HIGH END MUNICH 2023 REPORT BY ERIC VAN SPELDE PART 2

HiFi PiG’s Germany and Benelux reporter and reviewer takes us around the second and final part of his report on the High End Munich show 2023.

Lansche Audio

Another German high end manufacturer that tends to fly under audiophiles´ radar in most foreign markets, and one of less than a handful that has managed to productionise Plasma (ionisation) high frequency units featuring pretty much zero moving mass. Plasma tweeters aren´t just reserved for the top models in the range, either: all of the four models in the range feature the same unit and Lansche were going against the grain by not showing off the huge, seven-driver P 9.2 but the Benjamin of the range, the neat and unassuming P 3.2. The only other items in the room were a small rack with three black boxes: a Gigawatt PC-3 power conditioner while the others were branded Lansche (no information on their website, sadly), one was marked ´VDAC´ and the other had what looked like a cd-slot. Anyhow – the highs and upper mids of these speakers are out of this world transparent and fast, and the lower and middle ranges are well enough integrated that they are not obviously out of tune with that fabulous top end; and in this case, all of it comes in a very living room-friendly package.

Lehmann Audio

Norbert Lehmann founded his own company as an audio engineering student in Cologne, back in 1988. The portfolio consists of headphone, power and phono amps and in the latter category the Black Cube has been a stalwart for many years. One day, the people at Lehmann found one Sven Väth on the list of customers. Now some readers may not have heard of him, but in Germany (and beyond) he´s pretty much the original techno god. A collaboration plan was quickly hatched and so we now have the Black Cube Sven Väth Edition – which is not just a regular Black Cube with Väths name printed on it and a limited edition 7” single that comes with it; the music producer actually had some input in the technical part, which resulted in some capacitors having been upgraded compared to the standard Black Cube. An excellent initiative to bring premium sound to the sort of audience that is more likely to be in clubs at weekends than on HiFi shows.

Levin Design

The rather stunning Silbatone amps from South Korea were found at the show in two places: at Silbatone themselves where, as per usual, they were driving huge horn speakers designed for cinemas in the 1920s and ´30s (more about that later) and at Levin Design, where they were partnered with something rather more living room friendly. Levin´s speakers are in essence a cube out of slate featuring a coaxial speaker with a ribbon high-frequency unit on top of a bigger, more rectangular box from the same material, containing a large woofer. Levin Design also offers a headphone amp, a loooong tonearm, a part-carbon fibre platter mat that works wonders with the bigger mass-loaded turntables in particular and more. Also featured were the Vermeer Audio Three network streamer/DAC and equipment support courtesy of Schroers & Schroers from Berlin. It looked good, sounded great and Kim and Frank Levin are lovely, genuinely enthusiastic people.

Linn

The big news from the Glaswegian HiFi stalwarts is the launch of the new flagship speaker, Exakt 360. A momentous occasion as the last time Linn introduced a new top-of-the-line speaker was eighteen years ago… Hence, literally everything is new: the enclosure, the speaker units, the electronics… The development goal was, to make a sonically ´invisible´ speaker that does not draw any attention to itself, not through colouration, distortion or other untoward behaviour – and do it on a footprint that would still be acceptable in most households. The result runs into six figures in Euros – if only just – in its full fat, fully active form – there´s a passive 360 version too, that is fully upgradeable to full Exact spec if and when the owner wishes – and while being a large floor stander, is compact enough not to dominate its environment.

A Linn Klimax DSM network player and the full-house LP12 Klimax were delivering the tunes to the active 360s during the presentation, where an enjoyable variety of music was being played – none of it specifically aimed at audiophiles, which was a breath of fresh air to be honest. Stuff like the latest Yeah Yeah Yeahs album might not make the grade in strictly HiFi terms but there was a very palpable sense that the system was always on the music´s side and out to forge a connection with the listener – which is, or should be, what it´s all about.

Living Voice

Kevin Scott and Lynn Scott of Definitive Audio near Nottingham are ´music´ people par excellence and although they have been demoing and selling the most exquisitely built and finished horn systems with price tags deep into six figures to super yacht owners for years, they never forget their prime raison d´etre. With the long-awaited R80 speakers, their Living Voice brand is bridging the gap between the long-established, but ever-evolving Auditorium series and the megabuck, horn-loaded Vox range. You could say that the R80, which according to Kevin has just gone into series production – is in essence an Auditorium with more cubic inches under the hood – more volume, more membrane surface area, more everything – but there must be a lot more to it. With a suite of SJS valve amplification running Takatsuki and Living Voice 300Bs, Kuzma XL AIR and Grand Prix Monaco V 3.0 turntables – the latter of which in all its compactness and carbon fibre construction is a dream record deck for yours truly with a Viv Labs Rigid Float tonearm for the ultimate in energy preservation and visual understatement – a custom Consolidated step up transformer (a work of art in itself) all of it sitting on Living Voice´s own equipment stand and fed by the fabled bank of batteries that always gets taken to Munich (a not inconsiderable cost factor in itself, I imagine) the sound was as dynamic and musically expressive as I ever experienced in this room. Utterly convincing.

