Hifi Pig

Hifi Pig’s coverage of the High End Munich hifi show has started. You can read all about it by following the link or clicking on the image to the right. We’ve got loads of pictures to add over the next few days as well as what we thought about the show.

Always popular is Linette’s “Bird’s Eye View” series of articles, the couple of which are now live! Don’t miss it!

Munich High End 2014

We met up with LAB 12 at last year’s High End Munich Show were pleased when they got in touch to tell us about their new amplifier, the Mighty.

The Mighty is a Class A, Single Ended, 10 Watts per channel valve amplifier and continues the company’s aesthetic seen on their previous products.You can see LAB 12 at booth F15 Hall 3 at this years Munich High-End.

Features: 

• Triode / ultra linear selector switch
• Handcrafted custom audio grade transformers (T.GIATRAS)
• No feedback design
• Toroidal power transformer (T.GIATRAS)
• Special audio grade matched parts in every stage
• SRSG® implementation
• Fine symmetry® implementation
• Matched tubes
• Gold plated Teflon rca connectors
• Gold plated tube sockets
• 5mm aluminium face panel with luxury painting
• Five years guarantee

Specifications: 

• Power: 230/240 Vac 50Hz
• Power consumption: 120 VA max
• Output power: 10 watt per channel
• Frequency response: 20Hz-20KHz (-0.9dB)
• Input impedance: 100K ohms
• Output impedance: 4,8 ohm
• Tube complement: 2x 6n1p dual triode, 2x el34 power pentodes (tube audio circuit, solid-state power supply)
• Inputs: 1x line stereo (RCA connectors)

Naim & Focal will be at High End Munich this year which shouldn’t come as any surprise. This year they will be showing the Naim Statement amp paired with Focal Grande Utopia loudspeakers.

As well as this high-end, high price system Naim will also have their Muso wireless hifi system on demonstration.

You can see Naim & Focal in E119 Atrium 4, 1.OG.

Check out Hifi Pig’s visit to Focal’s headquarters in last month’s Hifi Pig Magazine where you can see just how their speakers are put together.

Following the hugely positive coverage of their Munich debut last year, Living Voice contacted us to tell us about their system for this year’s High End show. They’ll again be featuring the Vox Olympian/Elysian and you can find them on the second floor of Atrium 4, Room E220 (A4 2.OG E220).

“We’ll be playing a wide variety of musical delights via the Vox Olympians in a system including the CEC TL0.3 transport, KSL Kondo DAC, M77 pre-amp & Gakuoh monoblocks, along with an additional system using our OBX-RW loudspeakers” they told us.

Without a doubt their room was one of the highlights of last year’s Munich High End and will be one to make a beeline for this year.

EMMESpeakers’ got in touch with Hifi Pig to tell us about their latest loudspeaker the GALILEO.

The GALILEO loudspeakers is the development of the design concept that last year brought the company’s  DA VINCI model. Their target was to get the same listening experience of the DA VINCI but “bigger” and able to play in the largest of listening rooms.

The EMMESpeakers wanted to develop a multi driver loudspeaker with a flat response and they say that even with its seven drivers the GALILEO achieves this.

The bigger cabinet, and the need to keep it relatively lightweight represented a new challenge against standing waves and resonances, but by using a combination of discontinuity in shape, mass variation and absorbing material with high damping the company say they have achieved their goal.

The decoupling of the ceramic midwoofers and tweeter has been obtained by using a high mass aluminum front panel in which they are inserted.

 Technical data:

– 3 way floorstanding loudspeaker

– Sealed box

– no. 4 10” – 290 mm rear Aluminium Woofer

– no. 2 5” – 124 mm Accuton CELL ceramic Midwoofer

– no. 1 1,2” – 30 mm Accuton CELL ceramic Tweeter

– Sensitivity 86 db

– Power Handling 300 watt

– Nominal impedance 6 Ohm

– Frequency response: 20Hz – 20Khz

– Dimensions (HxWxD): 1490mm x 386mm x 452mm

– Net weight (per unit): 80 kg

Cost from 14.990 up to 16.900 EUR each, depending by the finish.

