The newcomers part of Munich High End is a great idea and gives those company’s that are relatively new to the industry the opportunity to showcase their products without having to shell out huge amounts of cash for a stand or room proper. It’s a great thing that the High End Society does and I for one hope they continue this tradition in the future!

New to Munich High-End this year but not to regular readers of Hifi Pig is Audio 4 Soul who make a great sounding True Digital Amplifiers that we reviewed a while ago. At High End this year they were showing off their latest addition to their range – the Reference 50, plus a new set of OCC speaker cables that Jerry has reviewed and will be live on the Hifi Pig site very soon.

Next on the Newcomers stand was Stack Audio from Great Britain and Theo Stack who is straight out of six form and designing this streamer that has been engineered from the ground up and is machined from a solid billet of aluminium. It comes complete with a never connected power supply, separate rails for the Clock and DSP. It’s heavy bit of kit and it’s certainly very impressive to look at with plenty of brownie points as far as cool goes and inside has low noise clocks. Hifi Pig certainly wish Theo and his team all the very best with this project that we’re sure will be the first of many!

Nippon Hifi in the guise of Jani Leppälammi (pictured) from Finland distribute the Japanese made SoulNote kit in Europe were on the newcomers stand too. We were really impressed with their little SA 710 integrated amp we reviewed not too long ago and have reviews of its bigger brother and a CD player coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Evolution Audio and head honcho Alfred Langer (pictured speaking with Stuart) make a turntable which is direct drive and it’s an impressive looking bit of kit. They offer the turntable as a full package in a range of finishes that uses the same sub chassis through out. It’s a brushless design and you can buy the motor and speed control unit on its own for putting into your very own DIY turntable for €2900 whereas the finished turntable tips the scales at €7500. Be an interesting comparison to the direct driver turntable we have at Hifi Pig as a reference.

A Charlin powered by Roboli Design make solid state amplifiers and very nice they look too. Their 4S amplifier boasts 100w a channel and costs € 80 000 and we’d have liked to have had a chat to the French chap manning the stand but it appeared every time we approached he was engrossed in something far more important.

Hemiolia Records are an independent record label based in Perugia, Italy and do master tapes for reel to reel machines and offer a small collection (so far) of recordings that are bound to be of interest to the enthusiast of this format.

Stepnext UG are a German company and make the Next Board which is a modular board system
with a size of 60 x 45 centimeters offering space inside to accommodate HTPC, hard drives, routers, or DA converters. If more space is needed they can be arranged horizontally or vertically and extended as required. Optional accessories include a universal docking station for smartphones and tablets and a cable channel.

Best of luck to all the newcomers at this years Munich High End, all at hifi Pig wish you every success for the future of your businesses!