Munich show 2023 Hifideluxe and MOC .

[orfeo_monteverdi]

This particular Beethoven piano sonata (which is a personal reference for me) sounds great on the big WE

Does someone know the reference of that LP? Thanks.
(played in WE room)

 

[audioline]

No may be you can zoom in

Bergmann turntable

 

[bonzo75]

Does someone know the reference of that LP? Thanks.
(played in WE room)

There are 2 known Beethoven piano sonata LPs of women on the picture looking to the left. The other is Annie Fisher.

Youra Guller, Ludwig van Beethoven - Les Deux Dernières Sonates Pour Piano (Vinyl, France, 1973) For Sale | Discogs

Shop the 1973 France Vinyl release of Les Deux Dernières Sonates Pour Piano by Youra Guller, Ludwig van Beethoven at Discogs.

www.discogs.com

 

[Zero000]

One of the forum users (less active as a poster) who has CH and Goebbel told me that the WE system was his favorite, and he would like tone like that. Another (TZBC) also reported the WE as his favorite, he owned big TADs before, (thankfully) swapped them out for Sigma MAAT (which I really like). These are non-horn users. Into modern current equipment. Justin who reported on WE is into Apogees and SS amps.

The best thing about Munich is it can show the contrast between sh*t fi sound and real/natural/absolute sound pretty easily.

I am back on the 211s...

Need longer IC though.

 

[bonzo75]

I am back on the 211s...

So you are changing your handle again?

 

[microstrip]

Peter, everyone is the same. I got the exposure first in 2014, I was a skeptic too when someone told me to go visit this room and I saw this monstrosities. That was my first time to Munich. Luckily this group of guys just told me to go there, they did not tell me these were 100 year old speakers, else I might have been negatively biased.

Next year, Bill joined me, and that time he was big focal Krell owner, looking for big cones, loving Techdas there etc. He was initially not sure how to react but then fell in love with the WE. So, lack of exposure and bias is a natural thing. No one actually grew up with WE. Not even our fathers. It was before their time. So, like Beethoven or Bach, you can be biased against old music as a teenager, wanting to focus on the current pop but for me those who do get exposure and shift show a clear manner of adapting to new experiences.

When someone here says this is nostalgia, and it was old, I only see an inability to learn, an inability to understand the nuance of why people flock to classical music starting 800 years ago, Western electric from 100 years ago, rock from 60s and 70s, recordings from a certain era called the golden era, and some equipment from the modern era. Unless (shock), those eras were the respective bests for those things. TV series, for example, have been amazing recently, movies not so much. And we can understand why this is happening, there is a certain set of factors, a change in customer pattern, that drives talent towards one sector.

Take recordings for example. It was a very short era, where label by label, equipment, engineers etc aligned to produce that gloriousness. But to understand this, one needs to get into a lot of detail, understand labels, lacquer.mother/stamper/engineer/performances etc. It is much easier for one to say modern recordings are better because hey, I cannot bother doing this research, and am much more comfortable passing this off as nostalgia and aligning it to my understanding of progress on laptops and computers. That person is just looking to get a word in, be lazy, not do research, try to paint things black and white as old = outdated and new & expensive = progress. He is therefore the teenager focusing on pop music, not willing to investigate the complexity of classical. I therefore respect the people who once they get exposure are willing to appreciate it. The WE, for example, is by no means a speaker for someone's home, but teaches a lot about how poor today's gear is, and how a lot of today's gear is not even attempting to produce music.

Look, if the audience wants junk food, industry will give junk food. If the audience wants salads and is health conscious, the likes of KFC will close down and healthy options will open up, and healthy salads have got way more tastier than they were before. Hence my point that as long as we have clueless customers who use the wrong "sounds" to audition, and look at prices, expensive KFC is what they will get. Right now there is a trend of expensive coffee in London, and not necessarily the best coffee. I don't blame reviewers or manufacturers...only the customers. If they progressively trained themselves on recordings, music, and exposed themselves to gear, instead of progressively increasing expenditure on their components, they would have progressed on audio sonics, and manufacturers would have to make things to suit those tastes, and price would get more competitive as more people would come in.

Interesting post, but focusing mainly in a few stereotypes that IMO are not statistically representative of most audiophiles, particularly considering musical preferences.

You blame customers, I congratulate them by taking all the risks and for living this hobby their way and buying what they choose to listen what they enjoy, not what a few gurus tell them to buy.

 

[bonzo75]

Interesting post, but focusing mainly in a few stereotypes that IMO are not statistically representative of most audiophiles, particularly considering musical preferences.

