High End Munich – Show Report 9 including NEAT ACOUSTICS, ENGSTROM, ATOHM, DAVIS ACOUSTICS, METRONOME and KALISTA, ALBEDO, AUDIO FLIGHT and FABERS CABLES, AUDIOVECTOR, LYRAVOX, ANTIPODES AUDIO and PURITAN, INDIANA LINE, PIER AUDIO, WOLF VON LANGA, AIR TIGHT, ISO ACOUSTIC, EAR YOSHINO, LEVIN and RIKE, DANISH AUDIO GROUP.

Neat Acoustics, based in the North of England, are a well-loved and well-respected loudspeaker manufacturer headed up by Bob Surgeoner who, as well as being an excellent designer of aforementioned loudspeakers, is also a talented musician who plays out with contre-bass player Bruce Rollo – you can get a feel of their music on this link. Neat used the High End Munich 2002 event to announce their latest iteration of the somewhat legendary Neat Petite standmounter.

Neat tell us that the runaway success of the 2021 limited edition 30th Anniversary ‘Petite 30’ model has led to the demand for a new version of the Petite and that the new ‘Petite Classic’ comes in precisely the same dimensions as the original Petite, but uses the drive units from the Petite 30 and a new crossover network. The component parts have been chosen with extreme care so as to deliver that unique NEAT sound and they say that despite its discreet dimensions, “the Petite Classic delivers astonishingly lifelike images, an exceptional midrange and stunning dynamics whilst maintaining the musical coherence and essence of the original Petite model.” The Petite Classic will be available in two finishes, Textured Black and Satin White and the price is £1,995. Can’t wait to get a listen to this one!

We’ve long championed the isolation footers etc of ISO Acoustics and it was great to see them having such a high profile room at Munich. Dave Morrison, the founder of ISO Acoustics was on hand to carry out the highly convincing demonstration of the effects of their footers. You can read an interview with Dave in the last edition of the HiFi Pig Magazine.

Estelon sadly had an issue with their wi-fi whilst we were up in their room and so Alfred Vassilkov had to improvise with an informative talk about the design of their speakers. This is one of the problems of such massive shows as High End Much; sadly you are on a pretty strict schedule to make sure as much as possible gets covered and no one gets left out, any mishap means a brand loses their spot as there’s not always time to go back. However, having heard Estelon on numerous occasions at shows I’m certain they represented themselves very well. This is unashamedly high-end with price tags to match.

And here’s where I have an issue with folk who go to shows like this and then moan about the price of this brand or that brand. So what if it’s outrageously expensive. These products get people to shows. If you go to a car show you don’t go to look at the Fords and the Skodas (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those brands), you go to look at the Lambos and the Ferraris and the other marques that you may well have lusted from afar over. The truth is you may well leave the show in a Ford or a Skoda, but the cars that drew you to the show are likely to have been the exotics – the same is true for shows such as High End Munich. Apart from anything else the name of the show sort of gives it away!

DCS were in the next room along with D’Agostino and Wilson Audio and all of these are brands I was looking forward to hearing. However, we just don’t have the time to sit through a talk in each and every room and so didn’t get a chance to hear this room. Looked fantastic, though!

Eggleston Works, J,Sikora, Doshi, Cardas Audio and Alpin Line were next along the corridor and what a room this was. Really stunningly good sounding. The father and son team at J.Sikora make some fantastic turntables and arms in Poland and they were complimented very nicely with the Doshi Electronics headed up by Nick Doshi. The amps are the Evolution monos using the KT150 tube to deliver around 160 Watts into 5Ohms. This combo really did make the EgglestonWorks speakers sing with a truly dynamic performance. I believe they played us some Infected Mushroom but you can check out our playlist from the show here.

Zellaton were using a YS 332 JPS amplifier to drive their Plural Evo loudspeakers and had some rather tasty vinyl spinners in there too. One of these was the Helix One by Dohmann, whose 40K price tag seemed fairly reasonable when compared to the prices asked for some turntables out there.

The Helix One weighs 105Kg and this got me thinking about the weight of some of the kit now produce. Is a higher weight product seen as being higher quality, independent of it’s possible effects on sound quality? Do owners of this kind of kit casually slip into conversation that they have had to have the floors of their properties reinforced to cope with the gargantuan masses of kit they are placing in there? And what happens when the inevitable fiddle factor comes into play and you want to move your room about or play with speaker position? Do you get a team of body builders round? Do you have everything on wheels? All sort of the absolute antithesis of the whole portable audio movement. Anyway, I’m going off-piste here so back to the rooms we visited.

