Athens 2013: Hørning and Lamm

By Dr. Panagiotis Karavitis

There are two types of show rooms, the ones full packed with equipment and the ones that host a clean system playing music nonstop. I love the clean ones. Not too much fuss, you take a seat and listen to the music. And the Hørning/Lamm room made music throughout the entire show.

MF Audio imports showcased the latest iteration of Hørning’s flagship speaker, the Eufrodite. Each speaker features an impressive number of drivers: a front firing tweeter and midrange and 8 woofers. The latter are mounted on the rear of the cabinet and paired in a push/pull isobaric configuration. All this with a declared sensitivity of 98 dB/watt …. This speaker demands quality SET amplifier and a complete array of Lamm’s electronics completed the rig. The L2 reference pre was driving two ML 2.2 monos sitting on SRA platforms. Hørning provided both the turntable and the CD-DAC combo from his SATI line of electronics while RIAA equalization was handled by Lamm’s LP2. Mounted on the beefy turntable was Breuer’s legendary dynamic tonearm with an EMT JSD 6 cartridge. Cabling was Nirvana Audio S-X.

Although I enjoyed the SATI CD-DAC combo in the digitally remastered Pee Wee Russell’s “That old feeling” album I could not hold myself from requesting a full audition of the analog setup. The Bolshoi Theater Orchestra performing the Carmen ballet directed by Rozhdestvensky (EMI) was as involving as it gets with excellent detail retrieval and I felt immersed in a Spanish mood. Just to verify my initial (excellent) impression I went on and listened to Reiner’s Scheherazade (RCA Living Stereo). This is not how a show correspondent should do time wise, but I did not leave until the entire first side was done. Speed and resolution coming from this set up was amazing to say the least. Definitely not the classic mellow warm, this system proved what SET amps can do!