METAXAS & SINS
After over 35 years of work in the field of High End Audio, from the design and manufacturing of entire playback systems to the recording of over 300 acoustic concerts to gain further musical insights, the last thing that artist-designer Kostas Metaxas wanted to produce was “another set of boxes with transistors on a heatsink”.
Kostas was dreaming of the most spectacular architecture, design and sculpture he had experienced and wanted to bring that emotional intensity, daring and seductive beauty to audio amplifiers.
As a recording engineer, Metaxas also wanted to “voice” them for extremely realistic recording playback, to be able to reproduce all the nuance and emotion of a musical performance.
His new IKARUS, SOLITAIRE and SOLILOQUY amplifiers are the result. Machined from a solid block of either aircraft aluminium, copper or titanium, they're totally bespoke and the modular electronics make them future-proof. Even the circuit boards can be CNC machined from 1mm solid silver coated clear polystyrene.
From the sensual, organic and striking casework [inspired by the stunning work in Sports cars of the 1950’s/60’s of Ercole Spada, as well as the architecture of Hadid, Gehry and Calatrava] to absolutely every part of the amplifiers including the circuit, topology, layout and casework have been developed by Kostas Metaxas. It is the logical evolution of his ground-breaking design concepts pioneered in the early 1980’s.
Then, it true “Bugatti fashion”, each and every amplifier is assembled by the master or his sins — either Andreas or Alessandros Metaxas.
Opus Preamplifier
An aesthetic engineering triumph, the OPUS preamplifier is the first example of “moulage” or draping with solid aluminium on an imaginary mannequin. The folds and drapes are impossibly sculpted using a 5 axis CNC machine. This organic, non-geometric form, allows a perfect evacuation of all chassis micro-vibrations.
The OPUS is the direct result of an intense 35 years fascination with music recording and reproduction to perfect the most transparent, reference calibre “monitoring” preamplifier to complement both the finest domestic audio playback & professional recording systems in the world. Using technology borrowed from Aerospace and Formula 1, the design also reflects the extraordinary advances that made over the last 15 years in modelling and simulation software.
In the early 2000’s, Kostas Metaxas underwent extensive training to become one of the first designers who could conceive, model and prototype an entire amplifier on a component by component basis in 3D.
The PCB software he uses not only lays out the boards, but also allows schematic based simulations which can test [or verify] the PCB’s signal integrity displaying Reflection and Crosstalk Analysis.
