Hifi Pig’s coverage of the Munich High End show is now available for FREE download. There’s over 140 pages of comment, photographs, inerviews and reports in this bumper edition that has been sponsored by Tellurium Q.
As well as all the great content one lucky reader will have the chance to win a Hifi Pig Special Edition pair of loudspeakers kindly given by Kralk Audio and a pair of Tellurium Q speaker cables to connect the speakers to your rig.
Download your copy now!
As you may have seen before, we like to give an award, to express our love for what Hifi Pig sees as our favourite room of the show. Now, this is not strictly for the ‘Best Sound’ at the show, though that is definitely a factor, we take other things into consideration. We pick rooms that sound great, have attentive (but not pushy) staff who are friendly and knowledgeable. The room has to look really nice and have a style about it…effort has to have gone into how it looks and feels to be in the room, as well as how it sounds. More »
Hifi Pig’s very last report on High End Munich 2016. More »
High End is a BIG event and there is just so much to see, hear and report on that inevitably it’s impossible to cover everything we would like. So, in the penultimate report from High End Munich 2106 we’re going to look at some of the exhibits and stands that others may have bypassed or not given a second glance to because they weren’t in a huge room, with huge speakers and making a huge sound. More »
PMC launched the twenty5 series to mark the company’s 25th anniversary at High End.
The five strong twenty5 series features a multitude of innovations, including a key development that has been achieved as a result of the research into aerodynamics that was originally conducted PMC’s flagship studio monitors, the QB1 – the reference loudspeaker of the world famous Capitol Studios, LA. In keeping with all PMC products, the foundation of the twenty5 series is Advanced Transmission Line bass loading, which has been improved and enhanced with the new aerodynamically designed Laminair vent technology. More »
Always a bit of a highlight at High-End is Gryphon Audio’s room. Owner Flemming Rasmussen always has something new to show us and this year was no exception. We missed the press launch due to a prior engagement but were graciously allowed to sit in with Gryphon distributors for their launch of the Kodo Reference Loudspeaker system. More »
The vinyl revolution shows no signs of retreating behind the barricades and here in our second look at vinyl at high end Munich 2016 we see a number of innovative and pricey vinyl spinners…and some not to expensive of course. Part 1 can be found here. Sperling Audio, Rega, AMG, Acoustic Solid, Clearaudio, Trans Rotor, WE Audio Systems, Well Tempered Lab, Audio Deva, Pro-Ject, SPEC Corporation, Acoustic Signature, Gpinto, Kuzma, Sibatech, Acoustical Systems More »
JoSound are based in Jersey and make rather distinctive single driver loudspeakers and we’ve been lucky enough to review their Cartouche and Ra models over the last few years. Hifi Pig met up for a chat with Joe Jouhal from JoSound at the end of this years High End in Munich where he was demonstrating his latest Horus loudspeakers. More »
Living Voice is certainly one room we at Hifi Pig always make a bee-line for at Munich High-End and it’s invariably one of he highlights of the show. And that’s no surprise given that their flagship model costs around £435 000 (yes around half a million) plus taxes. However, this year the British company brought along a slightly more affordable model in the shape of the Vox Palladian that costs £252 000. Hifi Pig spoke to Kevin Scott the creator of Vox loudspeakers and owner of Living Voice. More »
Entotem are a UK based company that burst onto the audio scene at last year’s Bristol Show with Plato, a product that will not only stream your music and video but will also automatically digitize your vinyl for you. Ian Ringstead reviewed it for Hifi Pig and loved it but the company haven’t rested on their laurels and have continued to innovate and introduce new products. At this years High End Show they had the original Plato, Plato Lite and Plato Pre on show. As well as the new Plato they’ve improved and developed the app, introduced Hi Res Audio download service and also introduced a Class A amplifier to their range of products. Hifi Pig caught up with Andy Hughes from Entotem at their very busy stand at High End. More »
Part five of Hifi Pig’s coverage of High End Munich 2016 featuring: Innuos and Leema, Telos Audio Design, Geometric Harmony, Audium & Atoll, Moon By Simaudio, Naim and Focal, Audioquest, Graham Audio, Genelec, Ear Yoshino Tim De Paravicini, Absolare and Rockport Technologies, Van den Hul, Heco More »
Tubes/valves hold a real fascination for audiophiles with many many using them and swearing by them. Here’s a selection of tubes we found at this year’s High End in Munich. Of course there were lots of rooms using tubes and most of the pictures you see here were taken on stands where we weren’t able to listen to them. Includes: Angstrom, LAB 12, Unison Research, Audion, Triode Labs, Tsakiridis Devices, Jadis, Acoustic Plan, Fezz Audio, Mastersound, Dared, Cayin, AudioValve, Rumee Audio, Remton
You can read our highlights series of posts here with loads more tube systems as well as solid state. More »
Part four of Hifi Pig’s coverage of High End Munich 2016 featuring: Neodio, Audio Hungary, Bang And Olufsen, Terrastrato Typ 1 Standard, Estelon, Blumenhofer Acoustics and Cammino, Indiana Line, TW Acustic, Constellation and Martin Logan, TAD, D’Agostino, Wadia, Krell, Audio Research, Meridian, EAT, Sonus Faber More »
Part three of Hifi Pig’s highlights of this year’s high end show in Munich. Featuring: Mark Levinson, Harbeth, R Dacoustic, 440 Audio and KR Audio, IAG, Nagra, dCS, Rogue, Eggleston Works and Analogueworks, Totem, Trinnov, Mola Mola and Vivid Audio, hORNS, Credo, Graditech, Lansche Audio, Meitner Emm Labs, Daudio, Grimm, Marantz, McIntosh Labs, Volya Audio. More »
The continued success of the vinyl format shows no signs of slowing and, judging by the number of turntables on show at this year’s High End, there’s plenty of choice for vinyl lovers when it comes to getting into the grooves.
