Bound For Sound, Chicago Show report
METAXAS AUDIO. This company intrigues me. In Chicago I had the opportunity to spend considerable time listening to the equipment of Metaxas. I think this is an incredible story. Kostas Metaxas is first a publisher of "style and fashion" magazines worldwide. He writes articles, controls content, and interviews some of the top persons in the design industry; his distribution is international. But he had time on his hands, so he learned about and started designing audio electronics on his own - just like that! OK, so lots of people do that, and they come out with average or below average gear. But, that's not Kostas. He came out with some truly amazing things right out of the gate. And he designs from the ground up, things like; amplifiers, preamplifiers, loudspeakers (electrostatic and dynamic) digital processors and digital transports. He wants to do it, so he does it; and the quality of his designs are exceptional.
So I find a spot on the sofa next to the door and start watching the people that come in. To my surprise, many of the people that come into his room are other manufacturiers, manufacturer's reps, or audio engineers (PHD types). They ask Kostas questions of every kind concerning everything from electrostatic stators, to DAC layout, to switching, to preamp power supplies. Everything! Some guys from a highly respected loudspeaker manufacturer were amazed at how he builds his electrostatic loudspeakers. (He does things that they had never thought of). He told a manufacturer that the design of his preamp power supply was inefficient and poorly designed, then told him how to fix it. He then discussed, in depth, digital processor design with a manufacturer of such devices. Kostas not only understood the intimate details of the other guy's design, but he had some pretty interesting ideas on how the other guy could improve his product; improvements that the other designer really couldn't argue about. And he critiques these other designers in such a way that they didn't feel on the defensive or put down. You talk to Kostas for five minutes, and there is an air of instant respect for his ideas and the way he presents them. He's street smart, he's exceptionally intelligent, he's versatile and he has a sense of humour that is disarming. In many ways he strikes me as one of the last of the renaissance intellects. And his designs reflect his brilliance.
The sound in his room? Despite the room being way too small, if you stood well away from the two story electrostats, the sound was glorious, well above the ordinary, and a contender for best sound at the show if room conditions were better.
Australian Hi Fi
Kostas Metaxas of Metaxas Audio Systems might well be seen as a symbol of multi-cultural Australia - an Australian of Greek parents with a German education. US heroes, an Ethiopian muse and a French 'patron'; getting rave reviews in Germany, French and Hong Kong audio magazines and filling export orders as far afield as Finland and Canada.
Metaxas might also serve as an object lesson in how a confident, cosmopolitan attitude and total lack of cultural cringe can win international recognition for Australian products.
A certain mystique and controversy surround Metaxas - both the man and his creations. Introduced to true hi-fi as a Melbourne teenager by exposure to his uncle's up-market American rig, Kostas was never likely to settle for second-best. Trying to match his uncle's system on budget , he experienced the reverence that local hi-fi dealers had for the classic marques of audio, and the pecking order of product excellence that must always have a top.Quite early in life, Kostas seems to have fostered a determination to be at the pinnacle. He moved very quickly from assembling basic kit speakers to the mysteries of valve amplifier design. Sent from Melbourne to Germany to complete his education, the young Kostas took his home-built moving-coil pre-amplifier (the PP1) with him for his own listening pleasure. According to Kostas, the sound quality of the PP1 so bowled-over and Ethiopian audiophile - a student colleague - that he began to realise that without formal, professional electronics training, he had created a component worthy of comparison with those of his heroes - Mark Levinson and Bill Johnson.
Actual comparison tests only reinforced Kostas' confidence as the local Heidelberg high-end dealers he visited tried to buy PP1s. Says Kostas, "They found my amplifier had more life, was more open. I soon had prepaid orders to make twenty units". Kostas went straight home to start work on the amplifiers and, in 1981, founded Metaxas Audio Systems in Melbourne.
Unbeknownst to Kostas, the German agent for Metaxas had submitted the PP1 for a review by Klaus Renner in Das Ohr - a German audiophile publication. According to Kostas, Renner acclaimed the PP1 as the finest pre-amplifier available at that time. Thus encouraged, Kostas soon had a Metaxas power amplifier in production and established European distribution.
