u-Audio.com.tw
Review on u-Audio.com.tw
ABSOLUTE SOUND: 5 Audionet Amps among the best on the planet
TAS just published their recommendations for 2021. We’re in with STERN, HEISENBERG, HUMBOLDT, PRE G2 und MAX (WATT and SAM SE haven’t been tested) and like that very much. Thank you!
HUMBOLDT Review in STEREO 10/2020
HUMBOLDT Review in THE ABSOLUTE SOUND 07/2020
HUMBOLDT Review on SOUNDREBELS 12/2019
“HUMBOLDT should be treated in absolute terms – as a kind of obligatory reference point for all those who, searching for their dream and uncompromising reference, have decided, for more or less obvious reasons, to go for an integrated solution.”
Review on the Soundrebels website (polish)…
SAM 20 SE review in Stereo Video Magazine (Poland) 7/2018
“Setting the Amplifier SAM 20 SE is a matter of minutes. Streamed music in Hi-Res (96 and 192 kHz) has no error. Extreme bandwidth ensures unpainted transmission. The 200 watts power is a prerequisite for a sufficient dynamic range for loud listening and medium-sensitive loudspeaker systems. The amplifier has a high damping factor and speakers for unusual performance. The basses are incredibly deep, while maintaining firm contours. The top of the band is finely detailed and clean. The Phono Entrance is great and is not just a cheap addition to the sixth entrance.”
Read the review online (polish language)…
SAM 20 SE review in Audiotechnique (Hong Kong), 4/2018
“SAM 20 SE sounds extremely natural, I feel that I can get in touch with the singer through her voice.
SAM 20 SE inherits Audionets knowledge of high end engineering and 20 years of continued research in natural sound reproduction. Without additional colouration, it reproduces every micro detail from the source material.”
Read the review online (chinese language)…
WATT review in positive feedback, Issue 96, 04/2018
“From the stillest, calmest, blackest of backgrounds, music erupts into the listening space with alarming immediacy and vividness.”
Follow Maurice Jeffries to our “paradigm-shifting” WATT here:
Read the review online…
SAM 20 SE review in Stereo 02/2018
“The 20 SE enhances the strengths of the “standard” SAM model to perfection, demonstrating the potential of the SAM G2 circuitry – but only for a limited time: when all 200 of these special amps are sold, they’re gone, so this is one well worth seeking out, and soon.”
Download the review as PDF…
MAX & PRE G2 review in “The Absolute Sound”
“At this point in my audio journey, after some 45 years of beeing involved at virtually every level of high-end audio (I was selling stereo gear before I could legally drive a car), I find that this Audionet combination represents one of the highest ratios of performance to price I’ve yet encountered, exemplifying the role of the proverbial “Giant Killer”. If the ultimate goal in this industry is to create products capable of engaging the listener so completely that we become transfixed by an entirely fabricated deception, unaware that the time and space of the events unfolding before us are merely auditory illusions generated by a complex reconstruction engine, a conglomeration of electro-mechanical devices, then Audionet has earned its place among the handful of manufacturers pushing the limits. I urge you not to part with a dime until you seek out and hear what the PRE G2 and MAX can do.”
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STERN & HEISENBERG review in the “Stereo Times”
“The bass was quick-footed, articulate and most importantly it conveyed a musicality that belied both its size and build. All I could say was DAMN! Ironically, instead of more powerful, the system appeared more relaxed and resolving – as if the added wattage aided in providing less stress and more realism. In a sense, it sounded as though the Heisenberg/Stern combo took full control of the massive YG XV’s many individual drivers and made them a single source. The very look and feel bespoke “state of the art” throughout while the sound is powerful and taut, yet elegant and ultra-refined. Voices hover above the floor at the right height and size but elicit a sense life that’s quite uncanny for a solid-state design. Music just flowed into this huge listening space in way that it had not in the past. It made the room seem smaller and more intimate. Weird. This made it somewhat difficult to concentrate on anything except the music. What higher accolade is there when a system can achieve that? I don’t know what else to say except that listening to the Audionet Heisenberg and Stern combination was truly an adventure!”
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STERN & HEISENBERG review in “The Absolute Sound”
“We chose to listen exclusively to LPs for this audition. I got to spend the entire day listening to this remarkable system, and virtually every LP we played (I had a dozen of my own favorite records with me) left me astounded. From the moment the needle landed in the groove, the utter naturalness of the presentation became apparent. I was hearing subtleties of hall and performance ambiance that I’d never before heard in all my years of listening to this LP on literally hundreds of systems. Transients were crisper, more sharply and accurately delineated, tone color and texture were astonishingly accurate, and every aspect of the presentation was depicted with full, honest bloom, accurate weight, and ample body. Dynamic scaling was spectacular, and I was overwhelmed by the degree of ambient detail conveyed. Both of these characteristics coexisted in equal measure; neither showed compromise. An absolute revelation of the musicians’ spatial relationships within the soundstage and of vibrant, faithful timbre. And the rhythmic pace, the timing and drive of the music, had never sounded more frenetic! The Stern linestage and Heisenberg monoblocks push the bar to previously unattainable levels. In short, the combination of the Audionet Scientist Series Stern linestage and Heisenberg monoblock amplifiers establishes a new benchmark.”