Lorenzo Audio Labs

Some beautiful Spanish artisanship. Wardrobe-size speakers in piano black and gold with horn-loaded highs and high-mids, driven by TLA amplification and fed by way of the full-house Kronos turntable system and another double stack of Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra music servers (I have laid a request at the virtual door of Pink Faun head honcho Jord Groen to have explained what that one´s all about). Big, beautiful sounds.

Luxman

One of the grand old names in Japanese HiFi offering bank-vault build quality, the sort of functionality that we took for granted in the ´70s and early ´80 before audio purism took over, and more than enough musical nous to lift itself from the mainstream, its nearest competition arguably being Accuphase. Both integrated and pre/power amps were available for demonstration, accompanied by the PD-191A turntable, NT-07 network player and D-07X integrated CD player.

While it might not quite scale the heights of some of the more exotic line-ups here, you are unlikely to be disappointed with a Luxman presentation, much less one using Focal Utopia Scalas and a big frigging Stromtank to provide the juice. Classy, lush, easy to live with.

MBL

For Munich, MBL pulled out the stops and provided the biggest Radialstrahler supported by a stack of woofers and driven by a quartet of huge power amps. While their dispersion characteristics prescribe that they lack the directness, impact and precise imaging of more conventional or even horn speakers, we know of quite a few mainly classic music lovers that downright adore the MBLs because they make them feel like they´re sitting in the middle rows of a concert hall – fair enough I´d say. The aesthetics are a bit rich for my taste, too – but the gear is undeniably engineered and built to a very high standard.

McIntosh Group

McIntosh and Sonus Faber weren´t at the High End as such, choosing to hold their press conference – a remarkably relaxed affair without any speeches or presentations, ´just have a walk around and enjoy the music´- and dealer presentations in the Kempinski Hotel in central Munich. There were three big novelties, two of which we´re allowed to tell you about here and now.

Proving, along with Bellame in the first part of this High End report, that mid-century aesthetics are becoming a ´thing´, McIntosh was launching a reimagination of their very first loudspeaker, the ML1 that was introduced in 1970 and ran until ´77. Quaint as the ML-1 Mk II might look – the vertical wooden slats of the original might have been gone for acoustic reasons, but otherwise it´s a faithful reproduction made from oiled American walnut (both solid wood and veneer) to which a ´vintage´ cast aluminium logo has been added to the speaker stands – the innards are thoroughly modern. The ML1 Mk II features a single 12-inch woofer and two 4-inch lower midrange drivers flanking a 2” upper midrange dome speaker, while high frequencies are handled by a ¾” titanium dome tweeter. Sensitivity is modest at a stated 85 dB/W, the speaker is however designed to handle the output of a 600 W amplifier. Bi-amping using the MC 451 power amps -solid state for bass, tubes for the mid/high-frequency section) is an option, and this is the configuration that we listened to. Those who were expecting a vintage sound experience with oodles of flappy bass, dark brown tinted vocal ranges and not much in the way of high-frequency extension or imaging, will have been either disappointed or pleasantly surprised – not just the technology, but also the voicing of the second-gen ML1s is most definitely of the 21^st century.

Sonus Faber celebrated its 40^th anniversary by reimagining a classic from its portfolio, too – albeit one from this century rather than from 1983. In 2004, the quintessentially Italian brand launched the Stradivari Homage, a floorstanding speaker with a very distinctive wide and relatively shallow oval footprint. The second-generation Stradivari that Sonus Faber launched not at, but in time for the High End, is, at first glance, true to the original´s aesthetic although the ellipse shape has made way for a pentagram. The driver arrangement of this 3.5-way acoustic suspension speaker with a separate, vented, chamber for the bass drivers, has changed somewhat too. A pair of 10-inch drivers cover the low frequencies, the midrange driver measures 6” and a 25 mm dome covers the high frequencies. Sensitivity is stated at 92 dB/W/m. The cable binding posts at the rear offer three possible connections to tailor bass response: one for a flat response while the other two bump up the bass to a small or somewhat larger extent. For the demonstration – with a full McIntosh rig featuring huge monoblock power amps of course – the biggest ´bump´ was selected while sound pressure levels were varying between ´fairly loud´ and ´ravetastic´ – the Sonus Faber folks at the controls certainly were taking no prisoners in a bid to impress… Still, the Stradivaris remained in control throughout and never, ever came even close to shouting at you or losing their prodigious grip and focus. 45,000 euro for the pair might be a lot of dosh even in today´s market but for a ´do it all´ speaker that holds its own as a piece of high-class furniture seems not too unreasonable…