World premiere at the upcoming Munich High End Show (Halle 3 F09/G09).

On stand F17, Halle 3 at Highend 2014, Munich, Germany, 15- 18 May 2014 The Bespoke Audio Company will launch themselves to the world. The Bespoke Audio company is a new name in the audio world, but with an established history.

The company is founded on two principles says the press release: “to hold the experience of the customer as paramount and to accept no compromise in anything we do. We want to raise the standards of what can be expected from a high end audio company. Nothing else will do for our customers, nothing else will do for us”.

The company’s début product is a pre-amplifier. A flexible design with six inputs and two outputs in any combination of balanced and unbalanced connections. A wide variety of finish and technical options allow it to be configured to suit any system.

Looks a lovely and well made product and I’m looking forward to having a listen at Munich High End later this month.

Following AURALiC’s CES 2014 introduction of its Lightning Streaming technology, the industry’s first whole-house, high-resolution streaming solution that supports both Double-Rate DSD and DXD, the company is now debuting its first product in the Lightning family — ARIES — here at the Munich High-End show..

The ARIES serves as a “bridge” between music files on network storage or high quality online streaming services and the consumers’ DAC — enabling DACs to stream high-resolution music quickly and wirelessly in virtually any sampling rate, including DSD, Double-Rate DSD and DXD.
ARIES is powered by AURALiC’s proprietary Telsa hardware platform that includes a Quad-Core ARM Coretex-A9 processor running at 1GHz, 1GB DDR3 onboard memory and 4GB internal storage. The Telsa platform has a calculation ability of 25,000 MIPS, more than enough to decode a vast spectrum of audio formats, including AAC, AIFF, ALAC, APE, DIFF, DSF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, WV and WMA.
The inputs of ARIES include Dual-Band high-speed WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 port. The outputs are USB audio host buffered by AURALiC’s patented ActiveUSB™ technology; low jitter digital audio outputs: AES/EBU, Coaxial and TOSLINK. The USB audio host can deliver PCM from 44.1 to 384 KHz at 16-, 24- and 32-bit resolutions as well as DSD, Double-Rate DSD for compatible USB DAC. The other digital outputs are limited to 192 KHz at 24-bit in maximum according to S/PDIF standard.

ARIES is bundled with AURALiC’s Lightning DS App. The App has the capability to fully control ARIES to browse your music libraries on your network-attached storage (NAS), to steam high quality music content from service providers like Qobuz and WiMP, to control the playback and to select the hardware settings such as output channel and WiFi network, etc. The App also supports Songcast, a music distribution service that allows users to map computer’s sound to any Lightning-equipped system and to map sound between different Lightning systems in the house and streaming sound though Apple AirPlay.

“ARIES will begin a new era in the Hi-Fi industry,” said Xuanqian Wang, the President and CEO of AURALIC LIMITED. “We intentionally set the retail price starting at $999, an extremely affordable entry point, to offer everyone an opportunity to get onboard and enjoy the convenience and high quality music that modern technology can bring to all. AURALiC has invested and budgeted more than $1,000,000 to develop the Lightning Streaming system. We are committed to providing continuous, free online upgrades to improve the performance and compatibility for our solution, as well as to add new exciting functions support in the near future such as local storage playback, DSD upsampling, room acoustics correction and multi-channel.”

The ARIES Streamer Bridge will be available in two models, with shipments starting in June:

ARIES LE: The standard model with low-phase noise crystal and standard external PSU. [$999/€999]

ARIES: The set-up model with two individual Femto Clocks for both USB audio host and digital outputs, low noise internal design to eliminate jitter and AURALiC Purer-Power™ based 10uV low noise external linear PSU. [$1,599/€1,499]