Vimberg Mino - LOUDSPEAKER

JOHN ATKINSON

- 

The priciest loudspeaker ever to have taken up residence in my listening room was the Akira from German company Tidal Audio,1 which I reviewed in the November 2018 issue of Stereophile.2 Designed by Tidal founder and CEO Jörn Janczak, the Akiras cost $215,000/pair! “The sheer resolution of the Akiras continued to astonish me throughout my auditioning,” I wrote in my review, concluding that “The Akiras are the best-looking, best-built, best-sounding speakers I have had in my listening room—as they should be at the price.”

Ah, the price. As good as the Tidal loudspeakers sounded and as heroically as they were engineered and built, I don’t think I ever really came to terms with what they cost. So my ears pricked up when I read in Robert Deutsch’s October 2018 report from the Toronto Audiofest3 that Janczak had launched Vimberg, a loudspeaker brand that, while still expensive in absolute terms, would be much less so than the Tidal models while preserving the Tidals’ sound quality. At $31,000/pair, the subject of this review, the Vimberg Mino, resembles the Akira in being a large three-way floor stander using Accuton drive-units from the German company Thiel & Partner, but is one-seventh its price.

The Mino