The THRAX Spartacus 300 amplifier is probably my favourite looking valve amplifier ever – it’s absolutely nuts! Just look at it! Four Western Electric 300B tubes deliver an output of 50W. I love its design with the tubes being hidden inside the 55Kg case – and look at that UV meter! For those with the money to spend on this stunningly beautiful amplifier it’s available in silver or black anodized aluminium  – I don’t, but I’d take black, thank you very much! The turntable in the room is the THRAX Yatrus and the speakers are the new floorstanders from THRAX that look very much to be based on their Lyra standmounters. The only non-THRAX component in this room was the CEC belt drive CD player. Come a lottery win I think some of my newfound wealth would be heading over to Sofia, Bulgaria.

Using Marten speakers, Scandinavian amplifier manufacturer Engstrom were showing off their latest EIRC ENCORE power amplifiers and their Monica Pk3 pre-amplifier. Eric is a beast of an amplifier using 845 output tubes in a stunningly beautiful design. Possibly the prize for best-looking amplifier will go to Timo and Lars from Sweden.

French brand ATOHM are really best known as a loudspeaker manufacturer but were using their RS Series mono amps that feature DSP control at the show.

We’d hit a bit of a French vein at the High End with the next room being a brand I really do enjoy every time I hear them. These are DAVIS loudspeakers that I’ve been lucky enough to review a few times and have always thoroughly enjoyed. For Munich, they were showing off their Steller floorstanding loudspeakers, including a stunning pair of “art-loudspeakers” in the window. I have seen a lot of Art-Cars in my time and I’ve always really loved that marriage of art and engineering prowess, so I wonder why we don’t see it more in audio and had the speakers in the window fitted in my pocket I’d have had them away!

The new Steller are designed by Olivier Visan and use carbon fibre/Kevlar and aramid fibres for their drivers, TiCoNAI motors and copper/silver cabling inside.  They are a three-way design that uses three drivers in a what DAVIS say is a teardrop design. I can’t wait to hear these at HiFi Pig Towers!

Another French brand that is close to my heart is Metronome and Kalista. If you don’t think you know this brand you will, unless you have been hiding under an audio-rock, be aware of their DreamPlay X and DreamPlay One CD players. It’s one of a kind and another of my must-own one day products. There is now the DreamPlay Twenty-Twenty turntable for those of you who still enjoy spinning vinyl and it carried through the design cues of the CD players into the analogue domain. We’ve reviewed Metronome products here at HiFi Pig and I never fail to be amazed with them. They carry an artisanal feel to them but with an attention to detail that is reminiscent of carefully crafted timepieces. Jean-Marie was telling us about their €7,700 Le Player top-loading CD player (available with a streaming option) and how potential buyers demanded a move away from the previous slot-loading mechanism over to a top-loader because it was “just more Metronome”. At less than €8K the LE PLAYER is a very nice intro to the French brand’s CD players without having to outlay the kind of money commanded by the much more highly-priced DreamPlay products. Jean Marie Clauzel also said “I was, probably like many other manufacturers/exhibitors, a bit doubtful on a successful Munich HighEnd 2022, regarding the global situation and some countries not been able to travel freely. This concern actually disappeared as soon as the first day, and thanks to the whole industry, together we managed a great edition of the “Munich”!” I think that pretty much sums up my thoughts on Munich High End 2022 too, and again it’s hats off to the High End Society and the brands that turned up to make it such an enjoyable spectacle.

Albedo loudspeakers from Italy were next along the corridor and were partnering with AudioFlight and Faber’s Cables. That cable block is a lovely thing! The larger pair of speakers are the Albedo Acclara that uses ceramic drivers from Accuton. I’m still yet to hear a speaker using these drivers that doesn’t sound great.

Apertura are another French brand who were showing off their Forté loudspeakers to good effect when we were in the room. The Forté are a new design for 2022 along with the Stela speakers, both of which will be available in Autumn of this year. Shame not more is known about this brand!

And so to a meeting with the guys from Audiovector and a look at their new QR7 loudspeaker. Frankly, I was gobsmacked when I was told the price of around five grand and I really do think this will be the speaker a lot of folk go to in this coming year when looking to upgrade. I was genuinely expecting a price much closer to the ten grand mark, perhaps a little more.