MSB Technology

From California, MSB Technology offers a four-strong range of DACs, the ´biggest´ of which come in several boxes with separate preamp modules, as well as big stereo and monoblock amps. At the high end, they were using a – or should we say, yet another – Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra streamer from the Netherlands and Marten speakers, all knitted together with Ikigai cabling – another small, artisanal Dutch company. A class act all round.

Nagra

´My Wilsons are bigger than yours´ – where most exhibitors demonstrating their wares on Wilson Audio speakers, perhaps sensibly, settled for Alexias, Nagra chose the Alexx Vs on the end of two rackfuls of delectable Swiss precision engineering (plus a pair of their HD monoblock amp towers standing on the floor) featuring – among other – the humungous Reference Anniversary turntable.  The news, however, was on the more affordable end of the portfolio in the shape of the Classic DAC II at a relatively modest (by Nagra standards) 18,000 euro. It features the same NADM (Nagra Audio Digital Module) digital engine employed in the HD DAC X and TUBE DAC, and accommodates all current high-resolution formats such as DSD 4x (256) and DXD.  Other highlights include an output stage featuring discrete topology in pure Class A and an improved built-in power supply along with the option to connect a Nagra external reference power supply, Classic PSU to further improve performance.

Naim

Another big introduction was tasking place at Naim, who launched the Classic 300 Series in a press conference on Thursday. The 300 Series line includes NSS 333, a high-resolution streaming solution; the NAC 332 preamplifier, the NAP 350 monoblock power amplifier, the NVC TT phono preamplifier and its dedicated power supply NPX TT.  The phono stage is basically the one from the limited-edition Solstice turntable system, put in its own box, and the amplifiers benefit from technology transfer from the Statement amp in several areas. We understand that despite being all-new designs, the 300 series components are backwards compatible with existing Naim equipment, so you can use existing upgrade power supplies from older models with the new amps. We got a little taste of the new gear playing Stella Utopia EMs from sister company Focal.

For the company´s 50^th anniversary, Naim is bringing back the original Nait of 1983 vintage, that is, the casework design as of course internally it´s a brand new design knocking out 25 Watts per channel (the original made do with 18 W aside). Only 1,973 copies will be finding their way to retailers worldwide so if you have the original Nait and your partner still doesn´t allow you to buy a new amp, here´s your chance – they´ll be none the wiser…

Nordost

More Wilson and Dan D´Agostino at world-renowned cable manufacturer Nordost. Source, power supply units, power distributor et cetera on Nordost´s own Sort Kones.

Phasemation

Most will know Phasemation by now from their excellent MC cartridges and step-up transformers at very favourable price/performance ratios – but there´s more… Passive/inductive volume control preamp, big and beautiful monoblock valve amps. The turntable is the elusive Yuki AP-01, loudspeakers courtesy of Wolf von Langa. An intriguing and musically satisfying set up, my only (small) gripe was that the WvL SON tends to project the stereo image nearer knee height…

Piega

Another big launch, another press conference: the Swiss manufacturer of elegant silver column speakers with ribbon mids and highs presented what is by all means the new flagship of their ´regular´ programme (there is a still larger and much more expensive one, but – just like for instance the Naiad turntable at Rega – that four-part Master Line Source is not really a production model). The MLS 2 Gen2 aims to bring high-end sound to rooms that aren´t high-end (acoustically), which is something many of us can get on board with – who actively wants to sit alone in a soundproofed basement? To this end, the MLS 2 Gen2 combines ribbon, dipole and coaxial technologies to tailor its dispersion pattern so it will work in modern living spaces which offer not much in the way of damping. Compared to its direct predecessor, the cabinet of the MLS2 Gen2 is slightly smaller and significantly reinforced. The MLS2 Gen2 is priced at 75,000 euro a pair.

I must say that for me, the Piegas playing Nick Cave´s Into My Arms was one of my highlights of the show, both for the musical content and the speakers´ ability to get out of the way of that music. Also, another pair that had been used as a canvas by a visual artist was placed in the entrance hall in front of Hall 4, which was a nice touch.

Premium Audio co.

