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After you had all the information necessary to understand the Pure Acourate Sound System objectively ... You'll get now my auditive impressions from that extraordinary session. Here is a small subjective run through to the most impressive tracks in the playlist, which you can find at Qobuz: -> https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/21340128 There are 2 more related playlists to be found here and here . Angel by Massive Attack: A reference track of mine, given the austerulous electronic sub-bass frequency used by the band. With this track I have - even on headphones - the sense of an eardrum massage from it and the experience here had been even more physical. Perhaps it’s correct to feel that it had been just another dimension of physical exposure getting involved into these walls of guitars, the dubby pulse, juxtaposed by Tracey Thorns enchanting singing? This felt really adventorous … Five Feet Tall - Lady Blackbird Everyones favourite soul darling’s voice gave me goosebumps galore. Simply overwhelming and unbelievable gracious - overheard with such brilliance. Papertrails by Darkiside A track I have only discovered a year ago, from the NY based duo Darkside. Quite melancholic, intimate and vulnerable, the production sounds to me like pure craftmanship, all instruments and sound choreographed through an outdoor parcour leading to your personal shady storage room called subconciousness. Nothing happy at all, but perfect for testing your system. An ultimate joy to listen to the hypnotic music (predominantly voice, guitars and percussions) and its production, less so to get your mind involved with the presented metaphors. Thee hypnotic séance left me with goosebumps oncemore. Erik Truffaz - El tiempo de la revolucion Thundering marching drums & meandering trompete sounds, this track covers all of our needs for testing system capabilities, I love the context, the Spanish Revolution. I had once (35 years ago) the pleasure to spend an evening with two survivors of the Francist Regime in Barcelona, people who fought during the Spanish Civil War at the barricades of the Anarchists. This spark in their elderly eyes when they spoke about the happy times before the war will stay with me forever and it gets enlightened everytime I listen to this track. In Freienohl, vibrant memories were added to the light. I could melt away on the Truffaz’ way of mastering his trumpet. Battle Royale - Duke Ellington and Count Basie - First Time! The Count Meets the Duke If I ever want to test speed of sound reproduction, this is the track that leaves me out of breath, wondering how could they do such a recording more than 60 years ago? Geniuses @work! For the ones who do not know, in the stereo version each orchester is presented in one separate channel, thus it’s a mono recording in a stereo container. In fact, on the mono recording you may hear both orchester equally on both speakers (source: Berdon.com) Finally, we heard the live version of “A fistful of dollars” by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Instantly, I felt that I may give up all my future plans for annual subsriptions to the local Symphony Concert Hall if I would own this system. Just kidding, No Symphony near me and I couldn’t fit the PASP system in my listening space. And nevermind my budget. But this special sensation listening to that live event recording were kind of unreal in quite an interesting way. Overall Assessment: The system’s clarity - from the lowest octave to the highest - was incredible, involving and sometimes otherworldly to me. It provided me with some insights I had to reflect. I am not used to this overwhelming accuracy, speed, resonance free clarity, deep clean & substantial bass and the sheer sum of details which leaves – if any - only a small margin for sugar coating & overlays of any kind by the source. “Truthfully to the source” is a design goal which was successfully achieved in my terms, however. Possible owners of this 75k € system should be warned, without the highest quality of source material all deficits of your music library could be quickly exposed to the bone. I was absolutely baffled from the immediacy and the involvement into the music we heard from our playlist - but forcefully appalled by the miniscule mastering quality of Iggy Pop’s “Free” and New Years Day version of New Orders’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”. Perhaps, altogether I felt that the listening experience could be a bit too much physical for someone living in cohabitation with an open baffle dipole system. Given that you can decide on your preferred room curve and the final degree of performance by Acourate settings, fine-tuning your system’s performance to your personal taste seems to be the definite way to go. Jumping from your 5/10k speakers/system to this rather definite combination could prove a bridge too far for some, this it is quite a serious invest for an end game set up, as always to my ears. The other side … When we entered the listening area first, after a quick