Saturday was our day to visit the rooms in the National Stadium. This venue was built to accommodate 58'000 sports fans and is thus equipped for large crowds with wide hallways, plenty of elevators and escalators but also a large amount of VIP rooms. For this occasion those rooms were cleared out and now acted as listening rooms. Last year this was a huge success and this year Adam had secured even more VIP rooms. His organization had shuttle buses connect the Sobieski and Stadium with a schedule such that no one had to wait more than 30 minutes to travel either way. We took the 10.00 o'clock to the Stadium where queues of eager visitors had formed already. It struck us at a glance that the average age of the waiting visitors was late 30's and that attendance was a real family affair. Many kids joined dads or mum'n'pop. How different from the typical audience at other big shows. Our press badges allowed us to skip ahead and directly proceed to the second ring. Here Italian Monrio presented their Asty Line preamplifier in combination with MP11 135wpc monos. Their choice of speakers was the 4-driver 2.5-way Humberto from Polish brand Passione.


Acoustic Zen teamed with Accuphase next door. The Crescendo with horn-loaded ribbon tweeter is one of those loudspeakers that can do no wrong.


Blumenhofer's FS3 Mk2 with 10" paper woofer and hornloaded compression driver is a real sound machine when matched with the right sources. Andrea Vitali's ‘ambassador' for Blumenhofer was in charge of the sound. Power amplification was in the hands of the Greek Ypsilon PSE-300B, with power conditioning by Camino Audio and analog by Das Laufwerk No.2 of Scheu. Andrea brought a wide collection of Fonè vinyl from Italy. We listened for quite a while to limited editions of Fausto Masolella's Live at Alcatraz and the really surprising Vir Dei Benedictus by the Monastic Choir of the Abbey of Montecassino.




mbl are a whole different story and we think very personal taste, perhaps acquired taste even. We heard their systems at various occasions and locations and really aspired to acquire but so far never clicked. We tried again but alas...


VTL's S400 Series II amplifier is a massive 300wpc/150wpc pentode/triode beast running 12 either KT88 or 6550. That power was delivered to a pair of Rockport Aviar. Analog come from a VPI model Avenger Reference with Lyra Etna cartridge. Transparent signed for the cabling. This was avery nice system that had to hold its breath a bit due to the room size. A few more cubic meters would have been nice.


We met Electrocompaniet electronics and Wilson Benesch ACT One Evolution P1 loudspeaker next. Here room size and system matched better.


The second Audio Tekne room of the show was here at the Stadium. Speakers on duty were the Slovenian Natural Sound 1 and a new model we think goes by the name Primavera. This made for a very nice open and detailed sound.


Then we returned to Accuphase electronics, now in combination with Avantgarde Duo horns and XA amplifier. We missed the expert hand of Armin Kraus in the fine-tuning of this setup.


Naim's Statement with towering Monitor Audio Platinum PL500II loudspeakers was fed from Naim's NDS network player. The Statement amplifier is in fact a system comprising the NAC S1 control amp in the middle flanked by two NAP S1 750wpc monoblocs. As the product name suggests, the Statement is proof of ultimate craftsmanship of Naim's engineering team.


J. Sikora are synonymous with Polish turntables. In their room the models Initial and Reference had the spotlight both with Kuzma arms. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw show, Sikora brought the power amplifiers that served duty in their room back in 1997, a Burdjak & Sikora. Speakers were German ASW Magadis.


Our timing visiting with Destination Audio was much better than last year. Then Włodek Wiśniewski and team had then still setting up their massive system but gave us a demo anyway. Now their room was all set and ready. Tight in the corners the signature horn system ran on dual 16" custom AlNiCo woofers and JBL 4" horn-loaded compression drivers. At 106dB sensitivity, not much input power was needed to reach a decent volume level. That power—a hefty 2 watt—came from 45 tube based monoblocs. The two-box preamp ran with 76 and ECC40 tubes.


After the dim almost dark Destination Audio space, the next room could not have been brighter. Here we met Dan D'agostino's pre/power amps driving Wilson Audio's Yvette. dCS provided a digital sources and Acoustic Signature supplied signal from vinyl.


More dCS came in the following room just like another Dan D'agostino amplifier, here the Master Power Classic. Loudspeakers were from UK's Russell K.


JR Audio with their Impossible arm that keeps the needle at the same angle to the groove at all times is one heckuva piece of mechanical craftsmanship. That arm was mounted on a JR Audio red turntable. Amplifiers from My Sound with their model Cube running EL84 tubes and hORNS' Universum 3-way horn completed the system. Here we had another confirmation that EL84 are underestimated tubes far more capable than often thought. 



More Wilson Audio and D'Agostino was next matched with Metronome Technologie's Kalista duo of CD transport and DAC both with external power supplies. We wonder how big interest is in very expensive CD transports in a time where streaming media haves so many advantages over spinning ‘digital' media.


ESA showcased their Continuum XXV Anniversary (15 years that is) 2-way loudspeaker. Vinyl was spun on an Avid turntable while Italian Mastersound amplification by way of their the 55wpc Evolution 845 class A integrated.


T+A chose pink spots lights for their room with PDP3000HV player, P3000HV preamp and P3000HV dual-mono power amp. Solitaire CWT 1000 were the matching loudspeakers from the same German catalogue.


Next door had more n T+A but now from their 1000 series electronics and matching loudspeaker.


Advance Acoustic from Paris opted for black all over. X-A220 was the model name for a surprising 220wpc monobloc. Just as surprising, the preamp was called X-Preamp while the CD player went by X-CD 1000. Loudspeakers were the X-L1000 Paris.


Mytek, American with strong Polish roots, had their Manhattan II DAC as centre piece. It's a headphone amp, preamp and of course DAC all in one small package. The company claims it's first to include an MQA decoder in such a product. Another option is a WiFi board for wireless streaming. The DAC accepts all input with DSD up to 256.