Know this: when Paris and hi-fi collide, I will always want to be there. And so it came to pass, at the Paris Audio Show, which ends today (October 27).
Want to hear multi-driver towers of power from the likes of Sonus Faber? (The very new Amati Supreme speakers were on show, see the main image of this piece, yours for a cool $78,000 / £75,000 / €78,000).
How about Magico (above, you’ll see the Magico S2, priced from £41,500, so around $55,400 or AU$84,500, before taxes), lit from below and hooked up to a system that can come home with you – for a fee you’d have to discuss with your bank manager? Maybe you just prefer live DJ sets on the second floor?
Enjoy the idea of passing by alien-like spherical Planet L Performance speakers from Elipson (see below) and the newest multi-room kit from WiiM? How about wandering into rooms with outstanding 5.1.2 surround-sound systems and outrageously huge screens just as the atomic bomb drops in Oppenheimer – or Timothee Chalamet deals with a particularly tricksy sand worm in Dune: Part 2? Or do you simply want to hole-up in a little booth with the newest set of outrageously expensive open-back headphones and a lovely supplied source device, just to make friends with music again? It’s all here.
And as luck would have it, so was I. Here’s the best I saw and heard at the show – but do note that I’m unable to cover every single product and experience. Want to know about the newest and best headphones I heard at the Paris Audio Show? Click the link, friend. Otherwise, let’s get going.
1. Adele’s L-Acoustics Syva performance – on Syva-Syva Sub stereo speakers
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For me, watching recorded gigs on TV can often be a game of ‘spot the Syva’ or ‘spot the line array’ – both L-Acoustics creations. But at the Paris Audio Show, I was able to listen to Adele perform using L-Acoustics’ Syvas, on an L-Acoustics Syva-Syva Sub stereo system – even while they were still setting the room up (hurrah for early press access).
And let me tell you right now: the sound blew me away. It’s the first time I’ve heard these speakers purely in a stereo setup and not in L-Acoustics’ phenomenal Highgate facility, where several of these same Syva-Syva Subs (and dozens of other L-Acoustics speakers) are squirreled away into the walls and overhead to create an incredibly immersive gig space.
My colleague Jamie experienced Max Cooper’s new album On Being at the space earlier this year and told me he never wants to go back to stereo, but having heard these speakers purely in that way now, I adore how they sound for impact, clarity, expanse and dynamic nuance.
In case you don’t know (I did not), Adele held a special concert at the Los Angeles Griffith Observatory for her 2021 CBS television special, Adele One Night Only – yes, the same observatory that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone danced through in La-La Land. And as you watch her at full voice, the camera pans out to reveal L-Acoustics’ Syva-Syva Subs dotted around the open-air auditorium.
Oh, to have been there… but honestly, this setup (I’m told in hushed tones they go for around $26,500 per pair) is a close second, and one you could enjoy every day…
2. Oppenheimer on Valerion’s 200″ home cinema and Thunderbeats sound system
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Imagine having a 200-inch home cinema system of your very own. Well, Valerion can deliver it with ease, and even priced it all up for me as I stood there.
You’ve got your VisionMaster Max for $4,999 / £4,349 / €4,999 (about AU$10,312); your Thunderbeat Speaker System, a 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos solution that’ll set you back a not-unreasonable £1,499 (so, maybe $2,000 or AU$3,050) and Valerion’s 200-inch ‘Matte White’ screen, for £899 (around $1,199 or AU$1,830). Obviously there’s more to consider here, but that’s the basics covered.
I sit with two other people in Valerion’s screening room during the early-access press night. Cillian Murphy is on-screen. As the room becomes a bomb site and the first ever atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima, I realize Valerion didn’t call them ‘Thunderbeat’ speakers for nothing. It was an emotionally charged performance for those of us lucky enough to have been in the room before the big show got underway.
3. WiiM’s new Sound speakers used as rear channels alongside Elipson towers
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We covered the launch of the WiiM Sound just days ago and, interestingly, any price information on the show stands in Paris had been removed – they’re so new that pricing probably hadn’t been finalized when the setup was conceived. Nevertheless, WiiM is keen to show them off, as a stereo pair but also as rear channels in a home cinema setup that also comprises the WiiM Sub Pro and Elipson Prestige Facet II 24F – June 2025-release speakers that sell for around £1,000 per pair.
I stood and watched a key section of Dune: Part 2. First, a disclaimer: it was a little too busy and noisy to truly appraise the sound from my standing spot, this being my second day at the Paris Audio Show and, to my dismay, they also let normal people in – many of whom had taken up residence on the seated sweet-spots – alongside the esteemed audio fourth estate. However, I can tell you that purely owing to the independent volume readings on each WiiM Sound’s screen, I think I would prefer them to using to Sonos Era 100s in a similar setup…
4. Bowers & Wilkins and Marantz, yes, but look at the elevated AudioQuest cables
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If you know me, you’ll know I’ve never met a Bowers & Wilkins speaker or Marantz amplification solution I couldn’t get along with.
But this room was different, because on the early-access press evening when the room was still fully lit (and not 100% finished) I got to see the full extent of audiophile perfectionism: AudioQuest cables and actual AudioQuest cable risers, to lift your carefully arranged, high-quality audio cables off the floor. Why do this? To reduce potential vibrational nasties in the audio signal and increase clarity, focus and detail.
When I was still a very green audio journo in 2019, I wrote an entire roundup on ‘hi-fi myths that actually work‘ – think playing a CD from the beginning (rather than pausing it and resuming) to get better timing, listening in the dark, listening at night, running in your hi-fi separates and, yes, elevating your cables from vibrations.
That piece still hounds me to this day – and yet I maintain that keeping your cables off the floor helps your system sound better. And having heard it again on this outstanding system, I won’t be changing my mind (or that piece) any time soon.
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This is not a dedicated entry – think more a ‘best of the rest’ I saw in passing at the Paris Audio Show – but I can’t let such a roundup end without mentioning these hi-fi morsels of joy.
First up is the fact that I have seen Pro-Ject’s new Elvis-themed turntable and it looks even better in real life than I could’ve imagined – as does the AC/DC deck (which annoyingly I didn’t manage to photograph).
Elsewhere, I’m happy to report that McIntosh’s amplification is still glowing gorgeously green in a hi-fi listening facility near you, and Koss is still making gloriously retro headphones, which makes sense – the company invented the first true stereo headphones designed for personal listening, the SP-3, in 1958.
Oh, and on October 15, Danish hi-fi outfit Eltax released a turntable called ‘Spinster’. Why nobody has thought of naming a deck thus before is something I pondered for most of the Eurostar train journey back to London…
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becky.scarrott@futurenet.com (Becky Scarrott)
