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Munich show 2023

Fave rooms for me:

- Boenicke - sounding sublime as ever with the new W22

- CAD/Trilogy - brilliant sounding room with CAD front end and grounding playing through Trilogy tube/solid state pre then power into Wilson Benesch speakers.

- the bonkers ESD acoustic room with a barrage of horns and tweeters and subs and 24 boxes of electronics making music of epic proportions with the scale of the Festival Hall. Fortunately the room is the size of a football pitch.

- Tannoy’s new Stirling III LZ was in a small room and near a rear wall yet sounded wonderful. Better than most more pricey speakers at the show.

- Totem’s room especially the very small Tribe Tower - tiny but really good. It has a monitor-like sound that belies its minute stature.

- the Aputura room with the Forte speaker. A company I had never heard of but this high sensitivity speaker sounded great, especially for the price and especially if you like a valve amp.


I love the Western Electric room. Hearing the 2 metre square 97 year old Western Electric Horn with a mind-bending sensitivity of 120db. The Grandad of all modern speakers. And it sounds fabulous!! It honestly sounded completely like a live gig with any pre-2000 recordings. The chap giving the talk reckons it is better than any speaker designed since. A 60W amp will be loud enough to drive this speaker to 1000 people! Hearing Whole Lotta Love through this ancient thing was a revelation and yes it sounds as good as any modern rendition I’ve heard!


Personally I would recommend anyone interested in Hi-Fi to attend Munich at least once in their lifetime. There is always some incredible sounding kit there that you never get a chance to see or hear elsewhere.
 
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There’s a Michael Fremer one too if you want the scope narrowed down to just the LOLprice turntables.

PS I’ve split it off into a fresh thread. It merits one a year given it is arguably the main global show.

What stood out was Projects 'a different Turntable a day' or fish with dynamite way of manufacturing and the multitude of hideous looking turntables at unbelievable prices which seem to be regarded as normal nowadays.

Makes Rega's stuff seem like a bargain and even Linn's you know what approach sensible.
 
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- the Aputura room with the Forte speaker. A company I had never heard of but this high sensitivity speaker sounded great, especially for the price and especially if you like a valve amp.
(...)

Apertura did a nice room when I was last in Munich (pre COVID - 2019).

I use their Adamante speakers. First with Aesthetix Atlas Signature (valve input stage, transistor drive) now with Simaudio Moon 760a (all transistor). The only time I've heard Apertura speakers with valves was when I went round to another person's home with my pre-amp for him to assess. He was using the Enigma model (one above mine) with Airtight ATM 3 mono blocks - nice but I still preferred my own Moon 760a.
 
Qualio Audio who did some excellent videos from Bristol has also been to Munich this year.

This is part 1 for now:

Just watching it now, I’m so pleased people make videos like this as I like to have an idea what is happening, but I’d really not enjoy being there in person.

To be honest the whole high-end market is starting to annoy me. I’ve no idea who the customer base is, but we just seem to have room after room after room of >€100k systems. Many being many multiples of that. Every one looking just like the last; another window into vulgar excess and pointless consumerism. Astonishingly unimaginative too, so much generic high-mass, CNC machined and piano lacquered variations on familiar shapes, but without any additional character or personality. Endless large blobs of aluminium and painted MDF that would need a fork-lift to move. If an industry wanted to alienate a young music-loving audience, in fact typical music fans of any age, I can’t think of a better way of achieving that aim. It all just shouts Veblen goods and irrelevance. Sure, I realise ‘high-end’ is a big clue in the event name, so I shouldn’t be surprised if it is rammed full of kit for oil sheiks, dictators, oligarchs, sports stars and landed gentry, but I’m still astounded by just how much of this stuff there is, and mostly from unknown brands (I recognise maybe a third or slightly more, and I have had an obsessive interest in audio for 45 years). There is something incredibly depressing about it. This is not where home audio should have ended up IMHO.
 
Just watching it now, I’m so pleased people make videos like this as I like to have an idea what is happening, but I’d really not enjoy being there in person.

