Audio Group Denmark wants to tap into new clientele with its new Axxess brand. The three all-in-one devices labelled Forté are a clear sign of this endeavour and benefit from the expensive components of the Aavik and Ansuz brands because they house many of their technical refinements.

Even though there is no accounting for taste, the new Axxess Forté shows up in a dignified design. Thus, it could also be classified into a much higher price range in terms of looks. But already when unpacking and setting up the Forté, one can possibly get a bit annoyed about the fact that the Forté has been given the feet typical for Aavik and Ansuz, which long for adding the sound enhancing Ansuz Darkz. Now I don't think a buyer of an all-in-one Forté1, no matter how sonically promising, should be expected to invest another 1,000+ euros for a set of four of these really good feet. I really appreciate them under my Ansuz PowerSwitch A2, but perhaps it would be possible in the future to include not only cotton gloves but also four felt or rubber disks in the scope of delivery, so that a Forté can be placed on a noble piece of furniture without any problems. In my case, this doesn't matter, since I'm a friend of hard coupling anyway, and in this review, a frequently used Ikea Lack table is going to host the Forté1.

What pleased me was the fact that with the Axxess Forté you don't need more than a pair of speakers and the connection to a router or its repeater via an Ethernet cable to browse a portal like Spotify or paid ones like Tidal or Qobuz for a musical experience. WLAN is not on board because of the immanent interference problem, but it could easily be supplemented with a WLAN receiver, which you then simply connect to the RJ45 jack, or a USB WLAN dongle. However, I would always recommend the use of a repeater, which you then connect to the Forté with a good Ethernet cable, thus keeping the source of WLAN interference at a distance. Each of the three currently available Forté models is an integration of a network streamer, bit-stream D/A converter, preamplifier, class-D power amplifier and headphone amplifier. So what we have here is a versatile all-in-one solution that, compared to individual components, makes the tedious choice of cable connections obsolete and prevents bad investments at this point. In addition, only a small footprint is required, as a Forté, at 37 centimeters wide, is even narrower than the hi-fi component standard. The three models differ considerably in price and how intensively they are equipped with the sound-relevant components for minimizing electrical interference, known from Ansuz and Aavik devices and developed by the Audio Group Denmark. In this form, this technical concept is unique in the world and can only be found in the products of the Audio Group Denmark. More specifically, it involves the number of "Active Tesla Coils", "Active Square Tesla Coils", Dither circuits and "Anti Areal Resonance Coils". Our Forté1 has the lowest amount of these implanted components, but features exactly the same output power as the Forté2 for 7,500 euros or the Forté3 for 10,000 euros, namely 100 watts per channel into eight ohms. In addition, the Forté2 and Forté3 were not only optimized by using a more extensive implantation of the aforementioned elements, but each of them also got enhanced with four active zirconium Tesla coils, while the top model also boasts a bottom plate made of copper. Otherwise, the three "forté" are equally equipped.