The Superstars of 2024

This year might have been our busiest year yet. No surpise then that the year was also peppered with some very powerful new products, most new to market although some simply just new to the UK or to Lotus. Way back 8 years ago I wrote a “stars of 2016” article and after such a successful 2024 it might be informative to do the same again, to create a quick roundup of the items that shone so brightly here in the Lotus demo room and indeed, in customers’ homes.

Superstars are of course the most auspicious launches that not only impress the most in any given year, but draw the most interest and sales, and if we are lucky go some way to redefining the high end consumer landscape at large, whether that be with new technology, new performance benchmarks or simply unprecedented sound quality within their price range.

The Wadax Studio Player digital source aces all those three criteria. A veritable gift to the industry and a potent and prophetic signal of what may lie ahead from this luminary outfit from Spain. Hifi Plus magazine deliberated on its very high sense of musicality and proclaimed it as comfortably the top tier of digital playback. Meanwhile Roy Gregory pointed out the yawning musical gulf between “this machine and anything else out there that can match its functionality at anywhere near its price”.

For the person who has to own the very pinnacle of what is possible with the digital medium we of course have the Wadax Atlantis Reference on permanent demonstration, but for almost everyone else, Studio Player is a true reference level unit and the last digital source you will likely ever need; below the Atlantis Reference, it has very few real rivals for out and out sound quality. Like the Tidal Contros it simply does not sound like digital or analogue and is not plagued with the colourations of either, and furthermore, its sonics have not been tailored or excessively seasoned in order to achieve that. This last point is an important one and it is no easy task; in my experience very few DACs in the entire marketplace are able to achieve it.

True to Wadax’s open product philosophy and for those who like upgrading and expansion, Studio Player will be joined in 2025 by a separate clock unit, power supply and pure DAC-only unit sans transport. We like it as a one box end point, as comfortable with an integrated amp and a set of high quality standmounts as it would be in a lottery winner’s system, but it’s tantalising to know that the forthcoming add-ons will stretch it even further.

A latecomer to the ‘Superstars of 2024’, and right down the other end of the scale at just £520, the natty HzProject Lan Isolator simply has no right to be this good for such a modest sum. The first batch sold out in one week and I have 10 more coming for New Years. I will be surprised if they make the end of January. Simply insert into the digital front end – ideally just before your streamer or network switch – and the startling increase in refinement, body, delicacy and overall realism is such that you simply will never ever remove it. If you already have a fancy switch, Ethernet lead or any other audiophile network gubbins, exactly the same holds true. HzProject from Korea, we are the only UK dealer currently and remember that you heard it here first.

Another very obvious addition to this years standout products was one of Thrax’s standmount speaker models. It was a very tough choice between the newly launched Sirens bookshelf speakers and the ‘new to Lotus’ Lyra SE. Both loudspeakers occupy the very highest level of performance and should be viewed as fully fledged high end solutions rather than compromised small footprint enclosures. Needless to say we did very well with both models throughout the year, and had Alan Sircom from Hifi Plus review both of them. The Sirens made the cover of January’s Hifi Plus too, the exhaustive review is exceptionally complimentary.

In the end our nod probably goes to the bigger and more grown up Thrax Lyra SE which floored everyone who had the chance to listen and find out or indeed purchase. Either as simple standmounts or with the optional Hades low frequency stands, the Lyra SE startled with incredible levels of clarity and musical insight. They quite simply show you everything.

Completely reversing the typical expectations of an all aluminium enclosure their presentation was the very opposite of clinical and sterile, with a deliciously articulate and extended treble that simply does not sound like a tweeter as we know it. Not a grain of detectable noise or colouration, precise and expertly accurate without ever sounding over tight or etched, the Lyra always delighted with mouthwatering levels of natural detail, pin sharp holographics and a very mature calmness and authority no matter what the musical genre. Realism and tactility with these speakers is off the dial especially on acoustic and delicate music. So open and invisible are they that they never really allow you to feel that there is a speaker or a music making transducer in the room.

Thrax Lyra then are a reference level product and about as neutral and transparent to source as it gets. They could happily sit inside a quarter of a million pound plus system and do it justice. We look forward to showcasing them even more in 2025. With the Hades low ferquency add-ons perhaps they are simply the last stop before one amasses the budget for a set of Rockports ?