The next international 'leg-up' for Kostas came when Michel Reverchon from the French turntable company, Goldmund, took an interest in Metaxas amplifiers. The meeting had lasting effects on Kostas' career. Kostas explains: "Up to that point, I had been designing amplifiers to perform optimally within the limitations of "good" commercial gear. Being exposed to a front-end as exquisite as the Goldmund Reference opened my eyes to the potential of a system".
The business upshot of the meeting was surprising. Goldmund bought a design for an external moving-coil phono stage to sit on top of the T3B arm. And Kostas became a hi-fi wholesaler - the Australian agent for Goldmund. Kostas recalls those days fondly: 'I remember giving a speech at the Melbourne Audio Club and at the close of the address, I wrote on the blackboard, "Goldmund Studio Turntable $2,000". I had orders coming out of my ears!'
Though Kostas claims to have sold more Goldmund turntables in Australia than were sold in total, elsewhere around the world, over the same period, the career importance of the Goldmund connection goes much deeper and has lasted longer than the distributorship. Kostas feels that being amongst a tine elite who could listen to a Goldmund turntable any time they wanted was a great luxury. More importantly, he could use such a front end as a reference in his designs for high-end amplifiers an speakers. 'I had a Goldmund Reference before Harry Pearson of Absolute Sound had one!' claims Kostas proudly.This has been one of the factors behind his reliance on listening rather than on specifications. 'I knew I was listening to the best. This is what has kept us that little bit ahead.' The added Goldmund income was a big help in putting the new business on firm footing. In 1981, Kostas bought and opened his now-famous innercity Melbourne showroom. Kostas and his wife and partner Carmela travel a lot, sometimes six months of the year. 'We usually to to CES in Chicago and in Las Vegas where we have a stand, and I go to as many of the European shows as possible - Frankfurt in August, Paris in February/March, Italy in October and London in September.'
Carmela Metaxas plays an active role in MAS decisions. Kostas explained: 'She gives me valuable female input into audio and design matters. Female ears are far more critical in the top end. I have three female high-end customers - one with JBLs the size of refrigerators - so it's not only a man's game, believe me! The industry consists mainly of men and it has been one of the few remaining male bastions. Females get bamboozled by all the unnecessary technical stuff. When I was in retailing, the wife was the enemy who would veto a sale. Even though men don't have so much time to sit and listen these days, it's even more important that they get the deep and involving relaxation of fine music rather than mindless chatter of television.'
Kostas' ventures into publishing (a glossy and stylish international lifestyle magazine) have seen him interviewing the designers and corporate leaders of some of the world's finest and most expensive consumer products. Says Kostas, 'The experience has given me further insights into my early realisation of what it takes to be on top. It's the same meticulous attention to detail, and accent on simplicity and durability that you seen in all classic products, from cars to clothes to wine. If you go into a restaurant and ask for a $200 bottle of champagne, nobody will look at you as if you've got two heads - they'll just assume it's a very special occasion. But talk about a $20,000 hi-fi and most people will think you are nuts, despite the enjoyment that so many people get from music. This perception is one of the biggest problems facing the high-end audio industry at the moment.''Everywhere there's new wealth, life is busy and it takes some time to learn about the best. And if you don't learn about it, your final arbiter tends to be the price tag. People with the money need to get up to speed quickly on where the quality lies. Visiting every top Swiss watch company, I quickly began to make informed preferences and to find out which company I was most in tune with. Champagne growers band together to provide a world-wide champagne information service that heightens people's awareness of the excellence of their product, but high-end hi-fi has never been able to accomplish this kind of co-operation. Perhaps it's because many of the retailers and producers are wild and woolly amateurs, rather than people following a planned career path.'
'I would love to have served an apprenticeship with a high-end manufacturer, but no such thing existed in Australia at the time I started. This has, perhaps, turned out to be an advantage because I was not taught how to think. We do everything we do from the heart: our publications, our components - and often despite contrary advice from so-called experts.'