To be honest the whole high-end market is actually starting to annoy me. I’ve no idea who the customer base is, but we just seem to have room after room after room of >€100k systems. Many being multiples of that. Every one looking just like the last; another window into vulgar excess and pointless consumerism. Astonishingly unimaginative too, so much just looks generic high-mass, CNC machined and piano lacquered variations on familiar shapes. So many large blobs of aluminium and painted MDF that would need a fork-lift to move. If an industry wanted to alienate a young music-loving audience, in fact typical music fans of any age I can’t think of a better way of achieving that aim. It all just shouts irrelevance. Sure, I realise ‘high-end’ is a big clue in the event name, so I shouldn’t be surprised if it is rammed full of kit for oil sheiks, dictators, oligarchs, sports stars and landed gentry, but I’m still astounded by just how much of this stuff there is, and mostly from unknown brands (I recognise maybe a third or slightly more, and I have had an obsessive interest in audio for 45 years). There is something incredibly depressing about it. This is not where home audio should have ended up IMHO.
It's not where home audio has ended up, it's where the high end with their £20,000 handbags and £50,000 shoes have ended up. They want something to show off in their luxury homes and yachts.
 
I’m still astounded by just how much of this stuff there is, and mostly from unknown brands (I recognise maybe a third or slightly more, and I have had an obsessive interest in audio for 45 years).

To be fair, the many of the names are simply just not well known in the UK.

If you talk to many of these manufacturers, most dismiss the UK as a market because people simply wouldn’t buy their stuff. They do very well elsewhere in the world.

I remember chatting to the guys from Naim when the Statement amps were launched and they had identified the main markets for them as China, Russia and Canada. They expected UK sales to be minimal.
 
I remember chatting to the guys from Naim when the Statement amps were launched and they had identified the main markets for them as China, Russia and Canada.

I’m surprised Canada is on that list, I didn’t realise it was that divided. The other two are dictatorships/oligarchies, so certainly have an extraordinary amount of money within the hands of a all-powerful elite. I’d expect the Middle East oil dictatorships to be a big market for this ultra-high-end stuff too.
 
To be fair, the many of the names are simply just not well known in the UK.

If you talk to many of these manufacturers, most dismiss the UK as a market because people simply wouldn’t buy their stuff. They do very well elsewhere in the world. ...
That instantly raises a couple of questions in my mind. What is it about the UK market which makes it not buy their stuff? And/or what is it about elsewhere in the world which does make those markets buy their stuff?
 
Goood post Tony - I share your despair. The D'Agostino stuff for example is just so blingy and ugly I can't get past the looks to even lust after it... The companies I admire are companies like ATC, SME, Rega, Naim, Kef, Dynaudio, Linn, B&W, Pro-ject, Rotel, Cambridge Audio, Michell, Ortofon, Audio Technica, Lyra, PMC, T&A, Quad etc who make great sounding kit that 'normal' people on decent incomes can afford to buy but which is capable of sounding fantastic. When I look at an SME Model 12 or an ATC SCM50 I can see where the engineering is, I can understand why the stuff costs what it does and I find that reassuring. The stupidly expensive stuff is just an arms race for people who have more money than sense. They're the people who buy a Bugatti Veyron or McLaren P1 when something like a Ferrari Dino or Lotus Emira is just a far better driving experience.

The sad thing is that the mags have latched on to the uber-expensive stuff as a way to sucker in readers who will never buy the stuff and just want to read about it. Actually the stuff that gets me interested is some of the really cool retro stuff that JBL and Cambridge Audio and Naim are doing now. Those orange grilled JBL loudspeakers are just cool as hell and I'd love to know what they sound like.

Maybe it's our age or maybe it's the fact we live in the real world with real incomes...

Birdseed

Anyway on a lighter note here's an incredible video of a simply gorgeous Ferrari Dino - turn it up and tell me the engine sound doesn't make the hairs on the back of your nexk stand up!!
 
That instantly raises a couple of questions in my mind. What is it about the UK market which makes it not buy their stuff? And/or what is it about elsewhere in the world which does make those markets buy their stuff?

I think we have far fewer of the oligarch types that it's all aimed at. Our hifi is very much 'man in a shed' type stuff that rich folk wouldn't p*ss on if it were on fire.

I also think as a nation we are just less showy, being a show off just isn't a British thing, sure there are some about that buck that trend but overall I think we're a much more restrained nation with things like that, also we're a bunch of cheapskates so spending 100k on an amp is about as likely as Boris Johnson telling the truth.
 


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