Venice, Italy trip - met Mark Levinson (Daniel Hertz SA)
July 2014, summer, Italy, Venice - Mark Levinson invited me and so i visited the wonderful Venice with my family.
Mark Levinson is probably the most famous personality in high-end audio. Or better said he invented high-end hifi 1972 in the US with his first famous preamp Mark Levinson LNP-2. In 1984 Marks next famous big brand Cello was formed - sure many remember the Cello Audio Palette, a state of the art preamp including a clever working Equalizer. Mark Levinson Audio Systems is still alive, now owned by Harman International. Even in Lexus automobiles now you can find Mark Levinson audio electronics.
In my opinion only a person should develop audio electronics, speakers who is deeply in music and is aware of how music enchants us with excitement and emotion. Mark Levinson gives us here the best example: As a jazz musician, he played with many top stars such as Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea or Stan Getz and as a sound engineer he made many jazz and classic recordings with the highest standard.
And now to the present: 2007 Daniel Hert SA founded as exclusive brand in Switzerland - Marks last brand in order to achieve the limits of the possible. His M1 flagship loudspeakers tells us that the old virtues high sensitivity and full-range frequency response still rules. Listening to the complete top Daniel Hertz system tells an impressive story what matters in music: power, dynamics, original timbre, the tension of the music, no limits by compression.
Mark did an impressive demonstration of his Master Class audio player software . Anyway its main purpose is to correct tonal deficits of recordings. We high end audio folks are afraid of Equalizing because of possible sound leakages. That is not the case with Master Class - no losses and it is very easy to use like Marks EQ in Cellos Audio Palette preamp. Mark choosed especially for me some opera songs and Maria Callas sounded as if she had risen again. Her unique timbre did not change by the correction. As surprise Mark told me to try to do the correction myself. I did and achieved a similar result - so realy easy to use. The second feature of Master Class is the so-called A+ mode - it recreates a more analogue sound of your pcm files. You can create a new file including A+ and possible EQ and play it wherever you want. Please read Matej Isak's in-depth review.
Group photo in Venice Italy - from left to right: Yuri Zamazeev (Chisto) with his wife Anna, Mark Levinson (Daniel Hertz SA), my wife Dzhamilya with our little Alexander, Bjoern Gabriel and myself.
Mark it was a great pleasure and honor to meet you!
And here the complete photo album.
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