'With MAS I have learned to become responsible as a luxury, high-end company. That mentality is a bit foreign to high-end audio and that's why high-end audio has suffered at the hands of specialist dealers selling home theatre systems. To me this is the ultimate failure - as if they'd tried music and found it didn't work. Cinema is fine but it doesn't provide the realism, the total illusion.'
'Companies such as Duntech have been ambassadors for fine Australian products and have struck a path for others to follow. But it's no good being chauvinistic. Australians initially shy away from anything Australian so we have never, ever emphasised the Australian-ness of our products as a key selling point. MAS has built a very strong, loyal clientele which absolutely loves our gear, not because we are Australian, but because we are a company that cares about doing the right thing.'
'These campaigns about Buy Australian: it's not an excuse. It has to be good. It's no use pretending that you like something because it's Australian. And how many products are actually Australian-made anyway? Where does the plastic come from? Germany and America. Where do the machines come from? Germany and America.'
How much of the Metaxas range is sourced locally? Kostas takes up the story: 'Our cases are make here by a Melbourne company that does a brilliant job. Our Transformers are make for us here by SES. Their technician can do anything I ask of him... and in small job lots. I need special things from transformers, such as the bifillar windings they used to use back in the twenties. He's excited by doing something unusual - special stacks, special cores, special metal, shielded this way, shielded that way... and the same is true with our special audio transformers for our electrostatic speakers.'
'There are very few places in the world where they have the design capabilities to make some of these very specialised products. The necessary skills are just not widely used anymore. To make a transformer for audio-bandwidth frequencies and that can handle leakage inductance, capacitance, high-voltage problems between windings, saturation levels, d.c. protection. The average transformer manufacturer just looks at you ! He wants only the ratio of windings-in to windings-out and stack size, to give you the appropriate current.'
'What we have been doing has been encouraging local expertise, which other manufacturers can then avail themselves of if they wish. The scale of economies in Australia can work to your advantage in this regard. In the US you couldn't go to a manufacturer and ask for 50 high-quality units. He'd say, "Talk 1,000 units or forget about it." In Australia , the volume we are producing perfectly suits what we are doing as an exporter.'
What sort of sales volume keeps Kostas in the black?
'Over the last year, we sold around 1,200 pieces total - including speakers, integrated amplifiers and our whole amplifier range, and this was across 22 different countries. That's pretty big for a little Australian manufacturer. Every single piece we make - and here I have taken a leaf from those Swiss watchmakers - bears a unique front panel number. Every single piece is an individual. Even with our integrated amplifiers, it's just as important as far as we're concerned, to listen to it and get it right: to make sure it's as musically pure as our most expensive amplifiers. Every product is individually tested before it leaves here. We go to a lot of trouble at this end because if the quality isn't there we'll be found out. They'll say, "This is OK but it costs too much for what it is."
Kostas' products seem out of step with typical audiophile cosmetics - or rather the lack of them. Whereas many highly - respected amplifiers are proud of their heavy industrial appearance, MAS components breathe opulence as well as power and efficiency. To Kostas, this is another example of form following function; one of his guiding philosophies.
'When I started, my gear was in black aluminium boxes too. But what I found was that aluminium didn't have the sound we wanted. We went to an unusual kind of stainless steel which just doesn't conduct heat. It has physical properties that are close to those of ceramics. For example, even if you hold one end of a stainless bar in a bunsen burner, you can still hold the other end; it just doesn't heat up.''In the same way, the stainless will only conduct vibrations at such high frequencies that they don't affect the resultant sound. The steel doesn't "sing" with the music. It also lets the vibration energy be channelled away through the special plastic feet we use. We've done nothing purely for cosmetic reasons. Look inside one of our power amplifiers and you'll see the total simplicity and lack of unnecessary wiring; this simplicity is carried through to every aspect of the product.'
