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Despite the impact of the Trump tariffs, Munich attendance figures were again impressive. With 323,000 square feet of exhibition space—that's seven and a half acres!—High End Munich '25 welcomed 10,562 trade visitors from 87 countries; 11,675 consumer attendees from 63 countries; and 581 media representatives from 43 countries. While the Munich event may not be audio's most popular—depending on how you count attendees, the Hong Kong, Warsaw, and AXPONA shows may attract more unique visitors—it is unquestionably the meeting place for consumers and distributors.

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Reviewing the VPI Avenger Direct turntable with its 12" FatBoy tonearm, I concluded, "The Avenger Direct recasts records I thought I knew well, revealing secrets and expressing a purer sense of each one's interior life." Covering the VPI Scout 21 for Stereophile's sister website, AnalogPlanet in October 2024, I wrote, "this $3300 table seriously swung and played it all warm and toasty, displaying a big heart. I would even say it displayed an inherent love of music, reflected in its wide rhythmic gait and warmhearted embrace of the LPs I spun on it. The 21 'table is quite the fine fit in the VPI sound family."

Despite my scarcely contained enthusiasm for these previous VPI products, I promise an unvarnished take on the Forever Model One turntable ($5250), which builds on one of the company's long-ago bestsellers, the HW-19, which was first produced in the early 1980s.