HIGH END 2023 Show Report
Europe's largest, and most attended, premium audio show!
HIGH END 2023 Show Report By Jason Kennedy

  Thorens have clearly been gaining in confidence since relaunching a few years back, the new Reference turntable is a genuine beast with two rather different tonearms, the TP 160 is a new 12" version of a classic Thorens design while the Reference arm is a Thiele TA 01 finished in black and branded to match the turntable. The price is €220,000 including both arms.

A rather different arm was found in the DeVore booth. New Zealand brand The Wand introduced the 10.3 inch Dark-Light tapered carbon fibre arm. As yet unpriced this has a huge 40mm diameter at the counterweight end and an adjustable mount to suit a range of overhang lengths. The new Wand 14-5 turntable has two arm mounts, carbon fibre on the platter and plinth and a battery power supply built in, isolation is provided by IsoAcoustics adjustable feet, price is also TBA.

Mention should also go to British electronics specialist Trilogy, Nic Poulsen brought four new products to Munich including his first all-transistor integrated amplifier, the 921 (£5,900) is a Class AB line-only design with 75W per channel available from its beautifully hewn chassis. Apparently, the 921 took "seven long years" to perfect but Nic does like to suffer for his art!

He also showed the 914 (£12,500) a fully balanced tube preamplifier, and the 994 monoblocks which are a hybrid design capable of 20W in Class A or 140W in AB (£10,000 each), finally the 975 two-box MM/MC phono stage has a choke input power supply and a $12,000 asking price.

Thank You
Thank you to all exhibitors, manufacturers, distributors, friends both old and new, and to the High End Society for producing an incredible HIGH END 2023 show in Munich!

To those of you reading my show report from afar, thanks go out to you too. You can find more of my writings at The EAR.

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