Munich 2018

For years, I have had the Munich High-End Show on my bucket list and, this year was the time to cross it off. Past reports have been enticing not only from the detailed reports of a wealth of familiar, not-so-familiar and some downright unknown audio companies but, even more, because it is said to be the best show in terms of venue, focus and community spirit.

I landed in Munich on Thursday morning, dumped my luggage at a downtown hotel and hopped on the U-bahn to the M.O.C. out in the quiet suburb of Freimann. Physically, the show was everything that I had anticipated. First, there are three large halls filled with booths of audio (and nothing but audio) with only the minor intrusion of a few automobiles with notable sound systems. Above the halls are three spacious atria, their inner and outer perimeters lined with larger demonstration and display rooms. I tried to cruise the halls by following the floor plan but found that I was constantly detoured by surprises in the form of new products and old friends. It was easy to fill two full days and I could have filled more had I not had other travel plans. This is really the best pure audio show I have been to in a long time.

As for the equipment, that depends on one's interests and both Art and Herb have offered more balanced reports than I will. That is because, for all my fascination with the accoutrements of audio, I really have no serious interest in rooms filled with high-tech turntables, hand-built vacuum-tube amplifiers, or horn-loaded speakers. To me, they are audio pornography. In addition, with only two exceptions that I can recall (Merging Technologies and Denon-Marantz), everything was stereo only!

So, what's in it for a modern multichannel guy? In a word: loudspeakers. There were four loudspeakers that I think worthy of mention. The first is the Vivid Kaya 90 ($26,000/pair) which Art has already mentioned. The three-way 90, with its four bass drivers, is the largest of a new Vivid line and adapts the construction principles of the successful Giya line to the use of simpler materials and processes. All the models in the Kaya line are less elaborately shaped than the provocative Giyas and, of course, they are much less expensive. The line also includes the Kaya 45, a smaller three-way floorstander, the Kaya 25, a compact two-way floorstander, the Kaya S15, a compact way monitor, and the C25, a center-channel speaker. However, even in a confined demo space, the 90 conveyed an open and dynamic sound. I visited this demo 3 times, so enticed was I by the sound of the Kaya 90.

In that same price range is the combination of the Kii Three loudspeaker with its dedicated new woofer (see photo). I say woofer, not subwoofer, because the BXT extends the range of the Three by adding the output of its eight woofers (per channel) by enhancing the bass from the Three but without any crossover. The Three sits on top of the BXT and they are interconnected physically, electrically and logically as the pair is integrated by new software in the Kii Control Module. It is as if the Three has just grown big woofers! The overall appearance is clean and not nearly as massive as the advance photos have suggested. In fact, many would not regard this combination as a large loudspeaker but it certainly performs as one. In my enthusiastic assessment of the Kii Three, I did find that, while it has quite extended bass, Kii applies power limitations to keep from overdriving the small LF speakers. With the BXT, this is no longer the case. In fact, using some of the same demo tracks as in the review, the Three/BXT was formidable.

In contrast to the above, I was also impressed with two "real world" speakers which incorporate built-in amplification and wireless signal inputs. This is not entirely novel but, in discussion with ELAC's Andrew Jones and Peter Madnick, we agreed that the rise of streaming and file-playback make these features so desirable that serious speaker makers must respond. ELAC's response is the new Eva line, shown in prototype form but with revealing interior views. The $2000/pair Argo bookshelf and the $4000/pair Argo floorstander are both three-way designs incorporating a new concentric HF/MF driver (different from the Uni-Fi) and one or three aluminum-cone woofers, respectively, with BASH class-AB amps for woofers and midranges, linear class-AB amps for the tweeters and analog crossovers. These speakers have wired and wireless digital inputs but, with their analog crossovers, they can also support no-compromise analog playback. I am eagerly hoping to get a pair (or five) of the floorstanders for review.

I was also impressed, this time by an active demo, of DALI's new Callisto 6C wireless floorstander ($5298/pair). With the 6C and it smaller bookshelf brother, the 2C ($4298/pair), all signal inputs, both wired and wireless as well as analog and digital, are channeled via the included SoundHub controller and output wirelessly at 24/96 to the speaker. The speakers include full 24-bit DSP, class-D amps, and paired sof- dome and ribbon tweeters. The controller has dual expansion slots to accommodate new I/O options and a suitable module for BluOS (NMP-1, $449) was in operation. Clearly this is another way of enabling new signal options but, bottom line, the Callisto 6C demonstrated that it was capable of great sound regardless of the source.