There’s a pair of 8” drivers, a 6” mid unit and the Air Motion Transformer to take care of the top frequencies. Stated figures say the new Audiovector QR7 will go down to 28Hz and it is a big speaker measuring over 1.1m in height. It’s a three-way design with a Q-port bass reflex system and crossover points are 425 and 3000Hz, whilst quoted sensitivity is 90.5dB which should make it an attractive proposition for those using more real-world amplifiers.
We own a pair of the company’s R6 and R3 speakers and I can’t wait to get a hold of a pair of these in the very near future for review.

The final leg of this level of High End Munich was massively busy as the show was now open to the general public but we still had a good few rooms to see and enjoy.

The CAD room was an oasis of chilled out calm.

Lyravox and Antipodes Audio were using power conditioning by UK brand Puritan Audio. The speakers from Hamburg based Lyravox are their €29K Karlotta that is an active design using 6 Class D NCore power amps, as onboard DSP and preamplifier allied to Accuton and ScanSpeak drivers…plus an AMT top-firing tweeter. The server in this room was from Atipodes Audio in the form of their Oladra Server/player and reclocker costing €25K.

New for Munich High End 2022 was the “Sounds Clever” rooms, of which we only really got to see one, or rather we only noticed one that was specifically saying it was part of the initiative. The Sounds Clever idea is to showcase systems that came in at a total cost of less than €5000. The Indiana Line Diva 552 speakers, with a Pier Audio MS-380 SE amp and Melodika cabling throughout. I love this concept and it goes to show that you really don’t need to spend mega money to achieve a fabulous sound.

Ear Yoshino were next but were playing music very quietly so just got a few snaps for you.

hORNS from Poland make, as the name suggests, horn loudspeakers and they really are going from strength to strength each time we see them.

Levin were sharing a room with Rike audio and showing off their turntable mat when went in the room with Kim Levin taking command of proceedings. Sadly we walked in half way through the dem but Kim is always very enthusiastic about their products and the small audience seemed to be lapping it up.

Wolf Von Langa always put on a very nice room at Munich and I really do like their loudspeakers, though they don’t look much. Turntables were by Primary Control which are a very interestingly designed record player from the Netherlands using low torque direct drive mechanisms. In fact, the Kinea turntable allows you to alter the torque which I thought was pretty cool. Electronics in this room were by Japanese brand Air Tight which I personally love. The system included the new Air Tight ATE-3011 phonostage that includes 5 different EQ curves – something of a fashion at the moment – including RIAA, NAB, AES, FFRR and a flat curve. There’s always a sense of quiet calm and unforcedness to the music playing in Von Langa rooms and I really do want to hear a pair of their speakers in our system at some point in the future.

Last but not least for High End Munich 2022 for me was the Audio Group Denmark rooms which were very, very nice sounding. The brands covered by this umbrella are Ansuz, Aavik and Børresen and founded by Lars Kristensen and Michael Børresen. New to the show were the Aavik 880 Amplifier, a partnership product made by Michael Børresen and Flemming Erik Rasmussen. This was the world premier for this amp which is a Class A amplifier that does not switch! The 880 is a Class A power amplifier that stays in Class A no matter how hard it is loaded and no matter how hard it is driven. This means that the need for inductive output filtering is simply much less. The Aavik 880 amplifiers features a resonance-optimized titanium/copper enclosure design, a unique microprocessor-controlled LDR volume control, a switch-less input circuitry for the preamp stages, and a 1kW resonant power supply.

The M1 loudspeakers from Børresen were also new for the show. These include the patented iron-free Børresen magnet motor system, which has now been further refine and includes a silver pole rings in place of the usual copper rings.

The  Børresen X Speaker Series loudspeakers are a new design and feature will feature carbon fibre reinforced cabinets, state-of-the-art drivers and Spread Tow Carbon and honeycomb cones. Stay tuned for more on these

Finally, Audio Group Denmark were using High End to launch their Ansuz Gold Signature cables that feature “a highly optimized anti-area antenna design to reduce interfering noise” and use a gold/silver/copper alloy for the 24-karat gold-plated conductors.

A massive thanks to Stefan and the whole team at the High End society for making our the first major HiFi Show after the nightmare that has been Corona such a wonderful experience. The organisation that goes into putting an event of this size on should not be under-estimated and absolutely everyone from Stefan who heads up the show to the ladies that check your coats and belongings, the cleaners and the security staff made us feel fantastically welcome.

Stuart Smith

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