Klipsch, Jamo, Magnat and Heco occupied a large stand together, with each brand occupying a living room-like space – Klipsch´ one being a little larger than the others because of the giant Klipsch Jubilee, a 2-way horn system that looks like it belongs on stage or in a cinema, and comes complete with an active crossover at 49,500 euro for the lot. A pair of McIntosh MC 451s – solid state for bass, tubes for mids and highs – was called upon for amplification.

Progressive Audio

A German outfit that I knew little about beforehand, offering a wide portfolio of living room-friendly speakers, the larger of which featured ceramic drivers, and a series of classy-looking electronics. On demo were the Evidence Diamon floorstanders, that combined two ceramic bass units with a coaxial driver for the mid and high-frequency range. Crossovers are developed to be phase and impedance linear throughout the range. The rest of the chain consisted of CD2 cd-player/transport, DAC 992 Reference, er, DAC, A 902 Reference integrated amplifier and Power Station power conditioner. Cabling was courtesy of Furutech. An ensemble and room that sounded as well as it looked.

Pro-Ject

A sushi bar without the sushi, but with turntable upgrades rolling along in circles instead under the banner ´All You Can Upgrade´ took centre stage at Pro-Ject´s huge Hall 3 stand, homing in on the upgrade paths available to owners of Pro-Ject turntables. The purple EAT turntable, however, was quite the eye-catcher, too…

Raidho

The cable runs give it away: no, it wasn´t the floor-to-(almost)-ceiling TD6s that were playing in the Raidho room when we were there, it was the comparatively tiny X2ts that were filling the BIG space with BIG sound. Yes, surprised the heck out of us, too. Partnering equipment was all Moon.

(HiFi) Rose

Judging from the branding of the Munich show stand, Hifi Rose identifies as Rose nowadays. It seemed like only a year or two ago that Hifi Rose was just an integrated amplifier doing the rounds in the scene, but looking at the myriad of amps and streamers parked in several rows, you get an idea of the growth the brand has experienced. The South Koreans were showing off their brand new flagship streamer RS 130, which packs a lot of technology (and no DAC) in an unassuming package.

Sigma Acoustics/ Extreme Audio

More Italian artisanal production here – huge three-way speakers with 125-inch woofers, alnico midrange Air Motion Transformer high-frequency units and double S-shaped cabinets, driven by an eclectic (and highly capable) ensemble of Thuono Audio turntable, Audio Research phono pre, Pink Faun music server (of which Extreme Audio is the distributor for Italy), CanEVER DAC, WhiteGold cables… And last but not least very atmospheric lighting, making this room something of an audio sanctuary.

Silbatone

Thank heavens they were back this year, after having missed the 2022 edition. Silbatone´s traditional big room in a corner of Atrium 4.1 is something of a palate cleanser, featuring what´s literally an old favourite – the 1927(!) vintage Western Electric 12B ´snail horns´, driven by Silbatone´s own P-103 power amp knocking out a healthy 8 Watts from its 205D triodes (which is rather a lot by Silbatone standards). Never mind a movie theatre, these could raise the roof of a stadium (provided it has one). More up to the minute (but not by much) and much smaller were the 1937 Lansings, the great grandfathers of every two-way 15-inch woofer-with-compression-driver-on-exponential-horn speaker built since.

SPL Audio

Lots of bright red and black boxes from the German manufacturer of headphone amps, preamp/DACs, power amps and electronic crossovers. SPL themselves also did crossover – from the studio to domestic HiFi that is. Both branches seem to be doing quite well.

Stein Music

More big horns from Germany. They also do a line of accessories which work by exotic if not esoteric principles, which nonetheless is held in high regard by most of those who have been open-minded enough to try them without prejudice.

Thrax

The Bulgarian manufacturer´s equipment always looks as if it´s hewn from solid metal – which in many cases isn´t too far from the truth… The Yatrus direct-drive turntable (with a Schroeder-designed tonearm and Koetsu cartridge), Orpheus Mk3 preamplifier and a pair of whopping great Spartacus 300B monoblocks from the brand´s Statement series were driving a pair of Lyra SE two-way monitors which stood on top of a pair of subwoofers. Typically for Thrax, the sound was big and airy with excellent separation and completely devoid of ´grain´, painting on the blackest of backgrounds.