tour through the furniture showroom and the attached work floors, we were asked to sit down, and quickly the light went out. We were welcomed by Bruce Cockburn’s “Bells of Gethsemane” and immediately sucked into the tune by a paramount soundstage with warmth and clarity. A second tune, Jacintha’s version of “Light my Fire”, followed by the lesser known “Bad Kingdom” by Desiree Mishoe provide us with a wonderful sense of purpose, this is what we want. Markus did all his little showroom tricks in order to prepare us for the ultimate performance yet to come. He did so with the smallest of his personal designs (6 liters), the 2-way bookshelf speaker called Micro, using Wavecor drivers, the 4,75” WF120BD-08 paper cone mid-bass and a 22mm neodymium dome tweeter called TW22WA09. Driven by the dual Infineon chipped SABAJ amp, the A20A 2023 in combination with an SMSL SU-1 DAC, using one AKM AK4493S chipset, the chain was in fact well worth 300 Euros, while the hand-manufactured speakers come at a whopping 2.5k Euro. In relation, this sounds like a lot of money, but the performance was really worth it, every single penny. My friend decided that he will change his active Backes & Müller living room set-up against this wonderful sounding design in the near future. Thus he need to come again with his wife to finalize their decision. By chance, there is more to have chez Rose Handwerk than only pure audio … ;-) The Porsche experience: Seeing old friends back home in Germany for 10 days, I had asked this recently retired friend with a shared interest in audiophile excursions if he would like to join me. He agreed, and early in the morning at the time of leaving we decided to have first another coffee but then with an 2nd thought we swapped my reliable Mazda family vehicle, which I had cleaned from every single dog hair mindfully for this precise trip, and vouch for his ride instead. It was actually my first acquaintance with a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, precisely sitting in any Porsche more capable than a 924 (1980) model. His sentence to remember, “..- Google Maps says one hour to the arrival … although we can still bag 10 minutes …” I enjoyed this experience, a really physical one – very much comparable to the physical bass performance with PASP - quite thoroughly, especially because on our way back we had one of the worst April storms in a couple of years and when imagining my own dog taxi (+25in height difference) under that conditions would definitely change my usually healthy face color into a pale white flag. The dimension of this storm may be comprehended by the fact that it uprooted one 700 years-old oak tree (Bärenwaldeiche), the oldest tree in the region we were visiting. https://audiophilestyle.com/gallery/album/180-pasp-7/ On our trip back home, we exchanged our impressions from this extensive listening and my friend was quite impressed by PASP, thus absolutely excited by the “Micro” design - as this is exactly was he was looking for. This Pure Acourate Sound Project isn’t made for quick decisions, you may need to hear it and get involved within this experience of the unknown (for most of us). Only a small number of audiophiles may have tasted such a 5-star menu, thus we - the majority – have the need to get acquainted to this type of almost distortion-less reproduction. FINAL NOTICE: The full system will be presented at the MHE 2024, in Hall 3, Box K05, with the team happy to make you smile. The designer, Dr. Brüggemann has a speaker slot about his project involvement at the MHE XPERT stage in the MHE press center at Friday, 10th of May, at 12h sharp (in German), he follows directly after the presentation by Klippel’s Ellis Blackford Strout at 11h sharp (in English).

The P-Experience: Pure Acourate Sound, PuRiFi and a Porsche Visiting the Pure Acourate Sound Project in Germany Mid-April I was travelling from France to my home region near Frankfurt/Germany - it was time to celebrate a 54-years friendship with my best friend in our hometown close to Frankfurt, where I had some duties as a DJ for his 60’s anniversary event. I used the fact of having already done the first 500 miles to organize a trip up north, into a region where the formerly excellent German Autobahn network still demands another hour drive on state roads to arrive at a very cold place not far from a ski jumping resort, called ”Winterberg”. I was accompanied by an old friend who shares an audiophile interest or two. I haven’t seen him lately, it has been approximately 15 years when I had last listened to his Wilson Sabrina powered by Krell monoblocks, thus he recently entered retirement and was open for a new adventure in Hifi. Given that he had neither heard (about) the PuRiFi chassis nor the PuRiFi Class D amplification, our almost 5-hour-long stay in the dedicated listening room @ Rose-Handwerk in Meschede-Freienohl, offered a couple of well perceived surprises for him. He provided for me, too, with some Porsche thrills which can be found at the end of the story. Rose Handwerk, Markus Grelka and Joachim Gerhardt & PASP Rose