The famed Brinkmann “Hewn from Granite” build quality (or perhaps more literally ‘Sat on Granite”) is mirrored very convincingly in the company’s stability, commercial image and general trustworthiness. Some hifi brands are side curiosities or second or third businesses. Some brands are pure moneyspinning ventures, lots of carbon fibre and gold but a veritable dogs dinner when you take off the lid. And a few brands are run by fairly impossible people; personalities or politics that have evolved to a point where you simply could not even begin to attempt to run a reputable shop around such a product.
Brinkmann Audio however is your Rolex, your Barbour, your Miele even. They’ve been there for probably as long as you can remember and all along have never stopped creating classic top level product that is utterly dependable. There might be rival organisations who are a little flashier, a little more active, a little more boastful even, but in typical Teutonic fashion Helmut Brinkmann and the whole gang in Achberg, southern Germany, prefer slow and steady, function over form and to let the work do the talking rater than incessantly talking about the work
Like many of Lotus’s brands, Brinkmann have been there almost from the start, 2014 to be precise so a good 6 years and counting. Choose once, choose right ! I love their whole range of turntables which offer exceptional performance and not so long ago along came the Nyquist DAC which has been a fabulous addition to our digital sources from Vitus, Allnic and Tidal.
Such is our success with the brand and the exceptional feedback from deeply satisfied owners, that now at the tail end of 2020, we have decided to reaffirm our love and support for all things Brinkmann and enter into an even deeper level of engagement with their product range. From January 2021 we will have a BARDO direct drive deck and flagship BALANCE belt drive turntable on permanent demonstration with both 10.5 and 12.1 Brinkmann tonearms. The newly updated RoNtII power supply will be in situ as well, along with the bespoke made MX3 isolation platform.
Bolstering the analogue side, we will also have the highly decorated Brinkmann Edison II phono stage on permanent demo as well as the Nyquist MK2 DAC. The sold state Edison will join our highly successful range of phono preamps from Allnic and Vitus but carve out a new slot at the £8995 pricepoint. The multi award winning Nyquist DAC is no stranger to Lotus and we’ve already placed a number of these since it’s successful launch in 2018 but we look forward to having continual access to our own unit from January onwards. It makes for a fine product inbetween the Vitus RD-101 and SD-025 digital sources, with inbuilt native functionality for MQA, DLNA, Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, vTuner and Roon.
In timely fashion, Brinkmann and importers Symmetry Systems also bring you a smattering of news themselves. First of all starting 2021 all the electronics will also be available in silver, very handsome I am sure you will agree. There is an Absolute Sound review of the Taurus direct drive turntable looming very soon so look out for that, and the Pi moving cartridge makes a welcome return to production. This is a great low cost partner to the Bardo and Oasis turntable, very much atuned to the neutral and linear presentation of the turntables. The full newsletter “Groove News” can be read here.
Perhaps most exciting of all from Brinkmann though is the soon to be released Voltaire Integrated amplifier. This is a hotly anticipated product very much with UK buying habits in its sights. The Voltaire is a no holds barred super Integrated amplifier with provision for either a DAC or Phono module or both, so once again a very friendly one box Highend system, just add speakers. It’s £19,000 – £30,000 pricepoint means it will slot very neatly inbetween our very popular single box integrated models from Vitus Audio whilst at the same time offering a slightly different presentation. The Voltaire was delayed in 2020 for obvious reasons but should land any moment and it will make a fine addition to our system building arsenal.
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