Munich High End Show 2017

[MarkS]

Chris, can you please report on how things sound at the dCS booth.  

[MarkS]

2 hours ago, manisandher said:

I’m now on my way home from the show. I managed to sit down and take a good listen to many systems, including: Living Voice/Kondo, MSB, Einstein, dCS, Göbel, Wilson Benesch, Aries Cerat, Sound Galleries, Avantgarde Acoustic, Cessaro, Kawero/Kondo, Magico/Spectral, MBL, Thöress, Tune Audio, Silatone/WE, Elrog, soulution, hORNS, Tidal, Mark Levinson, Marten, Stein and TAD, among others.

 

All my photos came out horribly, so I’ll leave others to post their photos instead.

 

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do this, but because they were amongst the most expensive systems at the show, here are my biggest disappointments of the last two days:

 

3. Living Voice. This is the first time I’ve listened to the Vox Palladians, but have heard the Vox Olympians a few times before. I wasn’t that impressed with the Olympians, and am even less impressed with the Palladians. Mind you, so I should be – as displayed, the Palladians only cost 2/3 of the Olympians’ $800,000 price tag!

 

2. Cessaro. This is the second time I’ve listened to the Gammas at the Munich show. I forced myself to sit through 30 minutes or so of ‘music’. In that time, most people came in, sat down for all of 30 seconds and walked back out. I was mightily tempted to do the same myself many times.

 

1. Magico/Spectral. The last time I heard Magicos was when they partnered with soulution a few years ago at Munich. I was underwhelmed back then, and unfortunately, partnering the S3s with Spectral hasn’t seemed to help one iota. A totally dead sound, as far as I’m concerned. How people can rant and rave about them is totally beyond me.

 

OK, on to the cool-sounding stuff. My top systems were:

 

3. Aries Cerat. Wow, what a dynamic and totally immersive sound. Slightly edgy off centre, but in the sweet spot were massively impressive. Finally, a system with a bit of life!

 

2. Silbatone/WE. So easy on the ear, and yet so detailed and intricate. I would have liked a bit more ‘kick’ from time to time though. But really can’t complain... for an 85 year-old pair of speakers!

 

1. Tune Audio/Trafomatic. OK, I’m probably a bit biased... This year, Tune Audio left the Animas at home and instead brought along the newer, larger and more expensive Avatons, mated with a gorgeous pair of Trafomatic Elysium SE tube amps. I heard the system on the Friday and wasn’t overly impressed. But I went back today and really, really enjoyed the sound. I stayed for an hour or so, and everything Manolis played sounded great. Only a handful of systems I’ve ever heard have matched this level of performance IMHO. My only criticism was that the sound was a tad too bright, but this could be easily solved.

 

Overall, I phenomenal two days. It’s a shame I didn’t bump into any other CAers though. Oh well, maybe next time.

 

Mani.

How were Kondo and dCS systems?  Did Kondo show with the Kaiser Kaewero speakers?

 

[MarkS]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Today I had an opportunity to sit down with Peter McGrath from Wilson Audio. He has been a recording engineer for 40 years. He had several of his tracks encoded as MQA versions and gave me a proper A/B using an MQA enabled dCS DAC. 

 

There was no denying the positive difference MQA made in each track. There were substantial audible benefits on all five tracks we played. I asked him to flip back and forth several times so I could make sure of what I heard. In this case, MQA made the music sound much much better. 

 

I was in the room with someone else who is quite skeptical of MQA, and he heard the same very positive differences.

 

Our listening was done after show hours, so the noise level was substantially lower and the conditions were good. 

 

 

This is essentially the same demo I heard in NYC last month and wrote about on this website.  My similarly favorable impression of MQA was met with scepticism (to say the least).  I look forward to dCS' implementation of MQA and am anxious to see if you made it to the dCS room to hear the Rossini, which, I think, has been MQA'd. 

 

p.s.  My MQA demo was fully public.  I'm nobody special. 

[MarkS]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

I went to the dCS room couple of times, but it sounded boring every time... Not fan of those speakers, somehow the soundstage is missing. Or then they just don't work in that kind of room.

 

What speakers were used in the dCS room?

[MarkS]

7 hours ago, Duke40 said:

The 3 white diffraction panels behind the speakers look great (in comparison to what i was looking at earlier today for room treatment, a lot of stuff looks like it turns your room into a monitoring studio, at least the white one in photo above looks better). Wonder what brand they are.

 

The panels are made by Rainer Weber, the guy who designed the speakers. 

[MarkS]

45 minutes ago, Nikhil said:

 

Not really.  I suspect they did it for the sound stage 

 

 

 

Precisely, optimized for room and wide listening area. 

[MarkS]

What was in the Marten room.  I've heard the Coltrane system once and thought it was excellent (but I do not recall what it was playing with at that time).