I have no hesitation in also nominating the revised Tidal Contriva G3 as another exceptional and very special 2024 launch. Pretty much every new piece we see from Köln is something extraordinary and the latest G3 incarnation of Tidal’s “entry” full range floorstander did not disappoint. Nipping on the heels of the mighty diamond woofer adorned Akira – which wowed the crowds of Munich just a few years ago – this new Contriva sets a whole new benchmark in openness, purity and invisibility. The outgoing G2 was always one of my most cherished favourites and the G3 just takes this same concept to new dizzying heights. In the context of a Tidal system there is no other loudspeaker that will compare, nothing at all … except of course an even bigger Tidal.

Sometimes on social media you will see Contriva and indeed other Tidal loudspeakers paired with other brands of electronics (sometimes far more expensive than Tidal electronics). Whilst there are lots of good brands of electronics out there, trust me when I tell you that in those setups, you are simply not hearing fully what the Tidal speaker can do. That isn’t to denigrate any other equipment of course but more to understand the way synergy and an alignment of purity of purpose truly operates in the dark art of system building.

HifiStay from Gyeonggi-do in Korea was another newly appointed Lotus brand which made a big mark in 2024. Stella triple swing, Absolute Point, Centum IX and Dharma all made a deep impression on everyone who engaged with these products. Beautifully machined and presented with much love and care, exceptional performance enhancement in their respective uses and very competitive pricing compared to rivals.

The ingenious Mythology Hifi rack – pictured a few times in this article – was acquired very late in the year and so is yet to flourish here but flourish it will because it epitomises all of the HifiStay core tenets and is simply a stunning overall product which also obviates the need for extra individual footers under each box.

So that probably leaves the Absolute Point footers as the initial 2024 jewel in the crown. We sold many many sets of these to sit under all sorts of electronics and built a number of new systems with them as the foundation. Three layers of swing isolation in each foot giving a total of 12 degrees of suspension on a set of 4. Customers loved their supremely natural way of improving the music and the way they floated your albums into the air with much greater coherence and liquidity, not to mention significant improvements in soundstaging and space. Hifi Plus magazine also awarded them winners of the best isolation accessory for this year.

Soulnote came to Lotus late in the Autumn of 2024 but the E2 phono still managed to clock up an impressive number of sales before the year was out. That wasn’t the only units we managed to sell though and truth be told, I forecast that this ingenious Japanese outfit will produce many other superstars in the years to come, not least the amazing A3 integrated and the Dacs and the 3 series pre/power.

The E2 is one of those “spanner in the works” components that splashes into the market maybe only once in a decade or so. As I alluded to in my more detailed report, this phono arguably redraws the sub £20,000 market place. We have been very successfully selling the Allnic phonostages for over a decade now and they have historically tended to win almost any shootout they were engaged in and we also retail much coveted units from Brinkmann, Vitus and the Thrax Orpheus, so we do know a thing or two about decent phono preamps.

The E2 really has no right to be as good as it is at £6800. In a statement system or a budget system, and with almost any turntable and cart combination, it seems to slot straight in and impress hugely from the get go. The sheer amount of life, dynamics and presence it bring into the room is really quite startling. The feature set is also exhaustive, enough to serve the most meitculous and demanding vinyl user till his end days and more feature laden than almost anything else on the market.

Late next year we are expecting a newly launched E3 with MC input. One can only dream how good this equivalent 3 series phono from Soulnote will turn out to be and what it will add over and above the already ‘Goliath killing’ E2. We await with baited breath.

The Shunyata power distributors have pretty much dominated the UK marketplace since the Denali some 6 years ago. Since then the Everest and Hydra have been sold into countless homes through the very robust Shunyata UK dealer network. These products bring about a dramatic noise reduction in every unit plugged in, so inserting them into a system – where everything is receving an upgrade in purity, resolution and overall cleanup – is normally a startling upgrade in final system performance across all sources. I have had a number of customers state in email that these conditioners have amounted to the biggest sonic upgrades they have ever experienced in all their decades in the hobby. They are some of the most cherished sales we make.