Tidal

Tidal had its room divided into separate parts: a ´public´ area where the new Contriva G3 with the Contros digital music controller and Intra amplifier resided (but sadly, there was no activity going on when we were there) and one that was separated from the hoi polloi, where the ´Tidal for Bugatti´ line was to be introduced to a select group of customers – I would guess, the Bugatti Chiron customers who want a pair of Bugattis in the lounge as well as in their garage. Alas, all we could do is gaze at them from afar…

Totem

From the literally unreachable to the very affordable. Canadian outfit Totem was always a cut above the mass market in terms of price and finish in relation to cabinet size/number and size of drivers, but here we are, being confronted with the new Bison series, consisting of a standmount and two floorstanding speakers that occupy the price range between roughly 2,000 and 3,500 euro that´s traditionally ´theirs´ – next to a pair of powered monitors od which the smallest dips under a thou´ (if I´ve understood correctly, the larger of the two is priced at 1,395 euro/pair)… Moreover, I´ve heard the larger of the two, running from a Block Audio network streamer/DAC/preamp at 2,100 euro – and it did give a big slice of what ´true´ HiFi is all about.

Tune Audio

Tune Audio brought the 105 dB sensitive Epitome horns, in their own words ´a trickle-down project from the flagship Avaton´ but a formidable speaker in its own right, featuring a huge asymmetrical low/mid horn taking over from a 15-inch woofer at the low end. It proved to possess all the hallmarks of a well-designed, big horn system: speed, immediacy, and effortlessness. The supporting cast consisted of a Rockna music server and DA-converter with a Trafomatic amplifier; the latter two sported a red livery to match the big horns.

Vienna Acoustics

The Austrian speaker builders offered a light, airy and lightly furnished room with no electronics cluttering the space in between the speakers for our perusal. That, of course, was because the active Mozart Infinity they were launching at 12,000 euro for the pair, has all the necessary stuff integrated: network, digital, analogue and even HDMI.  The built-in streaming module supporting Spotify and Tidal directly, is of their own development, and everything including the electronics is made in Europe – of which the company is rightly proud.

Von Schweickert

Ad hoc rock ´n roll dancing in the Von Schweickert room by this lovely pair – isn´t that what HiFi is about? Let the good times roll, we´d say…

Voxativ

It´s no secret that we´re fans of the Berlin brand specialising in full-range driver-based speaker systems and the modular 9.88 system is on our fairly short list of ´speakers we would buy with our own money if we had the means´. At this years High End, though, we listened to the Ampeggio – the back loaded horn that brought Voxativ to hifi´s main stage as the company started 15 years ago, albeit reimagined for 2023. The cabinets are optimised, the driver is now the AC-1.9 or the new AC-4B – both available with paper or wood cones, you can have them in any colour as long as it´s Berlin Piano Black, prices start at a fairly reasonable 25,900 euro and they did sing at the end of Voxativ´s 805 single-ended triode stereo amplifier, appearing to suffer none of the usual bandwidth and dynamics limitations of single driver designs. Nor do they shout at you when turning up the wick with more ´difficult´ music. A propos: the music choice, as always, was that bit more interesting than most of the HiFi show fodder, so this was definitely a room where we would have liked to stay a little longer.

VTL

A premier American maker of big-hearted valve amps that experienced a renaissance in recent years, and yet another pair of Wilsons doing the talking (Alexia Vs in Spearmint, to be precise). Little to go wrong here, and the sound was as you expect: big, lush, and effortless while still scoring highly on all the usual tick-box HiFi parameters.

WLM

The Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur not only brought a broad array of loudspeakers, including on-wall speaker panels, but also the electronics to go with them, many of the items sporting a Perspex cover to allow a look inside. On demo were the active Franz and passive Diva floorstanders.

WOD

This German high-end distributor of brands like Bergmann, ifi and Miyajima, had an array of very tasty Bergmann turntables on display as per usual, and demonstrated using the new Cessaro Mendelssohn (one of the least ´horny´ Cessaros to date, sporting just a horn-loaded compression driver for high frequencies in a three-way system; this, along with a relatively compact cabinet size, does make it somewhat more living room friendly visually).

Yamaha

Yamaha launched four new products in the affordable price range – the R-N1000A and R-N800A streaming amplifiers using trickle-down technology from the brand´s 2000 series, and the NS-800A and NS-600A bookshelf speakers that are meant to be the obvious ´dancing partners´ for aforementioned network receivers.

YG Acoustics

This American high-end loudspeaker company´s room was heaving at the High End as it launched the third iteration of its Reference series. All models were demonstrated in a strict rotation scheme; while we were there, the relatively ´modest´ Vantage 3 was having a go at it, and it flat refused to be overwhelmed by the size of the room and the number of people inside. The Reference 3 series models will be hitting the market later in the year.

Stu’s Record Choice Let’ Go Tesko

 

Take a tour around the halls in this run around video by HiFi PiG at High End Munich 2023

Eric van Spelde 

We will see you at High End Munich 2024, from May 9th to 12th, 2024 at the MOC Munich!

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Read all the HiFi PiG High End Munich 2023 Reports here