Herb Gets Ready for High End 2019

Leute, High End München 2019 ist der große Audio-Zirkus.

You're stuck in America reading nightmare-news and you think high-end audio is dying because it’s all old men, and the dealers all carry the same stuff, and there is nothing new since MQA? I'm sorry, but that's so provincial of you. And embarrassing. You need to get out more.

Honestly, Were you to visit Munich today and experience just the crazy amount of High End 2019 signage—it’s in the airport, and along the highway, and in the cabs!—you would realize that this is truly the Greatest (audio) Show on Earth. This is the global crossroads of amps and speakers and DACs and turntables—the majority of which would probably be new to you, had you never been here before. High End Munich isn't just bigger than RMAF or AXPONA—it's spectacularly huge—and it isn't just more of the same: It's completely different. Munich High End is an immersive education in global audio culture.

Right now, in Munich, there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of workers putting up said signage, and hundreds more electricians and carpenters building fancy booths from scratch—and thousands more driving trucks, working in warehouses, moving crates, and unpacking boxes.

Best of all, the show venue isn't a stinky hotel with hastily converted rooms. There are no headboards bolted to the side walls, no laminated check-out rules stuck to the doors, no bathrooms filled with boxes. This big top is made of glass.

The average demonstration room has a glass front wall (so you can see in), a glass back wall (so you can see out), a sloping ceiling (for good sound), and a skylight (so the live plants can grow). And don’t start with me: I don’t want to hear all you armchair acousticians trolling about how the glass kills the sound. Last year, at High End 2018, I found more amazing-sounding rooms than I ever found in America. Not to mention, this show is young, and fashionable, and extremely diverse gender-wise.

Can you tell I love coming to High End Munich? This is not work—this is a heroisches abenteuer!

Stay tuned for more news from inside the glass tent.

COMMENTS
Anton's picture

The only thing that will cheer me up is to go buy a record.

Glotz's picture

What would this magazine be without HERB!? Not a funny as or as insightful.

Germans can figure out a way to make glass rooms SING! Don't even doubt it for a second....

And if I ran a hotel room at an audio show... Anytime, anyone, said ANYTHING bad about my room... I would repy....

"Whatever, it's a HOTEL ROOM."

Bogolu Haranath's picture

Is it Gorilla Glass? :-) ........

"Just Like Fire" ........... Pink ....... Alice Through the Looking Glass :-) ..........

volvic's picture

Of the new SME owned Garrard 301, hope your first post will describe what they've done under the hood. Look forward to the coverage. One of these days will make my own pilgrimage to the Munchen Hi-End Show. Till then I have Herb !

mmole's picture

The scene in NJ is kind of dry at the moment.

ok's picture

..but this looks like animal farm alright.

Anton's picture

Maybe it's stuck, or something?

Those same two guys have been there, like, forever!

tonykaz's picture

Wander around, absorb, be amazed, discover the Western World's Nucleus of Cultural Achievements.

I'll ask you to Review & Compare the German Societies Infrastructure:

Transportation

Street Food Shops

Cleanliness

Homelessness

Grafitti

Overall Livability

Germany thrives as a Democracy, it's not a Quarterly Profit Corporatocracy that blows the Tops off Mountains to get Coal.

Tony still in transit

ps. where would Music be without Mozart? Please reveal your Chopin Liszt of discovered must reviews.

Jim Austin's picture
Tony, please don't steer every post toward politics. It doesn't belong here. Jim Austin, Editor Stereophile
tonykaz's picture

It's what Munich is and what we are admiring here.

It's you that is bringing it here and I that admire you for it.

This messenger is innocent.

Tony in transit

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