HEMINGWAY FACTORY VISIT

I am sluggishly wandering through the circuitous elevated alleyways of Itaewon, one of Seoul’s more vibrant and international districts, looking for some decent barbeque. Today though everywhere is closed and there’s very few people in sight; it’s a ghost town. The weather app on my my iPhone tells me its 92% humidity and it feels it too. This is the middle of Korea’s summer and many Seoulites have left for the coast or the islands to escape the high heat. Maybe people just avoid stepping outdoors altogether at this time ? This is certainly a whole different feeling to [...]

30th December 2025|
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LOTUS SUGGESTED SYSTEMS #7

SOULNOTE MEET JOSEPH £90,035 The reasons behind Suggested System are numerous. Firstly to continue talking about Soulnote who are still relatively new to Lotus but already having a huge impact, secondly to quickly introduce the amazing new Joseph Loudspeakers to you, thirdly to illustrate very clearly the wonderful synergy between Soulnote and Joseph, and finally to showcase a vinyl system for a change, something that we do specialise in, despite the fact that the vast majority of people these days want systems built around Qobuz and Tidal. THE RATE OF CHANGE First an important note to [...]

8th December 2025|
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JOSEPH PULSAR 2 & PERSPECTIVE 2

THE LOUDSPEAKER PROBLEM Speakers are arguably the most important part of your system and the most difficult choice you will make. They are by far the hardest item to design and manufacture because of their propensity to introduce a very large amount of colouration and inaccuracy into the sound. Engineering all the colouration and noise out of a transducer, so that it has no inherent character, so that it does not introduce any sound of its own, so that it acts only as a perfectly transparent and almost indetectable three dimensional window back to the music, is nothing [...]

5th October 2025|
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LOTUS SUGGESTED SYSTEMS #6

SOULNOTE GETS SERIOUS £217,179 Setup, setup, setup ... and always finish the system. Just one or two sub-standard components can let the side down, skew the frequency response, harden or brighten the treble. Even a basic system prepared here for customer demo is underpinned by high-quality mains, cabling, network components and noise reducing support systems. These ancillaries don’t have to be ridiculously expensive. They can be the giant-killing entry models, the cheapest power cords, the first rung ethernet cable, the lowest level of isolation footers, but the important thing is, there’s no single noisy or coloured component anywhere [...]

24th July 2025|
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Tidal Audio – NEW factory visit 2025

I am walking through Tidal Audio’s new 2000 square metre factory in the small town of Erftstadt just outside Köln, Germany, and it all feels extremely familiar. The sense of purity and clean air, elegant pristine exhibits peppering the large and voluminous stress free spaces, a striking red Ducati 999 race bike glistening at the end of the central gangway, and up ahead when you first enter, a gigantic back-lit portrait of two beautiful silver and black Bugatti Royale loudspeakers. It's all familiar then, because in truth not a lot has changed. This is the old factory but ungraded [...]

1st July 2025|
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LOTUS SUGGESTED SYSTEMS #5

TIDAL AMPLIFIED PERFORMANCE £307,520 We waited some time before introducing our 5th suggested system. There were a few good reasons for this. The main reason is that the Lotus portfolio is going through a time of great change. This is driven by a period of overall expansion and investment but also by the movement of Tidal Audio into its own separate dedicated demonstration room. Whilst Tidal can be mixed into other systems and with other components (and very easily and successfully so on account of its very high performance quotient and high degree of invisibility) our intention has [...]

4th May 2025|
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AMPLIFIED PERFORMANCE – Tidal’s breakthrough AP1 loudspeaker

FROM 2016 to AP1 The system you see just below is very similar to the one that wooed the crowds at the Munich High End show 9 years ago or so. It would probably still rank in the last few percent of rooms if you took it back to Munich today - or indeed any other international Audio show. The cost ? With the Assoluta bass towers, around 1 million euros. Several years after that time, TIDAL were selected by the Bugatti motor company to design and build a ‘no limits’ Bugatti branded audio system. This initiated [...]

14th April 2025|
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Wadax Studio Player – Trickled down treats

BETTER IS BETTER The march of time and global disruptions in trade and economic security inevitably means that prices go up but in certain corners of our industry, the advancement and employment of trickle down technology means that greater value can sometimes be offered back to the customer. Refreshingly then, these products are actually reducing in cost relative to the performance they offer, and rewriting what is possible at certain customer budgets. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the new Tidal AP1 active powered floorstanders. Just seven years ago, the best system from Tidal Audio comprising the [...]

3rd March 2025|
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The Superstars of 2024

This year might have been our busiest year yet. No surpise then that the year was also peppered with some very powerful new products, most new to market although some simply just new to the UK or to Lotus. Way back 8 years ago I wrote a "stars of 2016" article and after such a successful 2024 it might be informative to do the same again, to create a quick roundup of the items that shone so brightly here in the Lotus demo room and indeed, in customers' homes. WADAX STUDIO PLAYER, £37,500 Superstars are of course [...]

17th December 2024|
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Soulnote E2 – reshaping the landscape

You may not have heard much about Soulnote but that is soon going to change. This bespoke passionate company, headed by ex-Marantz genius Hideki Kato in Kanawara on the outskirts of Tokyo, first came to our attention in the Spring of last year when our friends and UK importers Kog Audio lent us a small unassuming and modestly priced £6800 Integrated amplifier named the A2. We had a brief listen and were quite startled at the performance for the money. We also put it into a customer home up against a secondhand Vitus 010 integrated. The Vitus is a [...]

30th October 2024|
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