NIRVANA SOUND

TALKING SHOP with NIRVANA SOUND

This new Australian distributor majors in analogue delights, but has plenty of the digital breed too

Nirvana Sound is a new audio distribution and consulting business based in Melbourne, with a select network of national dealers, along with its own demonstration rooms, “dedicated to representing the finest audio equipment to discerning music lovers”. And the enthusiasm of the main protagonists is palpable.

Managing Director George Moraitis has spent a lifetime surrounded by music, with a professional guitarist father and a folk-singer mother, and a working life spent taking side trips to visit audio designers, personalities and audiophiles in his search to discover audio equipment which gets out of the way, putting the emphasis back on the music.

"One of the benefits of this hobby is that you meet very interesting people, and the friendships formed over listening to music are very precious to me," he says. "I’m driven to give our clients the same joy I feel when I’m at a concert or immersed in my favourite record at home.”

Both he and CEO Jim Angelopoulos believe in the maxims of quality over quantity, and emotion over convenience.

"I love watching the reactions people have when hearing a great audio system," says Angelopoulos. "It’s like they just heard the actual song for the first time."

Nirvana Sound certainly has the brands to do the job. It distributes electronics from Accustic Arts, Ypsilon from Greece, Emile Bok’s Taiko Audio music servers, Enrico Rossi’s Norma electronics from Italy, Atsushi Miura’s valves designs for Air Tight, as well as headphones from Abyss and Kennerton, and cables from Audience and the USA’s Stage III Concepts, the first company to offer ‘floating’ silver ribbon and air dielectric technology.

Loudspeakers handled by Nirvana Sound include the UK's Wilson Benesch, full-range ribbon speakers from Alsyvox Audio Design, Swedish ortho-acoustic designs from Larsen, and the extraordinary slate sculptures from

Fischer&Fischer. Moraitis waxes particularly lyrical on the idealist masterpieces of horn designs from Cessaro Horn Acoustics.

"I used to have a love/hate relationship with horn speakers, as I think many others do," he says. "But I urge the audiophile and music lovers among us to forget about what you think you know about horns, forget about what you have heard in the past, and organise to listen to a properly-implemented horn speaker system from Cessaro Horn Acoustics. You will never forget it."

'Analogue people'

Vinyl music lovers are particularly well served by Nirvana Sound, as you might expect from a company which distributes Döhmann Audio, of which both Moraitis and Angelopoulos are also directors.

"Yes, because of that we’ve gained a little reputation in the country as being analogue people," says George. "And so people have been coming to us for advice, cartridges, phono stages, and Mark Döhmann spends a lot of his life going round the country setting up turntables for people that are associated with us. So yes, we love analogue."

Australian Mark Döhmann’s collaborative designs for the Helix One and Two turntables are considered heirloom-quality industrial works of art that deliver the ultimate enjoyment from vinyl: Nirvana calls them ‘the Formula One of analogue design’. And these are joined at Nirvana by the legendary cartridges of Yoshiaki Sugano’s Koetsu, the creations of master cartridge-maker Yoshio Matsudaira at My Sonic Lab, and Decca London cartridges too, as well as the Black Forest turntables of Perpetuum Ebner (PE), and Frank Schröder’s Schröder tonearms. Nirvana can even help spruce up your record collection with the Record Cleaning and Restoration System developed by Charles Kirmuss.

Nirvana Sound is, however, keen to go beyond the equipment itself. They plan a focus on the music, on the people behind the music, with an extended team talking on the website about the records and music they love to listen to, as well as blogs about the general joys of music through audio equipment of excellence, with the goal of inspiring others to similar levels of enjoyment.

"We enjoy developing personal relationships with our clients and assisting them in their musical and sonic journey,” says George Moraitis. "We search the world to find exceptional equipment that has the ability to give our clients an experience of ultimate musical enjoyment — exceptional brands that help you attain that feeling that you are searching for, the experience of musical ‘nirvana’."

More info: www.nirvanasound.com

If you’re at the opposite end of your vinyl journey to those considering the Döhmann Helix turntable opposite, then Pro-Ject’s latest release may apply less pressure to the purse-strings. The T1 SB is the first in the company’s new T Line of turntables that will aim to deliver high-fidelity sound on a limited budget. Despite an RRP in Australia of only $549, it includes a built-in moving magnet phono stage so can be plugged into any line-level amplifier input, or its phonolevel outputs can be used into an external phono stage. Its build seems remarkable at the price, in a piano-black finish with a heavy, low-resonance glass platter, under which is a newly designed sub-platter mounted into an precise 0.001mm main bearing with a hardened steel axle and brass bushing. The motor drives a flat belt-system, and there is electronic speed control for 33⅓ and 45rpm activated by a switch on the front-left of the plinth. The plinth itself is CNC-routed with no plastic parts or hollows, reducing possible vibrations and resonances.

The straight 8.6-inch tonearm uses aluminium construction and low-friction bearings, with an integrated headshell pre-fitted with an Ortofon

OM5e moving magnet cartridge with elliptical diamond stylus. A preweighted counterweight means no adjustments are required out of the box, so there’s no need to do that balancing act with the tonearm. More info: www.interdyn.com