Every choice in this room points in the same direction: let the
record speak for itself.

It starts with the turntable, BarcaNova's own BNS 2828. If you had to
sum up its design in one word, it would be vibration, specifically,
the war against it. The plinth is cut from acrylic to soak up stray
energy, the underside of the aluminium platter is engraved at varying
depths to break up resonance, and a magnetic Eddy-current brake holds
the speed dead steady. The motto behind it is disarmingly plain:
"simplicity in everything."

From there the signal takes the scenic route through a full Ypsilon
chain, and Ypsilon do things their own stubborn way. Where most gear
leans on capacitors, they don't. In the VPS 100 phono stage they
reach instead for transformers they wind themselves and silver wire
run point to point by hand, because capacitors, they argue, smear the
sound in ways you can catch on a single piano note. The same thinking
carries into the PST 100 preamplifier, which turns the volume down
through a transformer rather than resistors, so a quiet passage stays
as honest as a loud one.

Then the muscle: a pair of Ypsilon Aelius mono blocks, hybrids that
put a single tube up front and a solid-state stage behind it, running
with no global feedback. The idea is power without personality.
Plenty of drive, nothing added.

All of it lands on the Blumenhofer BHC 1743, the flagship of the
BlumenHofer Classics line and probably the first thing you'll notice
walking in. Each cabinet is a true horn carrying two 15-inch woofers,
a 12-inch midrange and a horn tweeter, wrapped in real wood with an
unapologetically old-school look. There's a local twist,
too: the cabinets are now built here in the Netherlands, in
Groningen, with the drivers and crossovers still coming from
Blumenhofer.

BarcaNova's own cables tie the whole thing together. Add it up and
you get a room with a single purpose: to hand you a record and then
quietly disappear. Find a seat. Let it.

Highlighted sessions in the Warmerdamzaal

Hear the system in action throughout the weekend, with listening sessions that move from Dutch rock and Italo disco to rare sounds from Aruba, Iran and Cuba.

Golden Earring – Moontan
Rare Records from Aruba
The Origins of Italo Disco
Iran – The Golden Eras by Katayoun
DJ Jigüe: Vinyl Master & Rare Records from Cuba