Munich 2019 Official Thread

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Best room for me thus far: Zesto audio with Verity audio speakers.

 

Most remarkable room by far: Western Electric. Wow! There is something very right in the sound of that old horn speakers! (link)

 

 

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I also liked Wilson/Spectral, the Paradigm Persona’s 7F,  the Vandersteen/Brinkman room and the Nordost room with YG acoustics. 

 

The best sounding affordable speakers (3500 euro/pair)  I heard yesterday was from an unknown brand to me: WLM (Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur); an Austrian brand. I don’t know the name of the model but they were small towers with felt on the front baffle.

 

Bass was again a problem in most rooms and a lot were to warm sounding to my taste.

 

A trend this year: 7 out of 10 rooms play mostly vinyl!

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On my day two I really liked the Raidho room with their new TD 1.2 driven by a complete Chord stack. And for different reasons the Living Voice room. Here I had one of those wow moments of something getting very close to a live performance with certain genres.

 

I also liked the small Einstein system (the smallest of the two they had setup).

 

Heard a lot of potential with TAD, Stenheim/Playback systems, Lindemann/Manger and Vivid Audio/Mola Mola but unfortunately (except for TAD) these systems where setup in those awful smallish booths in the big halls.

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3 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

 

Could you say which Amphions and the rest of the chain. Eyeing a pair of LS7 but still on the fence.

 

The played with their 7LS and the large Krypton’s. With their own amplification and  some pro-audio gear in the front-end of the system. Very neutral but also a bit clinical to my taste. I owned Amphion in the past. 

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To complete my contribution: on day three I was impressed by the Crystal Cable/Siltech room with the Arabesque Minissimo diamond driven by a full DCS stack. Best two-way system of the show in my humble opinion. Also very interesting to hear about the philosophy behind the new Siltech Symphony speaker (prototype) with open baffle woofers. Unfortunately a speaker that will be priced for the very, very happy few.

 

I also liked the Marten room with the new Mingus Orchestra speaker, driven by CH Precision. And - for very different reasons - the complete Voxativ Hagen system. Very coherent, almost headphones like with a lot of music. The limitations of the full range driver approach could also easily be heard in dynamic or complex passages or when played louder: breakup.

 

There was a Voxativ implementation that I liked even more and this was the PureAudioProject Quintet10, driven by a lot of tube gear. Here a Voxativ full range driver is accompanied by four 10” woofers in an open baffle construction. Very involving and life like. I had to push myself to leave this room and give-up a perfect chair in the center.

 

I had high expectations of the Grimm Audio room with the LS1be and the new MU1 music player and although convincing is some ways there was something really off in terms of focus and sound staging. No matter in which row I sat, it was a constant feeling of sitting on in stead of in front of the soundstage. May be this was because the speakers were placed relatively far from each other and toed-in a lot. I did not take the time to ask for an explanation.