You blame customers, I congratulate them by taking all the risks and for living this hobby their way and buying what they choose to listen what they enjoy, not what a few gurus tell them to buy.

You are confusing risk taking with not learning. They might choose to listen to what they buy and enjoy, but I don't see them choosing to learn. That was my point. Surely someone eating KFC is taking risks and choosing to buy and eat what he enjoys.

 

[hogen]

Was the new flagship SME turntable model 60 being demonstrated in any of the rooms?

I did not see it anywhere in the show.

 

[bonzo75]

, not what a few gurus tell them to buy.

This statement reflects you are a bit too scarred by your arguments with David (which were pretty once sided) and still fighting those demons.

There are no few gurus here, WE room is for all at Munich and has the highest attendance and turnout usually. If anything those who follow Roy Gregory, Harley, or JV are following their own few gurus who tell them what to buy. Depends on how broad/narrow your perspective is. WE, Altec preference is quite a majority in a large part of audiophilia, and billionaires who can afford anything choose them. WE are less available and hence command rarity premiums, JC Morrison and Joe Roberts will often advise to go for Altec instead. I will leave you to your teenage pop stuff.

 

[microstrip]

This statement reflects you are a bit too scarred by your arguments with David (which were pretty once sided) and still fighting those demons. (...)

Wrong guess as usual. I used the word is a broad generic sense, as often used outside WBF.

 

[bonzo75]

as often used outside WBF.

Based on your choices you don't seem to go outside much.

 

[microstrip]

Based on your choices you don't seem to go outside much.

As far as I know the only choice influenced by WBF were the Lamm's that were either sold or are currently boxed waiting for buyer ...

 

[bonzo75]

As far as I know the only choice influenced by WBF were the Lamm's that were either sold or are currently boxed waiting for buyer ...

You mean the one I am on record as advising you against. dCS, Wilson, Techdas are very typical WBF material.

 

[microstrip]

You mean the one I am on record as advising you against.

OK.

dCS, Wilson, Techdas are very typical WBF material.

I owned dCS and Wilson long before WBF. The TechDas belonged to a friend and I appreciated a lot its sound in his system. And we are just referring to less than 50% of what I own. The acquisition of the Taiko Extreme was a direct consequence of WBF, however.

Retrospectively, forums such as the TheTapeProject or Audiogon in the good old days had more influence in my purchases than WBF. My best gratitude for WBF is for having presented me the book of Floyd Toole in its early days.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I think I heard 230k for the turntable and 39k for the tonearm.

230,000 UK Pounds, for the base tt, over $300k USD. plus arms, plus remote adjusting and plus stands.

just below Zero territory. above the new Thorens.

 

[Zero000]

So you are changing your handle again?

Going round in circles.

I locked the 211s up for nearly 3 years as the last time I tried them in this 35 by 14 room they lacked power output, or so it seemed. I was going to sell them so I got them out to make sure they still worked.

Bang! Addicted again. Power output seems fine to more than reasonable levels.

Not sure what was going on 3 years ago but something was wrong somewhere.

 

[beaur]

Most certainly in the areas of frequency extension, miniaturisation, lower distortion etc, how much that actually contributes to musical enjoyment is a good question.

Depending on what distortion you are talking about/measuring, you could be technically correct but missing the forest for the trees. If true why then when you listen to large single driver horns like WEs and similar can you have a fairly normal conversation without yelling but when you play back a large box type speaker at the same levels do you need to essentially shout?

In either case it boils down to "different strokes for different folks." If everyone like the same thing or had the same goal we'd all have the same system.

Beau

 

[microstrip]

The hobby is great. The current state of the industry, not so much. There are many choices.

My main criticism to the industry is that they do not manage to make $10k equipment sound like the $500k one.
IMO the gap in sound quality between "accessible" and the extreme price has widened.

 

[Amir]

The high prices at the moment in 99% of the cases are doing nothing, they are just stickers.

+1

 

[bonzo75]

My main criticism to the industry is that they do not manage to make $10k equipment sound like the $500k one.
IMO the gap in sound quality between "accessible" and the extreme price has widened.

This is what I was referring to - customers like who think to get 5 helpings of vegetables a day, they must pay a premium for potato chips, tomato ketchup, bloody mary, Pizza (in order to circumvent the rule of having vegetables served in schools, the US pizza industry wanted to classify pizza as a vegetable) . Instead of taking pain to actually try some decent food or do some research on nutrition.