Munich Hi-Fi Show 2017

[Beobloke]

Maybe I'm getting cynical, or maybe I need a year off as I've been to every High End Show since 2008, but I didn't enjoy it as much this year. There was a lot of truly dreadful sounding things to my ears and even the bonkers stuff with ridiculous price tags that usually makes me smile wryly just annoyed me this time. I even got right to the end of Friday, where I usually head back for a final half hour in whatever turns out to be my favourite room, and just went for a coffee instead!

In fact, the only wry smile I did manage was on hearing the same percussion track a few hours apart in different rooms. In one room it was played through a massive pair of horn loudspeakers with a close-on six figure price tag and in the other, through a pair of dinky £2000 standmounters. Through one of these, it was a shouty, hard and thoroughly unpleasant mess with absolutely no bass definition to speak of and, through the other, it was tight, focused, and with surprising punch and real texture to each drum strike. I'll leave you to guess which speakers were responsible for which sound...

There was some good stuff there, though and, overall, I'm glad I went, but I might have a year off next year.

[Jimbo]

I know someone who went to the Munich show and was not that impressed. He felt the show was a bit boring and held little interest.

[User211]

Tom - it was the AudioExclusiv - no Kingsound apart from headphones at the show.

[petrat]

Yes, the new Heco single-driver was my favourite product of the show. I went back several times, and heard a wide range of music being played ... a real-world speaker that pressed all my buttons, so to speak

As Tom said, the Avant-garde trio room was an impressive PA system ... see those stacked bass-bins Would have loved to hear what they could do with something other than PF's The Wall, though

I was particularly looking forward to the Kondo room, but it was maybe held back a bit by the Kaiser Kawero speakers employed, plus they never strayed from small-scale audiophile recordings. So not wholly convincing imo, although very pretty sounds.

An even bigger disappointment was the big MBL system, which was particularly bad, offering a painful mix of excessive bass plus excessive treble ... a truly exaggerated, unreal presentation, that the Germans crowds seemed to love, judging from the consistently packed room.

TBH, it's such a huge show that it's quite easy to get over-whelmed. My 'take-away' was a reminder that I actually do love what simple single-driver speakers can offer ... the Heco, a Supravox, and a couple of Fostex-loaded horns were all memorable to my ears.

[montesquieu]

I was particularly looking forward to the Kondo room, but it was maybe held back a bit by the Kaiser Kawero speakers employed, plus they never strayed from small-scale audiophile recordings. So not wholly convincing imo, although very pretty sounds.

Actually I felt the Kondo room sounded utterly rubbish, those speakers sounded hopeless ... what on earth were they thinking? - thin and insubstantial, detailed and 'hifi' but no fun at all.

If you fork out for Kondo surely you want to luxuriate in the sound? Wasted opportunity.

Tom - it was the AudioExclusiv - no Kingsound apart from headphones at the show.

Thanks Justin. I thought they were very good. If I ever find a suitcase with 25k Euros in it I'll know exactly what to do ....

[Marco]

Interesting, Tom. I've long lusted after Thoress gear, as I just love the retro styling and design principles, but have never heard any of it, so it's good to know you were suitably impressed.

Would I be right in thinking that the sound it produces isn't of the smoothed-off, 'warm & cuddly' nature, so often representative of high-end valve gear?

Yoo-hoo, Tom....





Marco.

[Gazjam]

Good blog about the show over on Thomas Mayer's Elrog site.
http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.uk/

[montesquieu]

Interesting, Tom. I've long lusted after Thoress gear, as I just love the retro styling and design principles, but have never heard any of it, so it's good to know you were suitably impressed.

Would I be right in thinking that the sound it produces isn't of the smoothed-off, 'warm & cuddly' nature, so often representative of high-end valve gear?



Wide baffles rool!

Marco.

Sorry Marco!

Actually it seemed to me to be very neutral - in that way it has commonality with the EAR 912 and indeed the sound seemed reminiscent to me. No soft/tidied up sound, but no hash or solid state nasties either. Very dynamic.

The phono pre has I think six inputs all configurable for mono, for impedance settings etc. On the front there is tweakery for the rolloff and turnover of the recording selected (actually I have this available to me anyway, an Esoteric Re-equalizer wired in the tape loop of the EAR), effectively this gives not just equalisation control for pre-RIAA recordings, but also a tone control for the settings. For classical music (and a few jazz recordings) this is really valuable and I do tend to use mine to clean up badly mastered LPs, so I know I would make use of this feature.

In the room we did actually try out an early stereo, and old Archiv choral recording (most of which in my posession sound a bit rubbish). Sure enough this didn't sound fantastic but it was the fault of the recording not the phono pre - but I guess the fact that it didn't pretty it up is something of a good thing - the tweakery clearly has its limits.

Actually for me the sense was like a modern, much more transparent version of the old tilt/Quad preamp controls - which I used to really love (and it's a pain no-one has them any more).

As for the styling, I'm totally with you on that, it looks like 50s lab gear, like you are at the controls of a Magnox power station. What's cooler than that?

[Macca]

plus they never strayed from small-scale audiophile recordings. .

Always the sign that even the people demming it know it sounds rubbish.

[montesquieu]

Good blog about the show over on Thomas Mayer's Elrog site.
http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.uk/

Mayer's room was a disaster, the speakers in use looked like two giant blue umbrellas (clearly some sort of horn) and they sounded like a 60s Roberts radio turned up too loud!

When I looked in again they had changed to the smaller wooden ones, which were better but I didn't get time to have a proper listen.