Statements in High Fidelity | German Edition 2024

The awards are ready and waiting to be handed over, a table in the restaurant has been reserved, the winners have been invited and have accepted, but Wojciech Pacuła and I have not yet announced our choice to you, our readers, which we are now doing: highfidelity.pl is awarding the Norma Audio Electronics REVO CDP-2, hifistatement.net the Keces S4.

Wojciech Pacuła just can't help himself. This year, he once again opted for a CD player, as my colleague is anything but a streaming fan, regardless of whether the files come from the internet or from the home network server. He summarizes his experience with the Norma Audio Electronics REVO CDP-2 as follows: „The sonic character of Norma's CD Player is consistent with what I consider to be good, proper sound. This is another device going in a direction that has long been too "dark", too "dense", not "open" enough for CD music listeners. Modern understanding of digital and analog technology translates into a much more resolving sound that no longer needs to be artificially "tweaked" to be open and detailed.“

My colleague and tube fan Carsten Bussler was open-minded, tested a transistor preamplifier and was enthusiastic: "The KECES S4 is a technically highly modern and sophisticated preamplifier which, in addition to line, MM and MC signals, also processes signals from optical pickups from DS-Audio as a special feature. The outstanding build quality, the comprehensive features and, last but not least, the neutral, no-frills and sparkling clean sound are a combination that is extremely rare in this price range." I also looked at the DS-Audio input and the headphone output: "If you add the quality of the headphone output and the DS-Audio phono input to the excellent build quality, comprehensive features and convincing sound already praised by my colleague, you can only rave about the price/performance ratio of the S4.“ The first Statements in High Fidelity this year therefore go to the Norma Audio Electronics REVO CDP-2 and the Keces S4. Congratulations to the winners!