Discovery
A synthesizer with room for other scales.
Korg’s revived PS-3300 brings an unusual analogue architecture back into production. The important return is a way of making sound, not a scarcity premium.
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THE WHV WORLD
Sound & Listening
Engineering you can hear. Objects you can live with.
Our perspective on Sound & Listening
THE QUESTION WE BRING
What survives beyond the first demonstration: listening pleasure, serviceability and a convincing place in the room?
OUR FIELD OF VIEW
- Audiophile loudspeakers
- Turntables and analogue systems
- Recording craft and listening rooms
Each selection begins with a specific subject, a reason to care and evidence worth examining.
In view.
Discovery
The watch that keeps another kind of time.
Seiko’s Metronome Watch turns its hands into a tempo cue. The 2026 FRAGMENT edition puts a musical instrument inside a familiar daily object.
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Discovery
The work inside a bell’s voice.
At the Paccard foundry museum near Annecy, a familiar sound becomes a made object. Casting, tuning and maintenance reveal why a bell’s long life depends on more than bronze.
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Discovery
A different way into sound.
The Buchla Music Easel replaces familiar piano keys with touch plates and a field of connections. Its enduring idea is a different relationship between gesture and sound.
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Discovery
The drum machine that became a language.
Roland’s TR-808 matters because musicians found a future in sounds that did not convincingly imitate an acoustic drum kit.
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Discovery
The shape of a sound problem.
Bowers & Wilkins did not give Nautilus a spiral simply to make it memorable. The shape follows an unusually ambitious attempt to deal with unwanted sound.
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Discovery
The collection you can hear.
At Cremona’s Museo del Violino, historic instruments sometimes leave silence behind. A short listening session can make a celebrated name less abstract.
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Discovery
The workshop behind the reels.
The Revox B77 makes recording physically visible. Its stronger claim to longevity lies beyond the turning reels, in a manufacturer that still restores its older machines.
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Discovery
The note does not end at the key.
Expressive E’s Osmose keeps the familiar piano keyboard but makes pressure and sideways movement part of the sound. The instrument rewards what happens after a note begins.
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Discovery
The instrument before the lesson.
Amsterdam’s SoundLAB invites people to make music on unfamiliar instruments before they have learned a conventional technique. A different interface can change who feels able to begin.
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Discovery
A speaker with a way inside.
Beosound A5 looks like something to carry by its wooden handle. Beneath the woven cover, a modular construction asks a more useful question: what happens when one part needs to change?
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Discovery
The instrument you do not touch.
A Moog Etherwave puts musical expression in the space around two antennas. With no keys or strings to locate a note, the player’s own movements become unusually visible.
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Discovery
A small studio that still changes.
Teenage Engineering’s OP–1 field puts a synthesizer, sampler and four-track recorder in one portable instrument. A 2026 update shows why the life of a digital object need not end with its launch specification.
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Discovery
A speaker that can change its beam.
Bang & Olufsen’s Beolab 90 treats the room as part of the listening problem. The 2026 Monarch execution adds remarkable woodwork to an existing, unusually ambitious acoustic platform.
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Discovery
The record player that became an instrument.
The Technics SL-1200MK2 puts musical time under the hand. A machine intended to reproduce records became a tool for making something new from them.
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Discovery
The room that keeps being played.
Vienna’s Musikverein Golden Hall is not only a famous interior. Its continuing concert life offers something more useful than a postcard: a reason to sit, listen and return.
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Discovery
The guitar that can change with you.
A familiar guitar can accommodate a changing player. The Fender Telecaster connects a simple construction idea to a long, adaptable musical life.
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Discovery
A headphone with parts to replace.
The Sennheiser HD 600 is interesting not only for listening. Its replaceable pads and cable give an owner specific questions about keeping it in use.
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Discovery
An old keyboard with new sounds left.
The Yamaha DX7 is often treated as the sound of the 1980s. Its more enduring idea is that a familiar machine can still be a place to invent.
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Discovery
Nagra IV-S: the recorder as an instrument.
A portable stereo tape recorder from 1971 makes precision visible, but its real appeal depends on more than watching the reels turn.
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Discovery
A small field that moves to music.
Real wheat, gold leaf and a mechanical musical movement make an unexpected contemporary automaton.
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Discovery
A sculpture you play with wet fingers.
The Cristal Baschet makes the boundary between musical instrument and sculpture feel surprisingly unnecessary.
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Discovery
The Stradivari valued for what survives.
The Messiah’s extraordinary condition makes it a witness to its maker, without settling which violin sounds best.
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Discovery
A small glass tube with a long afterlife.
Western Electric still makes the 300B electron tube. A component from 1938 asks what real continuity in audio manufacturing looks like.
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Market reading
The catalogue that became collateral.
In 1997, future royalties from David Bowie’s existing songs became the cash flow behind a bond. The idea is stranger and more useful than the nickname.
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Discovery
The piano that is not furniture.
A Steinway Model D may dominate a room, but its value is decided at the keyboard, inside the action and through the care that keeps it responsive.
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Discovery
A record player with a next chapter.
The Linn Sondek LP12 asks a better question than what comes next: how much of what you already own can come with you?
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Discovery
A sculpture that plays.
Avantgarde Acoustic’s TRIO G3 makes the loudspeaker impossible to ignore. The quieter question is what can be renewed inside it.
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