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Everything you've heard is true. Lufthansa really is among the world's finest airlines. (I say that as an uncomfortable and often unwilling traveler who has had nothing but perfect flights on Lufthansa), Munich is one of the cleanest, most attractive, and most easily traveled cities in Europe. And Munich High End is, without a doubt and by a stunning margin, the greatest audio show on Earth, period. Nothing I could say—nothing—can prepare you for the sheer scale of the venue, the number and variety of exhibits, the quality of those exhibits, and the exciting, carnival-like vibe of Munich High…
Scheduled to ship in early autumn, the Hegel 590 ($12,000) is poised to become the Norwegian company's new flagship integrated amplifier. With a power supply 50% larger than that of Hegel's previous top-of-the-line integrated (the H360), the 590 operates in class-AB, delivering 301Wpc and maintaining low distortion with a feed-forward system that kicks in as needed. As with previous Hegel products, its D/A section uses a built-from-scratch master clock, rather than an off-the-shelf chip, and it does PCM up to 384kHz, and up to DSD256 (DSD over PCM).
Driving a pair of KEF…
As I exited my hotel on Friday morning, a portion of my favorite Nick Drake lyric popped into my mind: A day once dawned / And it was beautiful . . .
Friday's weather was no less spectacular than Thursday's—yet from the moment I arrived there, the MOC was mobbed with attendees who weren't at all bashful about spending the day indoors. Perhaps the interior sunniness of the glass-and-steel structure helped: I would certainly chafe at spending such a beautiful day roaming the dark halls of some glum hotel.
Whatever the reason, I couldn't shake the impression that a lot of audio…
. . . is here and Art Dudley feels that in the age of streaming, there is still life in the CD medium, as typified by Rega's new Apollo player. Art's enthusiastic review is joined by reviews of EgglestonWorks' 20th anniversary Viginti speaker; Bryston's BP173 preamplifer; Rogers High Fidelity's single-ended 65V-1 amplifier; the NOS Formula xHD DAC from Italian company Aqua Acoustic; and comparisons between preamplifiers from Ayre and PS Audio.
Jim Austin concludes his technical analysis of the controversial MQA format with an interview with Bob Stuart, where he talks about "post-Shannon…
So, folks, here are a couple things you need to understand about Munich High End 2018:
As a rule, Europe brings to audio a different aesthetic and perspective than America—they are way less into giant, million-dollar, solid-state amplifiers and way more into low-power tube amps. And . . . they are definitely into horn loudspeakers in a way that most Americans cannot fathom. I was in Munich for three days and I could never have covered all the rooms featuring horn speakers. Can you imagine that many horn speakers at CES, RMAF, or AXPONA? I can't.
Mainstream taste in American high-…
Reminders were everywhere that the High End show, which takes place in a 30,000-square-meter convention center, differs from the hotel-centric North American norm in its preponderance of silent displays—silent, but seldom inconspicuous. A fine example was the room occupied by the 33.3-year-old Danish firm Gryphon Audio Designs, which used the occasion to display their 93.5"-tall, 2002-lb (net weight), twin-tower Kodo loudspeaker system (price on request). The Kodo—which, when I visited, enjoyed tremendous popularity as a selfie prop—is a four-way design, specified as reaching from 16Hz to…
In the primary Living Voice room (there were two) I found the Vox Olympian & Vox Elysian loudspeakers (851,200/pair Euros in Macassar Ebony & Amboyna Burl with figured Eucalyptus wood), partnered with vintage Kondo electronics via both digital and analog sources. For analog, there was the Grand Prix Audio Monaco 2.0 turntable with a Kuzma 4-point tonearm, and a Fuuga MC cartridge (45,419 Euro total) connected via a Living Voice step-up transformer (6812 Euros) to a SJS enhanced model 3 phono-amplifier voiced for Living Voice (15,896 Euros).
The digital source was Living…
Since Herb Reichert and I were booked to fly back to New York on Sunday, Saturday was to be my last day at High End 2018—which is to say, Saturday was my Sunday: a day of moving along smartly, covering as many rooms and booths as possible, and listening only briefly.
Wouldn't you know it that my first stop of the day, at the room sponsored by German loudspeaker manufacturer Zellaton, was one that discouraged drive-by reporting: This system, built around the enormous (350kg each) Zellaton Statement loudspeaker ($375,000/pair), had a clarity and ease unlike anything else at the show. And…
2018 marks the 100th year of business for Danish cartridge manufacturer Ortofon A/S—the actual birthday is October 9th—so it came as no surprise that Ortofon's head of product development, Leif Johannsen (on the right in the photo above, next to Lou Dorio of the company's American subsidiary, Ortofon Inc.) cooked up three special, limited-edition products to celebrate the milestone: the anachronistic and ostensibly DJ-friendly moving-magnet Concorde Century; the ultra-high-end MC Century; and the cartridge that most appealed to me, the SPU Century (estimated price: 5000).
The SPU…
Look at this photo of Cessaro Horn Acoustics' beautiful-in-color 5-way "Zeta" lautsprecher. Can you imagine it sitting in your listening room? I could, and I'd be proud to own it—if only I didn't live in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment and write reviews for a living. The Zetas are new, and cost between 320,00 and 460,000 Euros/pair, which—don't laugh—I think seems like a bargain for all the hardware and good sound a buyer would receive. Can you imagine all those Zeta crates arriving at your house?
In my view, most high-end loudspeakers sound worse than they look. (And usually, they look…