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STERN & HEISENBERG review in “Hi-Fi+”
“What is more, low-level textural, transient, and timbral details were rendered in a more complete and holistic way and with a heightened sense of focus and nuance. As a result, the voices of instruments and human singers became at once more natural sounding, more pure, and more focused. The sheer effortless clarity I heard was unlike anything I had heard from any hi-fi system in the past, and as a result, large-scale choral and orchestral works took a quantum leap forward in overall intelligibility and lucidity. Even more depth, more focus, and much more bass detail, yet that is exactly what the Stern/Heisenberg electronics delivered. Third, (and perhaps this come as no surprise) the extremely powerful Heisenberg amplifiers (1,050 watts @ 4 ohms) gave the system a certain “ceilings unlimited” quality in terms of dynamics. In fact, I suspect the Heisenberg might just be the most fleet-footed and agile audio amplifier I’ve ever experienced. Two major benefits of the Stern/Heisenberg package are these: first, the strengths of ancillary components seem greatly magnified by the Audionet electronics, and second, with the Audionet components in play recordings can be explored in much greater depth and with more insight than listeners might have thought possible. The bottom line is that Stern and Heisenberg have, in my opinion, raised the performance bar for high-end audio electronics.”
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STERN & HEISENBERG review in “Positive Feedback”
“The Heisenberg and Stern have a serious, we’re-not-playing-around, visual that will stop you in your tracks with their scale, cosmetics—and ambition! Both units are encased in nearly identical aluminum chassis of flawless German metalwork (by German design legend Hartmut Esslinger). The Stern has already been placed in the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art. The Stern has got to be one of the largest preamps on the planet. Why so much real estate? I was told the interior is chock-a-block with circuitry. It boasts some amazing specs. There’s more: more tone, more timbre and, most especially, triumphantly, the grandest dynamic peaks I’ve encountered in residential audio. I’m always fiddling with or critiquing tonal balance—it’s rare to find a system that leaves me with no complaint—but with this rig I didn’t want to change a thing. The tone was BIG, with 100% saturation, and striking in its uniformity from top to bottom. The treble was sweet and extended, but never harsh, and certainly not of a quality I associate with solid-state. The mids were clean; the bass full, round and tight. All of uncommon purity. Yay! The tone showed no compromise. The instruments on The Blues and the Abstract Truth grew from ff like you get with other über components, and then pushed beyond that to full fff, where no amp has gone before. Edge-of-the-art for what’s possible in audio reproduction.”
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STERN & HEISENBERG review on i-fidelity.net
“With the Stern preamp and the Heisenberg mono blocks, Audionet chimes in a new chapter of amplifier building. In more than one respect this trio is blasting conventions; sound quality and price fall definitely within. The attractive … styling by Hartmut Esslinger and the extent of innovative hightech from Audionet’s R&D department form in this triumvirate a passionate symbiosis which brought me a true joy of heart. … the new i-fidelity.net references.”
Download the review as PDF…
Read the review online…
STERN & HEISENBERG review in hifi&records
“Unheard-of-supremacy… A new leaf in the book of ampbuilding… Soundwise, musically and aesthetically the three towers are performing in a different league, a new class that needs no other superlative.”
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WATT and PLANCK review in Stereo 01/2017
“In the listening room the Berliners showed no mercy to either the connected loud speakers or with the various competitors we ranged against them. […] The conclusion is simple: Audionet equipment has never looked better – nor sounded better!!”
Sound Quality: 100%!
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PLANCK review on i-fidelity.net
“SUPERB. Outshines anything else that handles compact discs. […] Compositions that appear quite one-dimensional on the face of it, reveal all their complexity now, because of the extremely accurate reproduction in terms of micro dynamics and timing. […] The Planck’s performance is like an event horizon, from which there is no escape. Also time vanishes in it, but that doesn’t matter, since such musical experience is a constructive use of time.”
Reference!
Download test report as PDF…
WATT review in hifi&records
“WATT delivers a forthrightness and power in music reproduction, that I have never heard before. […] It does not only amplify the music but brings it to a sound alive, absolutely truthfully and emotional. WATT is painting any instruments in hardly believable tone colours. And it does add a spatial volume and grip, which I have so far only heard by huge pre-/power amplifier combinations. The delightful way it is performing playbacks is characterised not by pressing the sound into the speakers, but by delivering it with an organic lightness, which most other powerful amplifiers are not able to perform at all. […] True-to-life and realistic does describe the WATTs sound characteristics very well.”
Download test report as PDF…