This year, we saw a bumper crop of minute repeaters at Watches & Wonders. And we managed to make live recordings of six of the new minute repeaters.
Live recording: the sound of six new striking watches from this year
As this is a collage of live recordings made on the very busy booths of the maisons at Watches & Wonders 2025, some of the clips have rather loud background noises which we are not able to eliminate. We were careful with noise reduction software as we did not want to take away from the sound of the striking watches.
YouTube Video: Live Recording of Minute Repeaters
The watches are recorded mostly at 12:59, which gives the longest timing to complete the strikes. But some were recorded at other timing, as the repeaters were hot commodities. We sometimes have just enough time to do one single take, so we grab whatever we can to present you with this collage of live recordings. Some of the case crystals show fingerprint markings.
The watches are:
- A. Lange & Söhne Minute Repeater Tourbillon striking 12:59. This is the fourth Lange repeater to be introduced, after the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater, the Richard Lange Minute Repeater and the Grand Complication. And in our view, their best work yet!
- as the Lange repeater has a special feature which skips null quarters, we also made it strike, this time on the reverse side, showing the mechanism making 1:14. The watch goes directly from the single hour strike to the 14 minute strikes without any pause. Though this feature is by no means unique to Lange, the classical repeater will pause in silence to let the null 3 ding/dong strikes of quarters before going from the hour to the minutes.
- Chopard Full Strike Revelation. This is a new execution of the Chopard, with the full crystal gongs which are bolted to the sapphire crystal of the watch.
- Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Minute Repeater. This is the second minute repeater to be featured in a Reverso case. The first was for the 60th anniversary of the Reverso. It had the unfortunate reputation of not sounding very good, with dull tones. Quite possibly due to the rectangular case and thus the rectangular shaped gongs. This new rendition for 2025 is much improved, but we leave you to judge in the context of the competition.
- H. Moser Minute Repeater Concept Pop. This is a new piece unique from Moser featuring stone dials.
- Patek Philippe Ref. 5803 Split Seconds Chronograph Perpetual Calendar Minute Repeater. A grand complication. The environment was also quite noisy, and those who know may identify the voice of Philip Barat, the Director of Research and Development of Patek Philippe explaining the workings of another watch.
- Hublot Big Bang Integrated Tourbillon Cathedral Minute Repeater. The environment was particularly noisy, and in the background you can probably hear Hublot CEO Julien Tonare speaking to get the party started. This was recorded at about 6:30pm in the Hublot booth and the cocktail just outside was beginning.
2 Comments
Hello Peter,
Thank you for sharing. I like the Lange best clear and consistent sound. Patel ans Moser also nice. I was surprised that the Hublot had a good sound and very disappointed to hear the Chopard. Not pleasant at all.
Thank you
Thanks Rafaello for your comment.
1. The Lange indeed is a great improvement over their earlier efforts. But notice in the first clip that the strike power becomes lower towards to end of the long sequence.
2. The Chopard uses crystal gongs which are attached to the crystal of the watch. The tonal quality reflects that. Sounds really like using a butter knife to strike a wine glass. In fact, the minute strikes are so powerful and high pitched that it actually overloaded the microphones. To my personal taste, it is the best sounding of this lot of clips.
3. The Hublot is a surprise to me as well, that it sounds so full, rich and also loud. You can easily hear the reverberant signature of the cathederal gongs.
4. Though the JLC sounds much better than their first effort, the sound lacks attack and a nice decay. with the sound being dull, like something is damping the gongs, preventing them from vibrating freely. With no reverb. This is no doubt due to the rectangular case shape, as the JLC repeaters in round cases do not sound so constrained.