'One of our US competitors uses around one metre of wire to connect individual components, whereas we have reduced this to around seven centimetres. We don't design products to a price point, we design for good sound. Look at our cheapest integrated amplifier or our smallest power amplifier; both will give you sound-stage, dimensionality, openness, and transparency. They're not built to be cloudy and thick and muddy and cheap-sounding. The only compromise is total power output.
'Because we design this way, our products are designed to lead you to go further up. Our sales statistics show that customers who start off buying our small stuff end up buying our big stuff. They are people who are not yet totally absorbed in audio and who get recommended to us by owners of our big stuff.'
While many costly hi-fi imports are popular despite price differentials of more than 100 per cent over the local price, MAS can offer high-end quality that audiophiles in France, Germany and Italy are said to be paying similar premiums for their home countries. As an example Kostas quoted the recommended Australian price for his 150 watt-per-channell Solitaire power amplifier at around $4,000 whereas in France, Italy and Germany the same product sells for around $9,500; an Australian price advantage of more than 270 per cent.
Says Kostas, 'If we were importing the Solitaire, we would have to sell it for around $10,000. High-end equipment is heavy, which means high freight costs. You also have to cost in import duties, customs clearance charges and then sales tax on these charges. As a rough rule, our products cost between half and one third that of our obvious overseas competitors. In Europe, both prices are equivalent. In Italy, Germany and France, we're number one - in turnover for a high-end company, in brand image and sound quality. I am not trying to be arrogant, but our products compete on an equal keel.'
Though, according to Kostas, there's some unanimity about MAS quality, each country expresses this in terms of it national character. 'In France, Jean Hiraga of LA NOUVELLE REVUE DU SON writes about our amplifiers as if they were beautiful women. In Germany they describe them as being incredibly accurate. In Italy, I had a record producer cry when he heard one of our amplifiers at a hi-fi show. We're proud of what we have been able to do for Australia and we hope that many other Aussie companies can make something from the opportunities we have created.'
Europe is only one of MAS's growing markets. The Far East is also opening up fast. Says Kostas, 'With the standard of living soaring in Taiwan, we are selling our integrated amplifiers there 100 at a time. They have just taken 50 Iraklis amplifiers, which really stresses our production capacity.' (I gained the feeling this was the kind of stress Kostas could learn to live with.)
To Keep everything in-house, Kostas told me he brings in extra workers: university students who are interested in a career with MAS, to supplement his seven permanent staff. 'We tend to work seven days a week - I have for years. But our product is make to be easy to assemble, easy to disassemble and easy to fix. If we send something to Iceland or Norway, we certainly don't want it to come back.
Kostas doesn't want to hide behind tariff barriers for his edge. He'd rather the whole market grew. 'I would prefer no tariffs,' he said, boldly, 'at the end of the day, it would stimulate more sales. I would prefer things to be cheaper here so we can get the turnover. People would be more ready to trade up to a superior product. At $3,000, you'll think seriously about upgrading, but at $10,000, forget it!'
Kostas believes that high prices encourage parallel importing. 'We have learned that some dealers were bringing in equipment that we were importing, via Hong Kong. The Hong Kong market is relatively huge, ten or twenty times ours, and an Australian distributor spends a fortune promoting a product only to have it brought in by the back door. There are at least two Goldmund References in Australia that I didn't sell, but I could still get asked to service them.'(since Mechel Reverchon went into the amplifier business, Kostas says he longer handles Goldmund in Australia but will still bring in Jadis valve gear on an ad hoc basis. He still services his existing Jadis customers.)
Kostas has designed a turntable, but has never released it, and doesn't see the current market as being right for such a venture. 'We're going more for the digital side because that's where the market is heading . I could build a valve amplifier, but I don't see a need for another valve amplifier manufacturer. What I want MAS to do is produce solid-state equipment which has all of the nice qualities of valves. And the same goes for MAS digital - I want to give people the good things about the analogue turntable.'
