Once in few months myself and several great buddies we try to organize ourselves to see each other and have a great weekend full of music, tube rolling, food, drinks and above all fun while covering zillions of HiFi topics. On top we also try to link those meetings to the visit to one of the many Swiss producers and thanks god Switzerland is full of them.
This weekend we had a good opportunity to link HiEnd show in Zurich with the visit and I managed to organize that we spend some time with not so widely/globally known as the rest of Swiss gang, Tobian Soundsystems.
Woooow what a discovery and what a great time we spend with a Guenter Tobian who is totally devoted audiophile guy above all and an absolute connoisseur in hifi gear. I have not seen/experience this for a while and to be honest I had a smile on my face for the entire weekend. Such a nice person to talk to, chat above everything easy going and pleasant - just great.
To back up my part above his dedication and love towards music and HiFi - he has in his personal collection more than 200.000 tubes, almost whatever you can imagine from WE gear, Altec, etc. in terms of finished products but as well drivers, etc. and overall just mind blowing. And this is just related to hardware. LPs wise collection is as well impressive so variable of materials to listen to at his place is countless.
His studio is as well super nicely done, acoustically treated with of course entire line of his gear which starts with DAC, preamp, power amps, phono and several model of speakers.
Entire chain is tube based with different tubes he deploys and at this time we had a chance to hear TOTL DAC, Phono, Pre and power amps where in first part of the chain 801 DHT was deployed with Elrog 274b recti and in power amps Elrog was a tube of choice (300b, 274b). Tube choice also depends what customers would like to have so he can adapt to their wishes.
I will not go into any tech details as his web site is more than informative, while what website is super bad at, is to convey the sheer quality and in person look of his components. It's just stunning how they look in person and you can see on them crazy/insane Swiss attention to details. Guess from this also comes the fact that all his product have lifetime warranty (except tubes of course) as he is super confident in materials, parts, manufacturing process he uses (almost everything in house).
SQ wise - just everything is aligned, calm, neutral, musical, explodes when it needs to explode and convey dynamics and palpable above all. We can always find something we don't like or would like to have more or less but this system is a total no brainier for somebody who can afford it and have a one stop solution to musical nirvana.
I hope there will be a chance to visit Guenter soon enough as apparently several new models are in pre-launch phase so this could be a nice excuse to steal again few hours of his time.
I'll illustrate with few pictures from the place below:
This weekend we had a good opportunity to link HiEnd show in Zurich with the visit and I managed to organize that we spend some time with not so widely/globally known as the rest of Swiss gang, Tobian Soundsystems.
Woooow what a discovery and what a great time we spend with a Guenter Tobian who is totally devoted audiophile guy above all and an absolute connoisseur in hifi gear. I have not seen/experience this for a while and to be honest I had a smile on my face for the entire weekend. Such a nice person to talk to, chat above everything easy going and pleasant - just great.
To back up my part above his dedication and love towards music and HiFi - he has in his personal collection more than 200.000 tubes, almost whatever you can imagine from WE gear, Altec, etc. in terms of finished products but as well drivers, etc. and overall just mind blowing. And this is just related to hardware. LPs wise collection is as well impressive so variable of materials to listen to at his place is countless.
His studio is as well super nicely done, acoustically treated with of course entire line of his gear which starts with DAC, preamp, power amps, phono and several model of speakers.
Entire chain is tube based with different tubes he deploys and at this time we had a chance to hear TOTL DAC, Phono, Pre and power amps where in first part of the chain 801 DHT was deployed with Elrog 274b recti and in power amps Elrog was a tube of choice (300b, 274b). Tube choice also depends what customers would like to have so he can adapt to their wishes.
I will not go into any tech details as his web site is more than informative, while what website is super bad at, is to convey the sheer quality and in person look of his components. It's just stunning how they look in person and you can see on them crazy/insane Swiss attention to details. Guess from this also comes the fact that all his product have lifetime warranty (except tubes of course) as he is super confident in materials, parts, manufacturing process he uses (almost everything in house).
SQ wise - just everything is aligned, calm, neutral, musical, explodes when it needs to explode and convey dynamics and palpable above all. We can always find something we don't like or would like to have more or less but this system is a total no brainier for somebody who can afford it and have a one stop solution to musical nirvana.
I hope there will be a chance to visit Guenter soon enough as apparently several new models are in pre-launch phase so this could be a nice excuse to steal again few hours of his time.
I'll illustrate with few pictures from the place below:
