R)Evolutionary Audio – Brion “Fluksus” Music-Machine – M & S

Stefano Bertoncello writes: “Please read-on, folks: my good friend Marco Minoccheri, always passionate seeker of musical bliss, about 12 months ago and out-of-the-blue, called me at the phone… his voice was excited to a seldom-experienced degree. He was (apparently) confused as he was talking – he owned among the best Shindo’s, Yamamura’s, Sakuma’s and everything in-between – about an Italian-made “thing” able to make virtually everything: during our first conversation on the matter I was expecting (I swear) to hear something like “…”

“… and the coffee this new piece of gear makes really tastes awesome 😀🤩😏🙃😊 !” This phone-chatting left me berserk: OMG, my poor friend got crazy! He is disavowing the decades of audio research, the mountains of money invested in the best equipment ever built for… a coffee machine 😵‍💫?!? 🥳

Then, after a few days, we met and we reached an hangar-sized workshop where I experienced “the coffee machine “, aehm: the Brion Fluksus.

The unassuming, yet elegant Fluksus: its humble, organic appearance is inversely proportional to its sonic and design qualities.

A consideration: just guess “why?” someone should leave not-connected a dreadnought of Yamamura’s Class A just to show-up an unknown, underground product…

It’s all about quality in the Pirsig’s meaning: the sound is simply The One, cost-no-object… something which let you forget in a blink about 0,0001 % THD and distortion: also if the utmost care was used to optimize final results, the impressive, would dare, unique measures where simply functional to getting the purest sound.

A well-crafted plywood “cube” of sort which didn’t resemble anything else on the market: Marco was like a kid, enthusiastic and his enthusiasm – against my expectations – was going to soon become contagious.

The workshop was the headquarters of the Brion/Fluksus project: the agenda was quite ambitious, to say the least.

Let’s see: an 8 (eight) channel digital amp, a DAC, a preamp with line-stage and MM and MC phono with continuous capacitance control, a streamer, a built-in proprietary DSP and room-tuning (not corrector) directly, real-time talking with the computer via-USB3 and I4S… the fine tuning, I witnessed, is made not using the ubiquitous Pink- or White-Noise but Music!

The powerful latest-generation software and the proprietary ultra-selected integrated-circuits built (no hypes, saw the invoices) by an aerospace-grade industry aren’t a selfish technological exercise of-sort: what I heard that afternoon at the workshop twelve months ago and then, even better at Marco’s place with all the glorious of his world-renowned 7-ways ALE horn-system was an epiphany.

My mind, my music and aesthetic tastes, my 50 years of music and audio experience got such a shot!!!

I tried to resist in my old-school way of thinking, arguing about Class A, DHT and the like… but the “coffee machine” was simply, convincingly sounding like real-music, period.

All the skills of MM’s tech-head were functional and distilled into Fluksus, filtered by Marco’s love for music (he’s a pianist) and – why not – the listening experience accumulated in decades of tireless search for the best sound in the home environment.

Like a premium stove is functional to cooking, but worthless without a good chef, this piece of gears represent to my humble but unbiased ears, the peak of listening pleasure at home… funded and strongly wanted by someone, Marco Minoccheri, who, like a Zen monk, knew and/or owned most of the sought-after audio goodies and, after learning a lot, he (humbly) felt ready to make “his own” statement.

I called this piece of gear (R)Evolutionary because – yes! – I sincerely feel this one-of-a-kind product will be a game-changer: Mark Levinson’s Daniel Hertz is also brewing something in the same vein, but apparently at a cost and lesser in technological content and – indeed – evolutionary approach and extent.

The evolutionary character of Fluksus is about a HUGE powerhouse of digital-domain prowess at the service of Music.

I experienced at Marco’s place a shitty 340bps MP3 file sounding like an RCA Shaded Dog or a Wideband Decca’s… with authority, trueness and utmost listening pleasure.

… for the Espresso coffee, well: Marco and his team are still working… but what Fluksus brought to the world is an user-friendly package, touch-controls are soooo sexy 😏, and a level of refined presentation seldom found.

Reportedly, Fluksus will be presented at Munchen Hi-End 2024 to be known by many.

In the meantime, please wait for more down-to-earth details: pricing, availability, web-sites and assorted trivia, about to come.

BTW: just going to enjoy my morning coffee. “