Kostas didn't come to the digital side of hi-fi without a struggle. 'When digital first arrived, I couldn't stand it. It didn't have anything. I had been listening to sound staging (on the Goldmund) that went out to the other side of the street; detail and tonal quality that let me tell what makes of violins were being played. Everything was there. But when digital came along it sounded like packaged music with no sense of depth. It was just like the arrival of the transistor radio all over again; hard, flat; bloody awful.'
Kostas is frank enough to admit that he was also a bit overwhelmed by the technical side of digital technology. 'The technocrats were going crazy with invention after invention and the high-end had no voice. However, I was also pleased by the advent of digital from a marketing point of view. For the first time, people were able to go into an ordinary hi-fi store, have a proper demonstration and actually hear the differences between sources. In the old days, you could never get any idea of what a turntable sounded like. There was nobody to set it up properly and they didn't have a decent range set up for comparison.'
'With CD, any dealer can easily and quickly set up a direct comparison between a $500 player and a $10,000 player. This has really helped the industry, which can now show even the least experienced buyers, that there are differences between products. This is what the high-end industry has consistently failed to do by just talking about the difference.'
'I welcomed CD also because it gave many of my friends and colleagues in the hi-fi industry a chance to earn a few dollars. In reality, the hi-fi industry was not in good shape at that time. CD players were priced accessibly. You could get a reasonable CD player and integrated amplifier for $500-600 each. Add a pair of speakers and the customer has a fairly decent entry-level system. Then you can take them up with you to the stratosphere!'
Kostas has done more than twiddle his thumbs on the digital sidelines, as evidenced by two digital MAS products - the MAS DAC and the imminent 'Phos" CD transport. Kostas tells the story, 'While everyone was giving us a bit-stream vs multi-bit stream, I was doing my own research and found that digital is only dealing with on and off, there's nothing in between. But the people who designed CD players were experts who didn't necessarily care about music. People would ask them, for example, how to make this sine wave better. And they would say, "well, you can do over sampling or dithering or incorporating algorithms to add in the different pieces." We went through all this until eventually I commissioned a local Melbourne designer who I consider to be one of the industry's foremost experts on digital: Graham Thirkell. Graham is responsible for the digital side of MAS digital products. I did my thing on the analogue side, concept design and layout'.
'The MAS DAC is our pivotal product. I spent a long time on the first models and quit honestly I didn't believe that digital could sound so good as it does now. I was so surprised. I had been scared of digital but then I had to forget that I am not really a digital designer (like I forgot that I wasn't really an audio designer either) and started doing exactly the same things I do with my amplifiers: special regulators, ultra-low noise components and eliminating capacitors. I have done some unusual things. For example, at the start of digital circuit you usually find a quartz crystal and a pair of ceramic capacitors. I asked Graham if we could use polystyrene capacitors and he said we couldn't because they're inductive and for one reason and another. I just went ahead and tried it and there was an improvement in sound quality.'
'I am now getting from CD some of the characteristics that I was getting with the Goldmund Reference - maybe 65-70 per cent of that sound: incredible midrange liquidity and an incredible sound stage. The emotion is there and that's the most important thing - that's what it's all for. For information, use the telephone! Music is about feelings.'
According to Kostas, the MAS DAC has been available for the past 18 months. I used the ultra-analog 20-bit system, claims to be the first DAC in the world to us the jitter-free Apogee clock and has a recommended retail price of around $3,500. 'Pretty cheap,' says Kostas, 'when you consider it is supposed to be the top of the tree. We have had US reviews which rate it above DACs four and five times the cost.'
At the time I interviewed Kostas, the MAS Phos CD transport was just receiving it finishing touches and was almost due for release. 'We won't release it until it's absolutely "there", not just good, but the best in the world. We hope to be show casing it at the CES show later this year, along with our new electrostatic speakers.'
'My competitors say they are after accuracy, but real music is never that harsh. My equipment is much more musical. I try to make equipment that tunes in to those vital elements of the performance that make you excited about it. The tonal aspect is far more important. If you don't get the midrange right, forget it! No-one wants elevator music.'
