Over the last few years at Audio Video Show here in Warsaw and at High End in Munich, Canada’s EMM Labs has shared rooms with their distributors, and thus with other manufacturers. At Audio Video Show 2025, EMM Labs was hosting the room, and the equipment rack at the front was filled with a collection of components that looked like it had been freshly unloaded from the Death Star.
This full set of EMM Labs equipment was all in matte black—military, stealth black. I’ve never seen such ominous-looking hi‑fi gear. All the two formidable monoblock amplifiers needed were countdown timers ready to set off a suitcase nuke.
When we walked in, the CD player was playing a track left over from a showgoer—this was offensively sweet easy-listening fusion. The kind of music that my mom would have liked. I looked over at Amadeus Meitner, who was sitting off to the side, grinding his teeth to paste. Amadeus, who handles sales and distribution for EMM Labs, is the son of company founder Ed Meitner. I got the impression the Amadeus was no fan of smarmy, slimy saxophone and amateur-hour slapping bass. We waited for the track to end (which took far too long), and then Amadeus assumed control of the streamer and played something from a group called Dark Side, a techno-ish, effect-laden track that pressurized the room and didn’t make me want to kill myself.
It was easy to hear the pedigree of these components. Snappy, dynamic—did I say dynamic? I think I need a new word for this type of sound, given that this sense of instantaneous snap and start-stop immediacy right from the bass up through the midrange, even the highs, is so elusive at shows. How can treble instruments sound so . . . dynamic?
The Magico S5 speakers sounded excellent—controlled, open, and extended at both frequency extremes. But they continued the trend I’ve heard at recent shows where the bottom end tended to be deep but a touch dry. Overall, this was the kind of sound you expect from a statement-level system.
Down to the details. EMM Labs was premiering revisions to several of their products. Know this: Ed Meitner is never content with his products and is constantly working to improve them. The DS‑EQ1 optical phono equalizer that’s still in my system has been back to EMM Labs for updates twice, and according to Amadeus there’s a new update that’s ready to be applied. But those are improvements that are made to an existing version of an EMM Labs component. The electronics and speakers were all connected by Ikigai Audio cables. All products in the room are distributed in Poland by DWA Kanaly.
The EMM Labs components on display were new versions that deserved new names, here reflected with an additional i at the end of each model name. “It’s a generational update,” Amadeus said when I queried him. “We focused on extending the bandwidth and the stability over the entire frequency range,” he added cagily.
Further, the system’s preamplifier, the PREi (price TBA), was entirely new and on display here in prototype form. Fronting the system were a pair of MTRX2 V2 monoblock amplifiers ($115,000, all prices in USD), which were fed from the PREi. The source was the DA2i DAC ($35,000) and TXi CD transport ($12,500).
Amadeus Meitner provided me with prices for combinations that he felt were the most likely pairings. An MTRS stereo power amp and PREi will retail for $99,990, while the DA2i combined with the TXi retails for $47,500.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
