solingen were introducing a new headphone amplifier of their own design and manufacture. Unusually, but not uniquely for a solid-state device, it operates in single-ended Class A mode which always bodes well for sound quality. The actual amplifier, which gets its juice from a separate power supply based on a toroidal transformer, is vertically orientated and doubles as a headphone stand.  The source was a turntable of their own design sporting a 15-inch carbon arm and a multi-level platter out of ´forged´ carbon among other unusual features, running a Phasemation PP-500 MC cartridge. Kim Levin used the opportunity to demo their own three-layer sandwich platter mat in comparison to a regular leather one. The difference was immediately noticeable, rendering the sound with the´standard´ platter mat comparatively flat and undifferentiated. “However, the difference is much larger when used on a mass-loaded turntable with a thick aluminium platter,” added Mrs. Levin.

BT HiFi from Erkrath showed off a good part of the Edwards Audio turntable range in a colourful presentation as well as one of their phono preamps in a rather fetching shade of blue. Earlier turntables of the brand were variations on the Rega theme, but Edwards Audio have long since gone their own way and making headway into the German market with reviews from the press homing in on the musicality and excellent price/performance ratio of the products. Well worth a look as an alternative to the likes of Rega and Pro-Ject.

The Valken Hall on the first floor was reserved for ´record- and tape concerts´ that were held over the weekend from the start of every hour from 10.00 to 18.00h on Saturday and 10.00 to 17.00h on Sunday. On Saturday morning we attended an entertaining presentation of the ´40 Most Important albums of 1972´ by well-known music and audio reviewer Lothar Brandt. The audio set up for the concerts was built up from equipment provided by local manufacturers Luphonic (turntable), AudioCulture (valve electronics), Bruder-Jakob Audio (cables), Ballfinger (reel-to-reel tape deck) and Hornkultur (loudspeakers). In the huge hall with hard floors and reflective surfaces, the system had no trouble filling the space with scale and dynamics but – unsurprisingly in these circumstances – had a slight tendency towards being overly present. Also there were live concerts being recorded here on Saturday night and Sunday morning, for which events visitors were invited to buy tickets.

“Es weihnachtet schon sehr”, as the Germans would say… in plain English that would be something like “Ho Ho Ho!”

Eric van Spelde