Der Chefredakteur des angesehenen US-Magazins „The Absolute Sound“, Robert Harley, hat seine persönlichen Favoriten des Jahres 2015 mit den Golden Ear Awards ausgezeichnet. Unter den gerade mal sechs ‚Preisträgern‘ befinden sich
die Magico Q 7 Mk II:
„Magico has taken the Q7, a speaker I’ve long considered to be the state of the art and, surprisingly, made it significantly better. The Q7 Mk II benefits from an entirely new tweeter, designed from the ground up, a fresh midrange diaphragm made from graphene (a new carbon-fiber-like material), and a redesigned crossover with exotic capacitors. The Mk II obviates the classic dilemma of resolution vs. ease by combining the highest resolution midrange and treble I’ve heard in a loudspeaker with tremendous delicacy and a complete lack of hardness and glare. The sonic impact is so profound that the Mk II sounds as though it has a different tonal balance, but the two speakers have identical responses. Although the woofer section remains unchanged, the Mk II’s bass is considerably improved, perhaps by virtue of the midrange’s higher-resolution reproduction of the overtones of bass instruments. I’ll have a lot more to say about the Q7 Mk II in my upcoming review, but for now I’ll enthusiastically give this stunningly great transducer a Golden Ear Award.“
und der Aurender W 20:
„Aurender’s top-of-the-line W20 is the most feature-laden and capable turn-key music server on the market. It also happens to have the best music-management app, an important consideration when choosing a server. Load the W20’s internal hard drive (up to a whopping 12TB) with music, connect one of its many digital outputs to a DAC, link a tablet to your wireless network, and you’ve got virtually unlimited music. The W20’s seamless integration with Tidal’s streaming service greatly expands its functionality. You’ll need, however, a Mac or PC with an optical drive to rip to the W20. The W20’s sound quality is outstanding, due perhaps in part to its 128GB of internal cache memory and other performance-oriented design tricks.“