In 2023 the versatile Typhon T2 came along and could be employed either as a standalone condioner for a system that did not need many 240v supplies, or as a supercharger unit to augment existing Hydras and Denalis. My feeling was that the T2 was possibly the best product Shunyata had ever made but then in 2024 they came out with the new 30 Amp version of the T2, the Typhon T30.

The T30 is not only a good chunk more potent than the T2 but the bundled mains lead to the wall uses Shunyata’s proprietary Amphenol connector which itself is far more adept with noise than a standard IEC connection. Greater quality and current carrying capacity, lower contact impedance, the £2500 T30 supply mains lead will outperform a T2 shod with a £7000 Omega XC ! The T30 also has its usual additional supply twist lock outlet like the T2 so the unit can be used to power 3 items and you would obviously reserve the Amphenol to power the most important box.

For the biggest budget builds here with low box count, we usually specify a T30 or a pair if budget permits. If the system has a larger unit count then an Everest is also a perfect single unit solution which can also be supplemented with T2 or T30 for just the amplification.

In 2024 Hemingway cables from Korea continued to have a fairly dramatic effect on the entirety of Lotus. Not just sales and bringing in new customers but the total power of our built systems, our in store demos and indeed the potency of individual components offered to customers here like the Vitus Integrated amps. As well as a superlative and profoundly competitive cable choice just for the mere fact of buying and choosing a cable, Hemingway also exerts a system wide action of lowering noise through the manipulation of magnetic fields throughout. This is an easy claim to doubt yet just as easy to demonstrate.

It is fair to say we made Hemingway sales almost every week of 2024. Interest and home demos never waned. It was a tough choice to single out one component but in the end it came down to the Z-core ethernet cable and then both the entry Indigo II wires and the Z-core Alphas. The entry Indigo found many homes and usurped many other well known cables, some which would have originally cost well over double the price. With so many customers improving their home network lately, the Z-core Etherent wire was another big seller; in any full Lotus system build it is also one of the first components to be put on the shopping list simply because any streaming system will be partially defined by this one critical cable.

The Z-core Alpha speaker cables though perhaps better defined the brand as whole and speaker cables as we know are arguably the most important wire there is. Transformational in most applications the Alphas won many hearts and elevated many customers systems to something far beyond what the basic boxes would ordinarily foreshadow. In many instances, these were mated to Integrated amplifiers and speakers costing only 50% more money than the cables themselves, proving that wires really are more important and influencing of the final sonic result than most people care to realise, especially so with Hemingway. Hearing is believing though. Hemingway will continue to fortify and significantly enhance the systems we can build here, the electronics we sell, and ultimately the expert doctoring we can offer to customers’ pre-existing setups.

The Wadax Studio Player and the Tidal Contros are both new designs with the very latest technology inside and both have been developed with trickle down ingenuity from something far loftier and many times more bespoke and expensive. It is easy to understand why these digital sources offer far more than their price points suggest. More performance really than most people sensibly even need or can use.

If however the customer just inherently wants more, an even bigger hit, or simply has the financial means for a completely unrestricted selection, then we can bring out the big guy, now full of stealth and panache in Batman black !

The Wadax Atlantis Reference Server and DAC (spec dependent £227,500 – £353,000) arrived in 2024 and is set to have a very longstanding and distinguished life here in Walton On Thames. It has so far floored all those who have had the chance to experience it, not just because it goes dramatically beyond anything else, but because it will change one’s perceptions and beliefs about the entire digital medium. It is most definitely a superstar of 2024 and will likely be one every year from now on. It closes out this series and marks what has been a fabulous year for high end audio.

Sixteen courses at Heston’s Fat Duck, a 310 foot ride on the Millenium Force rollercoaster at Cedar Point, a passenger Lap of the Nurburging in a Porsche GT3 with a pro driver, bungee jumping off of the Verzasca dam in Switzerland … the Reference is an instructive ‘once in a lifetime’ experience, shockingly sensual and intense, drenching your whole nervous system in sweet opiate, a higher level of all aspects of the music which ultimately means a much bigger hit of sensory and psychic engagement.