Handwerk, a family driven enterprise led by Daniela Rose and her hubby Markus Grelka, are designer/ manufacturer of natural woodwork furniture and Markus has proved his woodworking excellence as selected cabinet maker for Joachim Gerhard’s collection line. Joachim, known amongst audiophiles for his contribution to Audio Physics and Süsskind speaker designs, lives just a couple of villages further east. Having brought together the PASP team, he is likely the spiritus rector of this project, though he usually stays in the shadows, caring about his own projects and customers. Pure Acourate Sound Project (PASP) main actors are Ralf Höllmann (Digital Loudspeaker), as a director responsible for project coordination and digital presence and Markus, who both have recently teamed up for the project with another audio authority from the region (some 60 miles away in Bielefeld), Dr. Ulrich Brüggemann from AudioVero, provider of the national DRC treasure Acourate / Acourate Convolver. Chez Rose Handwerk, Markus has created a purpose build listening room, where we can find one wall with short run creations of his own design and speakers deriving from his collaboration with Joachim Gerhard. The opposite side of the room is restricted to the reference system simply called “Pure Acourate Sound Project”. The room itself is treated with GIK acoustic elements and the center of listening pleasure is measured by AudioVero’s Acourate digital room correction appliance. Klippel, the German transducer measurement champion with a footprint in the labs of PuRiFi, joined the project, when an additional analysis of the speaker set prototype was run in the Klippel laboratories in Dresden. The audio hardware is predominantly PuRiFi, with a dip of Viawave (tweeter) plus the Okto Research DAC8 pro, with cabling provided through XLR and SpeakOn connectors from professional audio sources. The full system will be presented at the MHE 2024, in Hall 3, Box K05, with the team happy to make you smile. A special mention for the “East European” Viawave waveguided tweeter. It is worth to notice that this small company has suffered serious collateral damage from the Russian warfare in Ukraine as the owner’s family has been of both, Russian and Ukrainian origin and decided to leave Russia for understandable reasons. After a stopover in Finland during 2023, they finally established a new production line in Slovakia this year and are happy to fulfill the delivery of postponed orders starting mid-April 2024. Their tweeter, a model called WRT145-8, is based on the patented SRT (sealed ribbon tweeter) technology and its waveguide allows to work even more effortlessly to crossover into the midrange. The defined frequency range is between 1.8 and 30khz, it provides a characteristic sensitivity of 95db. (Data for the 8 Ohms model). Danish DIY pope Troels Gravesen remarks fairly positively about the GRT-145 4 Ohms tweeter: “My primary concern with ribbon tweeters is dispersion, but this tweeter has an excellent horizontal dispersion with very little loss even at 30 deg. off-axis. Vertical dispersion is surprisingly good, one of ribbons' usual drawbacks, and good dispersion at 20 deg. off-axis is excellent.” And concludes “Quite impressive although I would prefer a higher impedance and lower sensitivity (…)”. The PASP uses the GRT145-8 with higher impedance and lower sensitivity. From the beginning, Viawave had been the 1st replacement alternative for the 2023 announced PuRiFi waveguided cone tweeter, and due to the given insecurity in provision, SEAS has been teamed up as a 2nd option, in case both prime selections would have been doomed solutions. It’s kind of complicated. In future project stages PASP will use the then all new PuRiFi waveguided tweeter. The listening experience Spending a full afternoon in a dedicated listening room can be fun - especially when there is one of the wildest storms of the still young year brewing up outside. It was demanding too, and I have learned a lot about my own abilities of critical listening. It also may lead you to experience your capacative limits. Resting cocentrated, being exposed to pulsating and clear bass registers, crystal clear high ranges and undistorted mids allowed me to reflect on a couple of important questions about my personal approach towards the holy grail of audiophilia . - Will I be content if can clinical analyze every recording in my library? - How much precision is adaptable for me ? - How much bass is necessary allowed to stand a chance of surviving my wife’s wrath? - Depth of image or soundstage ? - Are distortion-less midrange and a brilliant top end design goals which connect with my fading hearing? (x-overed to the 60ies during this trip) - Would I want to have different voicings in my set-up to meet my personal taste or stay in line with the purists in the defence of unmolested bitperfect reproduction ofthe source? Someow this feels kind of heretic, but in front of a 75k audio system some considerations might certainly be on order. Listening to a reference system like the one of PASP, with such a thundering but controlled