Munich HighEnd 2024
- Thread starter redandgold
- Start date
I love these kind of attempts, same as the AC setup , big , complex and may not all be there yet , but the potential is big and deserving if and when they do succeed ..!
Those peak numbers sound about right mike . 1 watt RMS avg will easily require 100-200 watts peak on high DR recordings especially on drum whacks , this was easily proven by Bob Cordell at a show some years ago with his oscilloscope..!
BTW Herve is a critic to meter accuracy ..!
Regards
There may be to come , Unfortunately Moiz was unable to attend the show this year and amongst other manufacturers systems would have covered the Aries Cerat room producing his usual very high quality audio videos , which imho , are the next best to actually being there for a YouTube reference library :
I wouldnt say they are an offender on sensitivity - here are the Stereophile measurements on the Alumine 3:
JA also notes they present a "relatively easy load." They aren't horn like efficiency but aren't designed to be.
JA does not say that they are a relatively easy load throughout. Here is the relevant paragraph:
Stenheim specifies the Alumine Three's nominal impedance as 8 ohms. I found that the impedance reaches a minimum value of 3 ohms between 38Hz and 41Hz, but the magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) lies above 6 ohms for most of the audioband. The electrical phase angle (dashed trace) is generally low, but the EPDR (footnote 2 [resistive load]) drops to 1.5 ohms at 35Hz and to 2.3 ohms between 152Hz and 170Hz; otherwise, it remains between 4 ohms and 12 ohms in the midrange and above. Other than in the low bass and in that narrow region in the lower midrange, this speaker is a relatively easy load.
That all sounds like a no-no for a low to medium powered tube amp to me.
A low powered SS amp might do better on these speakers.
Agree,
Now imagine the babinga size Nuts needed to sell a paper coned midrange driver to current day audiophiles programmed to pay Federal reserve type cash for the next great space age Material brought back from mars just because it sounds more natural ..!
Sounded good today. Found another unknown 2-way that used an 8 inch Supravox and gold plated aluminum done from Audax that really sang. The Supravox was run full range rolling off at 8khz. Great sounding small floor stander.
Yea thats low i wouldn't touch those Stenheims with less than 100/100 @8 and a 2 ohm RMS rating, not the current Beta stable into 2 ohm chant by many these days ...!
Regards
Regards
A few random thoughts from my Thursday to Saturday visit.....
Small speakers often sounded better than bigger speakers. I suspect this is largely down to room size and it being easier to integrate the smaller speakers, but we were often much more "wowed" by smaller speakers than the bigger ones. Göbel a case in point - I thought it was a much better room with new smaller speakers than last year.
The most impressive demo we heard was for the PSI AAVA active bass traps. Outside their booth they demonstrated their effectiveness using a box and banging on the side, whilst inside the booth they were able to turn the traps on and off using an app, and the cleaning up of any bass overhang was notable. It was then interesting to see how many rooms were using them, eg Nagra / Stenheim (which incidentally were using a pair of REL 31's to cover the bass below 23Hz). The only problem is that a decent sized room will need 4-6, and they are £2.5k each!!
R2R tape decks seemed to be in use more than I've seen in previous years. Still a lot of vinyl being played too.
Pilium has overtaken CH Precision as the SS amp of choice, being in 5-6 rooms. I'm not a fan of CH (although not heard 10-series properly) and I think Pilium has a more dynamic sound, similar to my Audionet Stern / Heisenbergs, which I really like. The smaller Scientist series amps on the Vivid Giya Spirits sounded really good btw.
Whilst I still enjoyed the Alsyvox room, I preferred last year's with the Horizon in the system. Similarly, I preferred the sound characteristics of the Clarisys room at Hifi Delux using CAT and a Lampi DAC than at Florian's system using Soulution. Florian now has CAT back in Switzerland so I need to plan a return visit.
Richard of Supatrac has had the most meteoric rise through the ranks of audio designers of all time I reckon - at last year's Munich he had a tiny booth in the start-up area and this year he had arms on a Garrard in his own room, Mark Dohmann's Helix One, a Grand Prix Monaco in the Living Voice room, and perhaps one or two more. You can definitely tell the very dynamic nature of this arm, even for someone relatively inexperienced in vinyl replay like me. Speaking to Richard (who played some cracking stuff btw), lead time is now 5 months due to demand and prices are about to go up due to cost increases. I asked Mark Dohmann about the arm and he loves it, saying Richard deserves a place at the top table of designers due to the Blackbird - "arise Sir Richard" was his joke. BTW I discovered you could sneak into the Cessaro / Dohmann room before the main show doors opened, so enjoyed 25 mins in there with pretty much the room to myself Saturday morning!
