2025 Reel-to-Reel Tape Machine of the Year: United Home Audio Ultima Apollo

$55,000

Though it looks the same and operates via the same controls as its 2023 POY Award-winning predecessor, the Ultima5, Greg Beron’s new Ultima Apollo deck doesn’t sound the same. In fact, it doesn’t sound like any previous Ultima that JV has auditioned. With an entirely new EQ circuit and a beefed-up gain stage, it is “darker” in overall tonal balance (more “bottom-up”) than any previous UHA offering, save for the SuperDeck. Instruments in the bass range not only sound better resolved, more present, denser in color, more three-dimensional, and more powerful, they also sound deeper going, as if the deck had added another half-octave on the very bottom and some extra energy in the midbass. The midband shows this same increase in presence, color, solidity, and impact, while the top treble is still soft, smooth, and slightly rolled. It’s as if the frequency-response curve that the AES currently recommends for loudspeakers (a boost in the bass with extension down to 20Hz and a gradual roll-off in the treble above 1.5kHz) has somehow been incorporated in the Apollo’s new equalization stage. The result is a marked increase in bass-range extension, definition, and density of tone color, in overall listenability, in three-dimensional solidity top to bottom, and in the lifelike continuousness that makes an ensemble of instruments sound as if they are playing together in the same space, without any loss of their individual contributions.