and clean bass section, providing a unhinged and relentless clarity and dynamics, excellent imaging with asounding soundstage - if used in such a purposeful prepared environment, made me feel humbled, not only by a tiny bit. Even as someone deep in this hobby for better part of his life, my level of extended listenings to reference systems is far more limited than the number of music servers I have set up in the last decade. I clearly felt that head, body, mind and ears will need to adapt to such an experience. Eventually your bank account too ;-) Here is a small subjective run through to the most impressive tracks in the playlist, which you can find at Qobuz: -> https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/21340128 . There are 2 more related playlists to be found here and here . Part 2 with commented listening of some playlist tracks, some reflections, many documents and two other xperiences from that trip (yes - with Porsche) will follow tomorrow ;-)

Joachim Gerhard Collection & Rose Handwerk: PuRiFi based speaker design Some of you may have heard about Joachim Gerhard, the créateur of Michael Fremer's beloved Audio Physic Virgo speaker and founder of Audio Physic, Sonics and Suesskind Audio. In Europe he is often referred to as the "German Pope of High End Speakers" ... Nevermind, this century there has already seen a German Pope of the Catholic Church - from Bavaria - whose reign didn't last as long as Joachim Gerhard's dominion in the high end audio scene. While he still operates under the moniker Suesskind Audio, offering handmade loudspeakers - made in Germany, he has widened his activities through a co-operative project with Rose Handwerk's Markus Grelka, a master of wood craft & design and like Gerhard located in the Sauerland region, somewhere in the middle of Germany, roughly between Frankfurt and Hannover. The Joachim Gerhard Collection - referring with its slogan "Made in Sauerland" to this regional aspect of the product - shows to date 9 different speakers on their homepage, sharing the details about the Surveyor, the PuRiFi woofer based standmounts, only recently last week. If you are interested in the progress on their collaboration their Instagram makes a good feed. If you look at the pictures and feel that the PuRiFi drivers is looking fugly - you may have a point - but that design comes not without a reason! You may find the full explanation at Erin's video interview with Lars Risbo after minute 46. I had a chat with Markus before Christmas and was told that a pair of Surveyor's should make a trip to the US this year and forwarded @the computer audiophile contact details, pointing him to @mitchco's review of the Purifi evaluation kit last year. Just as many things under the influence of the worldwide crisis won't run as preferred, plans are in line - but still postponed. The Surveyor combines a two driver design pairing PuRiFi's 6.5 woofer and a special edition of the waveguided ViaWave SRT145 True Ribbon tweeter (buzzword - nano-crystalline magnets!) from Russian origin, together with double antipodal passive radiators for extended FR in the low end. The crossover is designed by Joachim Gerhard, the hand crafted speaker will leave the manufacturer in Germany for 6900 Euros (VAT included). 6moons called it a 4-way design. With permission of the owner I have chosen some images to be found within his instagram presence to present you a different vision of these beautiful transducers. Personally, me or Audiophile Style have no financial interest whatsoever with the manufacturer or the product, and I got behind that product as a follow up on our 2019 range of PuRiFi related articles, finding a link to this speaker through Lars's LinkedIn hub. Here is the manufacturer's description from their homepage Design: 2 way compact loudspeaker with passive diaphragm. Extremely low resonance cabinet with minimal sound leakage. 40mm solid wood baffle. Large baffle chamfers minimize edge diffraction. Transitional crossover. Midwoofer with long-stroke performance (+-10mm) and ultra low distortion. State of the Art Ribbon tweeter Technical data: Impedance: 4 Ohm Efficiency: 86dB / 1m / 2,85V Power handling: 160W Amplifier recommendation: 2 x 50W Class AB transistor or Class D, 2 x 20W tube or Class A Frequency response: ( -3dB ) 36Hz – 40kHz Linearity: 200Hz – 20kHz, +- 2dB Distortion factor at 90dB below 0,2% above 200Hz Transitional Crossover Xoverpoint 2200 Hz Dimensions: Width baffle and pedestal: 20cm Total width with aluminum clasp feet: 28cm Total height incl. pedestal and and feet: 43cm, without feet 41cm Depth corpus: 32cm Depth of corpus and baffle: 36cm Depth pedestal: 40cm Depth from baffle front to rear edge of pedestal: 44cm Weight: 11kg Drivers: Tweeter with solid metal waveguide. Ribbon membrane with excellent omnidirectional sound and extended frequency response up to 40kHz. Midwoofer with extreme long stroke (+-10mm) and ultra linear motor for lowest distortions. Edit: The contribution got lost in the events surrounding a family tragedy in Spring 2021. Hope it is still relevant today. Tom.