SIX NEW BRANDS MAKE THEIR HIGH END MUNICH DEBUT ON THE START-UP STAND

The High End Society developed the Start-Up Area as a stage for upcoming newcomers to the audio industry.

The joint stand, in Hall 1, gave the young companies a place to showcase their innovative strength, presenting fresh ideas and new technologies.

HIGH END MUNICH START-UP AREA

This has always been one of the parts of the show that we at HiFi PiG are very keen to check out and there have been many brands that we have met for the first time on the Start-Up (or Newcomers, as it used to be known) stand, that have gone on to achieve huge popularity around the world.

We recognise, along with the High End Society, how vital it is to nurture these new businesses and give them a chance to grow.

ARTIS NOVA

Artis Nova is a Spanish startup that designs audio amplifiers combining tubes with digital control and streaming High-Res music.

They say that they “focus on creating delicate designed products that offer exceptional audio quality and stand out for their beauty”. Artis Nova collaborate with artists to offer different aesthetic finishes, such as oxide and pigments on metal, or fine wood carvings. Their amps have several operating modes for expressive sound and multiple digital and analogue inputs. They are also equipping their devices with machine learning algorithms to provide personalized and innovative listening experiences for users.

They were very distinctive and eye catching on the display stand.

Artis Nova from Spain

BEND SPEAKERS

German HiFi brand BEND presented a new generation of speakers. A patented world first, presented for the first time at Munich, the speakers work on a bending wave converter or DML converter transmission principle, creating a floorstanding loudspeaker that they say radiates sound in 360°. They were very functional but also attractive, and looked to be room friendly, with their very slim design. Presented here by Bruno Winter from BEND.

The very interesting BEND panel speakers

DER HUESMANN

This stand featured what I thought was an isolation platform, unfortunately there was no one available that spoke English and my German is very limited so here is some more info from the manufacturer.

The Der Huesmann Earth Conductor works without electricity – it cannot and does not want to replace your HiFi equipment – neither does it add anything to it, nor does it interfere with its electronics, but merely frees it from the load of high frequencies in order to finally let its actual potential become audible in undiminished, sound quality.

Der Huesmann

VAL PICKUP CARTRIDGES

These were very beautiful looking cartridges from Japanese brand Vinyl Audio Laboratory (VAL). They have a structure in which a coil is sandwiched between magnets and is brought close to the stylus tip.

VAL told us: “We adopted this structure so that the tip of the stylus picks up the vibrations of the record without waste and quickly transmits them to the coil to generate electricity. Since the cantilever is a thin rod, it has some deflection and distortion. Therefore, in a typical cartridge structure in which a needle tip and a coil are placed at both ends of the cantilever, the influence of the cantilever cannot be avoided until the vibration picked up by the needle tip is transmitted to the coil(s) through the cantilever”. Vinyl Audio Laboratory aimed to eliminate these uncertainties as much as possible, and to generate electricity by directly transmitting the vibration of the record, picked up by the stylus, to the coil.

VAL cartridges on the Start-Ups stand

TESSITURE

Tessiture is a French manufacturer whose objective is to create speakers whose sound “comes as close as possible to musical instruments”.

The mono-horn (Patented Technology) is the distinctive element of the brand. Through an adapted geometry, the use of the single horn encompasses all the drivers to diffuse the sound collectively.

Kirwan Lelievre told us: “This technique allows us to standardize the diffusion of sound and to offer the listener a perfectly orchestrated sound signal”.

Great attention is also paid to the visual design of their loudspeakers, which really grabbed our attention on the stand.

Kirwan Lelievre presents the Tessiture loudspeakers from France

SUPATRAC

The SUPATRAC Blackbird is a new turntable tone arm from this British HiFi brand that I believe made its debut at this year’s Bristol HiFi Show. It is a patented ‘Sideways Uni-Pivot Arm’. The sideways uni-pivot bearing directly opposes stylus drag at a single point of contact, eliminating microscopic play in the time axis. The Blackbird is designed to resist the pull of the cartridge, opposing the oscillating drag forces to avoid scrubbing, chatter, and the resulting time errors.

Unfortunately, no one was free to speak to me when I passed by the stand.

the SUPATRAC Blackbird tonearm

Watch the HiFi PiG run around the halls of High End Munich 2023 in our video:

Linette Smith

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

NO PART OF THIS ARTICLE MAY BE COPIED IN ANY FORM. THIS INCLUDES WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS WHICH ARE THE PROPERTY OF HiFi PiG AND BIG PIG MEDIA.

Read all the HiFi PiG High End Munich 2023 Reports here