Kostas' latest speaker venture has been the MAS Mini Monitors. Even these 1992 newcomers have already received the customary Metaxas upgrade. Says Kostas, 'We've sold a heap of them to Taiwan, which is why we originally made them. They have been refined to include aluminium cones and a very unusual aluminium front baffle that's coupled to the speaker stand for perfect transmission of energy. We have people looking to offer them to the professional industry as mini-monitors. We also have a deal on the table with Air India which wants us to supply 500 radio stations and recordings studios with either our electrostatics or our dynamic speakers. They will require partial assembly of the speakers in India.'
The MAS electrostatic range comprises the 1.5 metre tall Empress and the 2.3 metre tall Emperor . Kostas on electrostatics: 'Most companies design electrostatic speakers to be meek. What we've tried to do is give them the punch of a JBL. They can do it, but that's where the headaches come in. Our big model has an efficiency of more than 100 dB SPL. Its radiating panel can move so much air that statics, handling the full range with the one transducer, can do things no other speakers can do. People hear these and they dispel all their notions about electrostatics. You don't need hearing aid to hear them and they go down really low. They also don't need a cone bass driver - a horrible idea. They do simply magical things.'
I prevailed on Kostas to give us some of his tips on critical listening. 'Listen to different types of music for different things. Try pop music for the midrange - it's all midrange. You shouldn't just be able to hear everything the singer says, he or she should be floating in space as a really strong, believable illusion. Many pop recordings are good enough for this: Joni Mitchell, Mary Black, Old Cat Stevens...'
'My three absolute references are 'Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall', 'The Weavers at Carnegie Hall' and 'Porgy and Bess' with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. They're superb tests discs for voice. With the Harry Belafonte, if the system can't handle it, it just becomes one great big flat whitewash. If it can , you get sound stage, you hear the orchestra right behind him, you hear the audience clapping and the clapping should be distinct, not just a hiss of high-frequency noise. His voice should be very rounded, very dynamic and never harsh. I think the recording was very simple because they didn't know any better!'
Kostas recommends using classical music for a sense of sound stage and depth and for testing bass. 'Most people try to use pop music to test bass but it's too flat and uni-dimensional. And how can you tell if an electric drum kit is correct? In classical, the opening passages of 'The Ghost and Mrs Muir' soundtrack will tell you everything about a system. If the bass is there, you'll hear the real groan of the cellos as they go down into the low frequencies. I f your system's not up to it, the violins will sound bright and raspy rather than sweet and rosy. And the panorama of the sound stage should be well behind the speakers and extend well beyond the edges of the speaker on either side.'
'Another favourite disc of mine, Spanish material on Mercury by Chabrier, starts off with a sense of majesty and power which gives me a lot clues as to quality. Another great pop demonstration disc is Aaron Neville's 'Warm Your Heart' (A&M 3953542). On the first track Louisiana, Aaron Neville's voice is a cross between a male and female tenor and to should be superbly rounded. In the second track, there are drums popping up all over the place - if you systems right you'll hear that.'
Another of Kostas' favourite references is Kiri To Kanawa's 'white album'. 'Her voice is so strong that a lot of systems have heart failure. What you are listening for here is an incredible sweetness and roundness. Oh, and some of the tracks on Annie Lennox' Diva' album have such low bottom-end that they're good for testing whether your speakers are going to start flapping. We use them to test our electrostatics.'
According to Kostas, discrimination is not so much a question of state of mind as an innate ability that needs informed encouragement. 'If I was sitting with a wine novice and handed him or her a glass of really good wine, they could tell the difference easily. I have the necessary experience to get people to listen. I would suggest to your readers that they visit a number of different stores and listen to what the dealers have to offer. This is their job. There are no excuses. I f they say they're not ready to do a proper demonstration, ask them when they will be. Listen to as much as you can. At the high-end, musical equipment is like fine wine, in that personal taste plays a large role in choice. It's real sheep mentality that talks about top brands when so much is personal taste. And if you find the sound you really love - adopt the dealer.
