Features
SoundStage! Australia’s Favourite Exhibits at High End Munich 2025
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 01 June 2025 01 June 2025
What a fabulous finale! An au revoir for the ages to the Bavarian capital at High End Munich 2025. München, du wirst uns fehlen. Excitement awaits the industry in beautiful Vienna… but that’s a story for the future. For now, we rejoice at the delights provided in spades at Munich’s last hurrah. I have to take this opportunity to mention the special part HIGH END Munich has played in this publication’s story. Back in 2017, at a meeting at the show’s vibrant Press Centre, SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider and I signed on the dotted line and committed to bringing SoundStage! Australia to life (fun fact: this year, the SoundStage! Network celebrates a whopping 30 years online). Then, just as fast as a flashing 300B, we were up and running in July of that very same year. The rest, as they say, is… you know. So, what vibed with me? What were the coolest exhibits of 2025?
High End Munich 2025
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 15 May 2025 15 May 2025
High End Munich 2025 will once again hold the largest international audio industry event at the sprawling MOC – Event Center Messe München – from Thursday, 15 May to Sunday, 18 May 2025.
Australian Hi-Fi Show 2025, Sydney
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 15 April 2025 15 April 2025
The Sydney Central Hotel has been the home, for a number of years now, to the Australian Hi-Fi Show. It’s a great location. A short hop from Central Station and a skip from Sydney’s new $20-million “concrete playground”, the haven of international cuisine now known as ‘Hay Street Market at Paddy’s’. Across the road, you’re in Chinatown, where its red gate invites the sampling of its own wonders. I have to admit that having attended Hi-Fi shows for over 30 years, this is the best location for after-hours activity (with an honourable mention going to CES’s Vegas strip). That aside, after all this time, I still get a buzz when I hit the show floors. I guess audio runs through my veins. Yes, my name is Edgar, and I’m an audio addict…
SoundStage! Talks Australia Video: Discussing Audio Research's Best and Most-Iconic Amplifiers—From Founding Until Now
- Details
- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 28 January 2025 28 January 2025
In this video, SoundStage! Australia’s editor, Edgar Kramer, talks to Audio Research’s brand director, Dave Gordon, about the company’s iconic products; founder William Z. Johnson’s aims of designing the best audio amplification, whether tubes, solid-state or hybrid technologies; and the new flagship Reference 330M monoblock amplifier.
SoundStage! Talks Australia Video: Why Audiophiles Should Care About the YG Acoustics Carmel 3 Loudspeaker
- Details
- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 22 December 2024 22 December 2024
In this video, YG Acoustics’ CEO, Matthew Webster, talks to SoundStage! Australia editor-in-chief Edgar Kramer about the Carmel 3 loudspeaker, the entry point to the company’s flagship range. Webster explains some of the in-house technology involved in the making of the drivers, cabinets, and ancillary parts while also discussing signal propagation through crossover networks, the importance of phase alignment, and much more.
The SoundStage! Australia Products of the Year Awards 2024
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 15 December 2024 15 December 2024
I feel fortunate to live in Katoomba, more fondly referred to by locals as K-Town, a history-rich town an hour-and-a-bit from Sydney central. K-Town teethers on the edge of ragged, rocky escarpments which put on a daily show of breathtaking beauty and drama… each scene enriched by an ever-changing palette of natural magnificence. It’s where coarse, high sandstone cliffs are often veiled by rising, ghostly mists which are there… and then not. Where dense gum-bush lines the rocky edges of shimmering waterfalls. Where the unique wildlife can be cute, or savage, or… deafening. Cicadas. This spring, after a seven year hiatus, the hordes are back in ridiculous numbers. The orange-tinged ‘Eastern Double Drummer’ is as boisterous as Danny Carey on steroids. Yep, near-120dB! Shouty, aroused males, throating a piercing chorus underlying the soundtrack to the SoundStage! in-room Insta reels. Heck, I’ve even had post comments pointing to that communal, ringing mayhem. Yet, here I am, presenting to you the antithesis of all that racket. I’m talking the best audio of 2024. How’s that for a segue?
Restoring a Memory: Tandy Electronics Mach One Loudspeakers
- Details
- Written by Barry Jones Barry Jones
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 01 December 2024 01 December 2024
I’m at a friend’s place, one evening, and after dinner we sit down to watch a few eps of the latest Trek “Strange New Worlds” when Pat points at his beloved speakers. Sadly, he tells me his wife is “making me get rid of them”. Pat’s hearing isn’t the best these days, so it kinda makes sense. It was actually through Pat that I first became interested in hi-fi, and it was Pat who gave me my first job. I used to ride my bike down to the local shopping centre after school some days to buy the latest Top 40 compilation LP record. One day, on the way out, I discovered the Tandy Electronics store (Radio Shack in the USA). Pat was the owner, and he had set up what was to me an absolute killer system. On that day, he was demonstrating it to a customer…
SoundStage! Talks Australia Video: Hi-Fi Brands & Products that Experts from Gryphon, Harman, Nordost, Linn Admire
- Details
- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 13 November 2024 13 November 2024
The idea was this: Get reps from major hi-fi companies to gather in the same room, at the same time, for a podcast-style chat about their favouite products, competing brands and the industry's future. We made it happen!
‘High-End Audio Innovators’ Event at Audio Connection, Sydney
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 22 October 2024 22 October 2024
On Friday evening, 18 October, industry luminaries from Denmark, Sweden and the UK gathered at Audio Connection, one of Sydney’s premier hi-fi retailers, courtesy of distributor and sister company Advance Audio. Each representative would host a presentation with an emphasis not just on providing insights into specific products, but to also instil a deeper understanding of their company’s vision.
StereoNET Hi-Fi & AV Show 2024 – Standout Rooms
- Details
- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 18 October 2024 18 October 2024
It’s now become a tradition. That breezy 90 minute flight from Sydney to Melbourne in October. Mind you, after driving nearly two hours to the airport from the Blue Mountains. Then, a soft-landing at Tullamarine Airport. Soon, I’ll be taxiing the runways of Australia’s largest audio show. That’s the StereoNET Hi-Fi & AV Show at its traditional home at the Pullman Melbourne Albert Park. I arrived mid-afternoon on kick-off Friday. Checked-in. Then, by the show’s entrance, a bombardment of low frequency shell-shock pulses. Audio PTSD. But hey, with a full-metal-jacket SD card magazine locked and loaded, itchy shutter trigger-finger, scrawly notepad and battle-scarred backpack at the shoulder, the campaign to move forward through the show began. Onwards and upwards.
SoundStage! Talks Australia Video: 50 Years of Wilson Audio's WATT/Puppy—from David to Daryl Wilson
- Details
- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 25 September 2024 25 September 2024
In 2024, Wilson Audio reintroduces The WATT/Puppy in the ninth version of the classic design, in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary. Being synonymous with the Wilson Audio brand, it was the ideal model to make into a celebratory product. In this video, CEO Daryl Wilson discusses the history of Wilson Audio and the WATT/Puppy heritage, and he also gives insights into how this new speaker model was designed.
The Adelphi Show Singapore 2024
- Details
- Written by Barry James Johnston Barry James Johnston
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 05 September 2024 05 September 2024
The Adelphi Centre in Singapore should be familiar to many audiophiles and music lovers alike. The Centre presents a unique offering unlike anywhere else in the world, with around thirty audio stores all in the one location, offering everything from entry level components, head-fi and home theatre, all the way through to esoteric über high-end brands which are the aspiration of audio enthusiasts around the globe.
