Super high-end company Esoteric is part of Teac, and now Teac is growing up! Seen here is their Reference 600 system which includes am AM/FM/Internet receiver in one chassis and a CD player with DAC
in another ($2500). For 2500 American FIAT dollars you get Ethernet ability and quite a bit more than you may expect.
Excellent build quality, impressive parts and plenty of features for virtually
all consumers. The good news is that Esoteric dealers will also be carrying the Teac Reference 600
series so check it out.
Pioneer has their Kuro 6080H plasma monitor (5400€) and must admit I love my
50-inch 111FD. While not a huge video guy per se, the Kuro is truly a world-class flat panel TV capable of impressive video resolution and fidelity.
With the power of 1.21 jigawatts, a bit of Back to the Future humor, the MBL system
(250,000€) will easily fill a large room while also looking very
retro-futuristic. Nice drop and go system for those 'old goats' in the hobby
or for those who do not desire mixing and matching brands.
Keeping with the old school theme of sorts, the Wilson Max 3 loudspeakers
strangely were not mated with Goldmund or Mark Levinson electronics. Goldman
was at the show is a very small booth. For a change, we have front-end gear from a company called Solution. Total price, a cool 250,000€ too (anyone sense a theme here).
Crystal Cable's did their European show launch of their Arabesque (45,000€) loudspeaker with their cabinet made from 0.75-inch thick glass. The loudspeaker's name comes from the shape of the cabinet, which is a type of teardrop shape to keep unwanted cabinet resonances in check. The ribbon tweeter is by Raal while the three 6.5-inch drivers are by ScanSpeak from their Illuminator line. The drivers have been modified to the specifics needed by Crystal Cable. Computer engineering was employed to first carefully simulate before the design began then tweaked accordingly. This is how all walls are not parallel and, as such, the company states that internal dampening was not necessary.
During the Munich High End 2009 show there were many well-attended seminars covering various aspects of the hobby.
Various manufacturers such as ScanSpeak had a booth showcasing their drivers.
Mastersound from Italy had their Evolution 845 (8500€) that uses a pair of 845 per channel in Class A parallel single-ended to produce 55 watts.
There are a pair of 845 tubes operated in Class A, with the pre-driver being
an ECC82 and for driver a 6SN7. You get 55 wpc total, three line inputs plus a
direct line input, a frequncy range from 8 Hz to 40 kHz and the unit is a
very hefty 115 lbs.
Turntable specialist Thorens just announced their TD309 / TP92 setup (~1200€) and includes an MM cartridge. The entire chassis is on sprung feet, which help reduce room vibrations from interfering with the needle/vinyl interface.
In fact many turntable manufacturers at the show had turntables around the
$1000 as vinyl sales are heating up.
Audio Fly has a very interesting system where a transmitter that uses adaptive frequency hopping at 2.4Gz to send a signal wirelessly to an amplifier. The transmitter handles a
I2S or analog input, then sends it via 16-bit/48kHz to a wireless stereo amplifier that produces 50 watts per channel. There is a monoblock version that produces 170 watts. The ZLT transmitter is 200€ and the amplifier is 700€.
Lehmann Audio's new ?integrated amplifier with
remote control and headphone jack. Wish i knew more yet have no notes on it.
And rounding up my Munich High End 2009 show
report is Italian cable manufacturer HiDiamond with their launching of their new complete line of cables. As they have won awards over the
years for their cables, this is a new line comes exclusively from their truly in-house extrusion and building the cables. An American distributor of quality needs to step up to the plate on this.
Click here for main Munich High
End 2009 page.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
