The High End by Oz room at the 2022 Pacific Audio Fest was the very last room I visited before I hopped in my car and drove home. (With a pair of speakers, a two amplifiers, I might add.) Why was it the last room? What made me stop?
Maybe it was the pair of Borresen 05 Silver Supreme speakers, and I’m headed off to visit Audio Group Denmark in Aalborg in just a few days. Maybe it’s because I’ve known Ozan Turan, the Oz in High End by Oz, for many years. Here’s the funny thing about that–I’ve never covered one of his exhibit rooms because a) someone else at PTA beats me to it, and b) I never put together that my FB friend Ozan Turan was, indeed, The Oz.
When I covered the Audio-Ultra room at PAF 2022 a couple of days ago, I might’ve stumbled onto the real reason. For one reason or another I’ve been subconsciously skipping exhibit rooms, often from dealers or importers, when there are a bunch of different brands on display in the main system. High End by OZ is the distributor for Thrax Audio, Vitus Audio, and Hifistay (who supplied the racks in this room), and will take over Lansche Audio speakers later this year.
When I first walked into this room, I didn’t know what to expect in regards to sound. Was it a sonic hodge-podge of brands, cobbled together into one show system for better or worse? That wasn’t the case with Audio-Ultra, and it’s very clearly not the case with High End by OZ.
I mean, look at all those brands in that big, sprawling High End by Oz system! You have Borresen, Thrax, Vitus Audio and one of those insanely expensive but extremely desirable UHA reel-to-reel decks from United Home Audio, and it’s all chugging along sound-wise as if it’d been made by a single manufacturer. This was the rare Big System that blended seamlessly with the Big Hotel Conference Room–and that was Ozan Turan.
Oz, thanks to you I’ll be spending more time in dealer rooms at future high-end audio shows. Thanks for the great set-up.