There were turntables pretty much at every turn at the show with everything from the highly exotic to the more affordable and sober.
Here’s a few of the vinyl spinners that caught our eye on our tour of High End. More »
In the second part of our highlights from High End Munich 2016 we have Q Acoustics, Advance Acoustics, Quadral, AEquo Audio, Kawero & Kondo, Living Voice, Wilson Benesch, Viva, Way Cables, Tune Audio, Trafomatic, Rockna, Computer Audio Design and Boenicke and finally Silbatone. More highlights from High End Munich to come in the coming days. More »
Once again, the HIGH END® made a splash as the world’s largest trade fair for the audio industry.
518 exhibitors from 42 countries (+2%)
19,489 attendees in total (-6%)
7,053 trade visitors from 69 countries (+7%)
More international than ever before. More »
Ian Ringstead had only ever read about the Munich High End show from afar, but this year decided to jump in with both feet pops his cherry. Here’s what he thought about his first time. More »
Contrary to what some, quite ‘stuck in their ways’ men in the hifi universe may think, there are actually a lot of women who are fans of music and the gear that we play it on, and that work in the hifi industry. More »
Lampizator, Skogrand, Emmespeakers, Analog Design, Kronos, Stacore, SoundKaos, SOtM, Bauta, Ayon,; Fischer & Fischer, Mudr Akustik, AVM and Elac
The High End Show at Munich is an absolutely gargantuan task for anyone to undertake but it always ends up been worth the effort of trying to see absolutely ever room you can as you come across some real gems that you just weren’t expecting…and of course some that you perhaps expected would be great anyway.
The vast majority of exhibitors go to an extraordinary amount of effort to make their rooms the very best they can be and all credit must go to them. As always though there are the rooms and stands that really leap out at you and remain in your memory for the whole of the show and a long time afterwards.
So, here are some of what I considered to be the real gems of this years show. They’re in no particular order and are likely to be in the order we happened across them. More »
Whilst attending the Munich High End show last week I was excited to be invited to see and hear the new Wilson Audio Alexx loudspeakers. This was an exclusive press event held at luxury audio specialist My Sound near Munich. The venue was truly spectacular and really did justice to the Wilson Audio range of speakers, which are of course renowned the world over. More »
Hifi Pig were invited along at this year’s HIGH END Munich to Dynaudio’s launch of their new Contour range of loudspeakers. The new series consists of four models: the compact 20, the medium-sized floor standing 30, the larger floor standing 60, and the 25C dedicated centre channel speaker for movie lovers. More »
It was interesting to see that British brand Entotem, who’ve Hifi Pig have been watching with interest for a good while now, had got their Plato unit in the Avantgarde set up, though they hadn’t got it in the system when we first popped our heads in the room. So, we thought we’d have a bit of a chat with Entotem to see what was afoot. More »
Every year we make a beeline for the Newcomers stand at High-End as these are the people that are the potential future of the hifi industry. The stand in Hall 1 is a great idea of the High-End Society, giving brands with little or no marketing budgets the opportunity to share their ideas and their concepts with an audience they could only dream of having. We managed to get to see the Newcomers early on the final day of the High-End Show and a couple of the exhibitors were clearly flagging, but the vast majority managed to be enthusiastic and passionate about their products. More »
There’s been a bit of a buzz around the audio world in the last twelve months or so and it’s a buzz that is pretty hard to ignore unless you have your head buried firmly in the sand…or where the sun don’t shine. Yes, it’s retro, yes, it’s funky and yes it’s bloody expensive to get into in any serious kind of way, but it’s hard to ignore the rise of the open reel (reel to reel) format if you have attended any meaningful Hifi show in the last year or more. We’ve even invested in the format here at Hifi Pig towers and we’re loving the sound we’re getting. More »
