What Is Metaxas & Sins
About Us
Metaxas & Sins, founded by Kostas Metaxas, is renowned for creating “high-end audio sculptures” and “kinetic art objects” - not merely hi-fi. Furthermore, Kostas is also a prolific recording engineer who's made hundreds of live concert recordings using magnetic open-reel tape.
So, it stands to reason that his reel-to-reel machines caught Ricardo Franassovici's eye. They have now been selected to join his carefully curated Ten collection joining, DeVore Fidelity and Robert Koda.
Metaxas & Sins is based in the Netherlands, where Kostas and his sons carefully hand-make these pieces of sonic art. Kostas is a renowned artist and product designer whose collaborations with respected luxury brands stretch well beyond audio equipment – pens, clocks and much more.
As with all Metaxas & Sins' creations, the design is horologically inspired and offers the user the tactile appeal of precision mechanical machinery. The high-end wristwatch design is followed through in the TR-X with the use of a tourbillon, an addition to the mechanics of a watch lever escapement to increase accuracy and has been used for the first time in a reel-to-reel tape machine to regulate the speed of the tape.
Even though right through to the 1990s, reel-to-reel machines were the established method of capturing master recordings in the music world, it was never a widely adopted format for the home the way vinyl or compact cassette was.
Absolute Sounds will carry both machines, but the initial focus, we are told, is on the TR-X Tourbillon. This high-end location recorder takes 10.5-inch reels and is designed to be practically portable and not left in the studio. Hence, there is also an optional battery box, so it doesn't have to be plugged into the mains.
