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John
Best in show awards as they relate to sound quality – this publication gave them up several years ago. Experience tells us that they’re a silly side effect of a play act undertaken by commentator and (unwitting) exhibitor. Show-based awards flatter both parties whilst remaining meaningless for the rest of us.
This audio reviewer’s self-imposed brief for Munich High-End 2018 was not only to take a snapshot of what’s new and to go long on video in the process but also to un/cover and profile manufacturers whose work stands out as markedly different. Metaxas & Sins are one such manufacturer.
Where art meets technology. A strapline that undersells the hi-fi products designed and made by Kostas Metaxas, a Greek-Australian recording engineer now living in the Netherlands. How about: art pieces that also reproduce sound? Better – but still not quite there.
Metaxas and Sins’ (read: sons) latest additions to their hifi gear range are a £35,000 ‘Phonographic Perambulator Turntable’ whose outboard motor-mount oozes – literally – Salvador Dali and the ‘GQT Portable Recording Device No. 1’ (£TBC), a reel-to-reel machine that channels Max Ernst. As the man himself says of his turntable, “It’s a luxury object…but it’s a piece of art.”
How about this then: Metaxas & Sins work stands as alone as a Giorgio De Chirico in a hifi world dominated by John Constables and William Turners.
From the floor of Munich High-End 2018, I spoke with Kostas Metaxas about why his gear looks like it does and what motivates him to make it so:
Further information: Metaxas & Sins
