M2Tech’s Marco Manunta likes to share with us a few words about the last Top Audio Show, which took place last weekend in Milan (this may sound weird, but I saved this blog in a strange place -I lost it in fact- and just found it back …). This is the most important hi-fi show in Italy and a good indicator of the situation of the market. First day apart, we had a good attendance, despite the traffic stop on Sunday. The bad thing was the steep reduction of the exhibitors: less money around, in Italy for shows like this. Anyway, his story gives you an idea what you can do with his Joplin.

We were exhibiting in our Italian distributor’s room, with a mixed system (M2Tech-Marantz-Boston) together with Mr. Ken Ishiwata. He managed to make this heterogeneous (and rather unbalanced, I should add: 770€/pair for the speakers against 6000€ for the DAC …) system play very well, and indeed we received a lot of praises from privates, as well as from professionals, for its sound. Part of this, I like to think, is also due to the Vaughan and the Joplin which were included in the system. The Joplin was driven by a Marantz turntable (in fact a Clearaudio), and in turn was driving the Vaughan via S/PDIF. The Vaughan was connected to a Marantz amplifier and was also driven via USB by my laptop for files playback.

I gave several demos alternating with Mr. Ishiwata and the audience was thrilled by the Joplin. At first, most of the people didn’t realize what it is and exchanged it for yet another DAC… After explanations and examples, many of them became really interested to the Joplin, especially for vinyl ripping and for home made live recordings. It was very funny to start a ripped file playback and at the same time to start the same record on the turntable: I liked the faces of the people when I lifted the arm and the music continued to flow!

Also, the audience was amazed by the sound quality improvement in the sound of an old record NOT recorded with RIAA when using the right eq curve in the Joplin (suggestion: use old Decca/London records recorded before 1954 if you can find them: it’s really impressive). It’s true that almost none of them have such old records in their collection, nevertheless they were interested by the demo.

I focused the demos about the versatility of the Joplin: the number of different uses is only limited by user’s fantasy, and so on, but also on the fact that the Joplin gives users back the enjoyment they were used to twenty years ago, before tone controls, graphic equalizers and cassette tape recorders were banned by audiophile fundamentalism. I remembered people that hifi is a game and as such it must be fun, not boring, and that being an active part of the process is the key to enjoy it again.

The Italian hifi magazines were thrilled as well: at last, a new product to talk about, something really different from all the rest to use for a scoop.

If you want to know more about the Joplin to decide if you could be interested in such a device, I kindly invite you to download here and read the Joplin user manual: it’s very informative. Thank you.