Let’s begin with the obvious—HIGH END Munich is full of people, about 22,000 according to their published numbers. All kinds of people and that’s why there’s all kinds of gear as tastes vary as widely as people’s appearance.
And this is one of the great joys to be found at a hifi show—variety. If we can leave our ‘expertise’ at the front door, we may just be surprised. Delighted, even, by the many approaches to turning our recorded musical history into a living force. A magical and mystical adventure, an entire hobby just for our pleasure. And education.
How else would we know Miles? How else would we get to know Jimi or Patsy, Nina Simone, Mississippi John Hurt, Prince, Django, or Nick Drake? The only way is through recordings. Recordings that need to be played back on a hifi.
I hope we can all agree that in an ideal world our hifi would get us as close as possible to our chosen tunes. So you can think of a hifi as a medium through which we commune with musical spirits not present, both living and dead. Which is kinda magical.
For me, a hifi show, especially one as large as HIGH END Munich, is a kind of introduction and reunion. A reunion with people and gear I’ve gotten to know and it’s a sign of my time in hifi that these days there’s nearly as many reunions as introductions. Which is kinda nice.
This is the last time this show will take place at the MOC in Munich, moving to Vienna for 2026. I will share that I ran into someone I’ve known for decades, a German native whose gear I’ve enjoyed and owned, who told me this would be his last show. Which also meant this impromptu meeting was more than likely our last…
There are times at hifi shows when the experience begins to feel like being propelled on a conveyor, with little time to pause and reflect let alone listen (or think or feel). But our connections—to people, music, and yes even gear—help ground us in time and ideally make our lives all the richer for it.
dCS was showing off their new Lina DAC X Network Music Player, a piece of kit I’d like to get to know better because dCS knows how to make digital sound right.
Ø Audio‘s impressive top-of-the-line Verdande Loudspeakers were ratting the rafters with help from their new VARG subwoofer (4 x 15″). Woof! We are arranging a play date with the Verdande in Barn. Stay tuned.
That’s the new Riviera Labs AFM 70 Mono Power Amplifier sitting on silent display. But I still know it’ll sound marvelous. You want proof? I offer Exhibit A & Exhibit B.
I’ve reviewed gear from QLN , Vinnie Rossi and Merason so this room, which sounded simply lovely, was a kind of homecoming featuring the QLN Prestige Reference 9 loudspeakers (review), Vinnie Rossi’s Brama Preamplifier and BRAMA Monoblock Power Amplifiers (see my review of the Vinnie Rossi Brama Integrated), and the Merason Mountain DAC (see my review of the Merason DAC1 Mk II) with Innuos providing the serving and streaming.
The speakers from Maine’s Rockport Technologies are among my favorites. Pictured are the Lynx which I think would fit in the Barn, perfectly. I reviewed the Rockport Atria II back in 2023 where you can read more praise like “They dig as deeply, convincingly, and completely into the heart and soul of music as I’ve heard from a loudspeaker”.
The Wadax Studio Player seemed to be in more rooms than me, actually 7 in total, at HIGH END Munich 2025, but they were also showing off the STUDIO · PLAYER SYSTEM that’s comprised of the Studio Player, Studio Clock, Studio PSU, and Akasa DC Studio Cable. Color me more than intrigued.
France’s Diptyque had their REFERENCE MK2’s positively cooking with electronics from Kora. I also gave this small room an ‘A’ for appearance.
Those big horns are the Tune Audio ANIMA, which hide a 15″ down-firing woofer in the cabinet and this room was making sweet, sweet music with electronics from Trafomatic and ROCKNA. Sensitivity: 109dB. Very nice.
I’m always taken with the speakers from Germany’s Manger Acoustics and HIGH END 2025 was no exception in a system featuring their S1 loudspeakers, which can be run in active or passive mode. I reviewed the active version of the S1 way back in 2019.
The company has been refining their Manger sound transducer, pictured, which to my ears offers a lot of the lifelike spark and energy of a really good electrostat. Like Quad 57s.
totaldac‘s complete system, this time featuring their new d1-CD Transport, was all easy liquid listening. “You still using a totaldac?” people ask expecting to hear something other than “Yes.” Silly people.
Confession time—when I said “yes” to going to the JMF Audio room, I didn’t realize it was at HiFi Deluxe. But a yes is a yes in my book so I went, via cab, to the Marriott to hear a mostly JMF system, fronted by a lovely ‘table from Pear Audio. You may remember I have the HQS 6002 Amplifier & PRS 1.5 Preamplifier in Barn and so far I am very (very) impressed with their ability to endow music with body, weight, and color. Think rich. This system exhibited these fine traits and more. The speakers are not currently in production in case you were wondering.
There were lots of BIG systems in Munich including the new and huge YG Acoustics Gemini, which can be configured in 3 ways—fully passive, fully active, or as was the case here with just the bottom woofer powered by Bel Canto-designed power. Bel Canto electronics are also in the fully active, Gemini Live, version. With a big stack of electronics from AVM and cable from Siltech, this massive system in a large room hinted at bigger things…On a related note, the first thing I did this very morning was power up the Octave Jubilee gear and play Bon Iver’s latest through the YG Sonja 3.3. There’s no place like home, or Barn, to get to know what things actually sound like. Or to put it another way, drawing sweeping sound quality conclusions about specific pieces of gear at a hifi show is like thinking you know how good a book is by its spine.
Another big system that caught my attention was VTL‘s new Lohengri mono amplifiers driving the Wilson Audio Alexx V to you-are-there realness. This was big, bold (in a good way) sound that made it easy to fall under its spell.
Last but always first at HIGH END Munich is the room sponsored by Silbatone. This year’s speakers were an amalgam of sorts with pieces dating back to 1930s-era Western Electric with Silbatone’s own (stunning) electronics designed by Dr. Stephano BAE and J.C. Morrison with turntables and tonearms from Neumann (c. 1950s PA2), Thomas Schick, and Frank Schroeder. I’m nearly certain, thanks to this system’s crazy vital energy, that Maria Callas is now sharing my body. Color me possessed.
One question that comes up, over and over, at hifi shows—did you see anything new and exciting? While I did, that’s not saying that something old, very old, cannot offer even greater thrills.
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