Sphinx Audio, SME Music, and Siltech: A Private Evening at The Taj Mahal Palace

An Evening for Analog

When Audio Lounge stages a private evening at The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, the invitation carries weight. On this occasion, the reason was the Sphinx Element 3 speaker – heard in India for the first time – paired with Siltech SAGA electronics and cabling, an SME Model 35 turntable, and a Nagra HD phono preamplifier. Vinyl pressings from the forthcoming SME Music label completed a system that left little to chance and everything to the music.

The Sphinx Element 3

The Sphinx Element 3 is a loudspeaker that commands attention before a single note is played. The sculpted cabinet, inspired by the silhouette of a harp, rises from a curved aluminium base in synthetic stone — a material whose texture and veining recall antiquity rather than consumer electronics. The tweeter sits in an isolated housing crowning the cabinet, while the midrange and bass driver occupy the main baffle behind a surface that feels closer to sculpture than to conventional loudspeaker design.

That the form is also the function is the Element 3’s particular achievement. The stone-like exterior dampens cabinet resonance naturally, while the internal geometry accommodates Sphinx Audio’s proprietary Zero Gravity Bass technology and PAC crossover network. Designed and manufactured in the Netherlands as part of the Siltech and Crystal Cable group, the Sphinx Element 3 belongs in a room as much as any piece of furniture — and then, when the music begins, redefines what the room is for.

The System: Siltech, Nagra, and SME

The reference system assembled for the evening was designed to place the Sphinx Element 3 in the company the loudspeaker deserves. An SME Model 35 turntable provided the source — precision-built at SME’s facility in Steyning, West Sussex, and fitted with the new-generation Series Vi tonearm, CNC-machined from a high-density polymer for lower resonance than its magnesium predecessor and internally wired with Crystal Cable. An Ortofon MC A95 cartridge tracked the groove. From there, the signal passed through a Nagra HD phono preamplifier and into the Siltech SAGA system: the battery-powered C1 preamplifier, the V1 tube voltage amplifier, and the P1 solid-state current amplifier — a three-box architecture that physically separates each gain stage for the lowest possible distortion. Siltech Classic Legend 880 series cables carried the signal throughout — interconnect, loudspeaker, and power — with the entire system presented on a Finite Element equipment rack.

The Reference System

Loudspeakers: Sphinx Audio Element 3

Source: SME Model 35 with Series Vi tonearm and Ortofon MC A95 cartridge

Amplification: Siltech SAGA System — C1 preamplifier, V1 voltage amplifier, P1 current amplifier

Phono stage: Nagra HD phono preamplifier

Cables: Siltech Classic Legend 880 series (interconnect, loudspeaker, and power)

Equipment rack: Finite Element

SME Music and Rainer Maillard

SME Music, the forthcoming pure-analog record label under SME, made its first appearance before an Indian audience the same evening. Guests heard newly pressed vinyl from the label, with Rainer Maillard – producer and general manager of Emil Berliner Studios in Berlin, and the engineer responsible for mastering and lacquer cutting every SME Music release – present as an exclusive guest to speak about the craft behind the pressings.

Maillard’s conversation covered the decisions made between tape and groove, the discipline a pure analog signal chain imposes on every stage of production, and the broader question of analog versus digital audio — framed not as nostalgia but as an engineering philosophy with audible consequences. A four-time Grammy Award winner who has spent more than three decades at the intersection of classical recording and analog mastery, Maillard’s involvement with SME Music speaks directly to the seriousness of the label’s ambitions.

Two forthcoming projects were announced: a series of recordings made with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, captured entirely in the analog domain, and an exclusive box set dedicated to Classical Indian Folk Music – a project bringing together some of India’s finest instrumentalists and vocalists. Among the musicians present at the evening was bansuri virtuoso Rakesh Chaurasia, two-time Grammy Award winner and nephew of the legendary flute maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, alongside composer and music arranger Kamlesh Bhadkamkar and fellow artists connected to the forthcoming recordings.

The People Behind the Equipment

Cadence Audio Group Chairman Ajay Shirke set the tone for the evening, outlining the philosophy behind SME Music and the conviction that analog recording, mastering, and playback represent a single continuous discipline — one that Cadence is now pursuing from the microphone to the loudspeaker. Shirke spoke with the fluency of someone who has spent more than three decades building toward precisely this moment: the equipment, the label, and the audience in the same room.

Kerry St. James, Director of Sales at SME, Garrard, and Loricraft, guided guests through the engineering heritage behind the SME turntable range and the thinking that produced the SME Model 60 One of One programme. Viktor de Leeuw and Rishabh Kumar of Siltech were on hand to discuss every cable and electronic component in the signal chain — the people who made them, explaining what they made. Rainer Maillard needed no introduction to those who had just heard the pressings he had cut. This was the character of the evening throughout: the kind of gathering where every question found the person best qualified to answer it.

Audio Lounge Mumbai is located at The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Heritage Wing, Apollo Bandar, Colaba, Mumbai 400001. To arrange a private demonstration of the Sphinx Element 3 or any equipment in the Audio Lounge portfolio, contact the team at [email protected].

More information on SME Music is available on sme.co.uk/music.