After a long 90 minute tarmac wait in the plane, two planes total, one automobile and a bus... I finally made it to the Munich High End 2012 Show! Entering the show I came upon these Alpenhorn musicians (sadly, no Ricola bonbons in sight).
EMT's JPA 66 Varia-Curve Tube Stereo Control Center caught my eye immediately! It has both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, handles both MM and MC cartridges and has a frequency response from 10 Hz to 50 kHz (+/-0.5dB). Being EMT, there are plenty of adjustments to fine-tune this phonostage to your system components.
WBT is now offering their new white speaker binding posts. As speakers are becoming more agreeable with interior design, WBT had demand for white color and they have
delivered.
Gryphon Audio, a company audiophiles such as myself lust over for their top quality products, just launched their Pendragon
(€150000) large reference floorstanding speaker. This four cabinet design in total weighs in at a hefty 1800 lbs.! The upper range
(right unit in photo above) is pure ribbon from 200 Hz on up and uses no
crossover in the signal's path. The woofer panel has eight of their 8 inch drivers, does use a low-pass crossover and includes a powerful 1000 watt amplifier.
KEF's new cool little studio monitor LS50 wins my heart for being a dual concentric point source 130mm driver with 25mm
tweeter ($1500).
Roving the hallways on Munich's High End 2012 show I ran into none other than Pete Trewin and Tom Hackforth of
Hi-Fi+ Magazine. A great pair of gentlemen!
Sexy vintage gear from Marantz including their St-8 quartz tuner and Pm-8 stereo amplifier with three band equipment.
This is late 70's to early 1980's goodies! C'mon, us longstanding music lovers seem to have this inner desire for these classic components. Just look at how sexy these
look! Retro is cool in my book!
Audio Physic is celebrating 25 years and had this great photo of one of their speakers ‘in the
nude'. Oh la la!!!
Cessaro Horn Acoustics speakers were being driven by
Tron tube amplifiers and the brand two-acoustic turntable. My notes say “Great sound!”
In the Silbatone room they had their top end tube amplification and the TIP 8 inch field coil two-way
speaker... and three-way designs. The big black speaker
to the right is the Western Electric 15a. And yes, it did sound very, very
good! Not too shabby for a 1920's or thereabouts design.
Amphion Audio had their sweet little desktop Ion+ monitors
(€999) with unforgettable DDA 100 (€499) with USB that produces 50 wpc stereo.
Cute little system that does deliver the goods.
Friday's coverage --->
High-Performance Audio Reviews
Munich High End Show Report 2012