The other arm which seemed to be everywhere was the relatively new Reed laser-guided arm.
Rooms generally sounded poor on Thursday, better on Friday, and many were singing nicely on Saturday. Thursday seemed quieter than last year, but Saturday was properly busy, although with a degree of patience you could usually get a prime listening spot pretty quickly.
I really enjoyed some of the presentations and insights by those playing the music. Notable was the guy Dj'ing in the Stenheim / Dartzeel / CSPort room (sax player was cool too), Dave Chesky in the Stenheim / Nagra room talking about his recording process and how he thinks about "good sound", Laurence Dickie talking through the design principles of the new Moya M1 (ugly as sin but sounded good in an acoustically poor room). It's also great to be able to speak to many of the designers themselves, understand the engineering principles, and their passion for hifi and music. For me this is what makes Munich special.
Arrogance of the year award for the second year in a row goes to Tidal. Thursday and Friday were invite-only, and the room was still closed to mere mortals at 11am on Saturday, so I gave up. I fondly remember my first trip to Munich being handed the iPad by Jorn to play tunes for 15 minutes late Friday on the La Assoluta system they had - those days seem long-gone.
Offshoots outside of HifiDeluxe don't work imho - the main MOC show is a rush to get round and spend quality time in rooms even over 3 days, so the idea of going somewhere else, even if only 5-10 mins walk, on the off chance of hearing something interesting is a non-starter imho. And for me, HifiDeluxe only works because it remains open for 2 hours after the main show closes.
The headphone area was as big as last year's but seemed far less busy. I had plenty of opportunity to compare the likes of Susvara's, Meze Elite, Abyss etc on different amps. Have we seen peak headphone?
High End passes allow you to travel free on the trams - can't believe I didn't know this before!
The best thing about Munich is getting home and listening to your own system to remind you that taking time and care to build a system in tune with your room and tastes is worth its weight in gold!
Small speakers often sounded better than bigger speakers. I suspect this is largely down to room size and it being easier to integrate the smaller speakers, but we were often much more "wowed" by smaller speakers than the bigger ones. Göbel a case in point - I thought it was a much better room with new smaller speakers than last year.
The most impressive demo we heard was for the PSI AAVA active bass traps. Outside their booth they demonstrated their effectiveness using a box and banging on the side, whilst inside the booth they were able to turn the traps on and off using an app, and the cleaning up of any bass overhang was notable. It was then interesting to see how many rooms were using them, eg Nagra / Stenheim (which incidentally were using a pair of REL 31's to cover the bass below 23Hz). The only problem is that a decent sized room will need 4-6, and they are £2.5k each!!
R2R tape decks seemed to be in use more than I've seen in previous years. Still a lot of vinyl being played too.
Pilium has overtaken CH Precision as the SS amp of choice, being in 5-6 rooms. I'm not a fan of CH (although not heard 10-series properly) and I think Pilium has a more dynamic sound, similar to my Audionet Stern / Heisenbergs, which I really like. The smaller Scientist series amps on the Vivid Giya Spirits sounded really good btw.
Whilst I still enjoyed the Alsyvox room, I preferred last year's with the Horizon in the system. Similarly, I preferred the sound characteristics of the Clarisys room at Hifi Delux using CAT and a Lampi DAC than at Florian's system using Soulution. Florian now has CAT back in Switzerland so I need to plan a return visit.
Richard of Supatrac has had the most meteoric rise through the ranks of audio designers of all time I reckon - at last year's Munich he had a tiny booth in the start-up area and this year he had arms on a Garrard in his own room, Mark Dohmann's Helix One, a Grand Prix Monaco in the Living Voice room, and perhaps one or two more. You can definitely tell the very dynamic nature of this arm, even for someone relatively inexperienced in vinyl replay like me. Speaking to Richard (who played some cracking stuff btw), lead time is now 5 months due to demand and prices are about to go up due to cost increases. I asked Mark Dohmann about the arm and he loves it, saying Richard deserves a place at the top table of designers due to the Blackbird - "arise Sir Richard" was his joke. BTW I discovered you could sneak into the Cessaro / Dohmann room before the main show doors opened, so enjoyed 25 mins in there with pretty much the room to myself Saturday morning!
The other arm which seemed to be everywhere was the relatively new Reed laser-guided arm.
Rooms generally sounded poor on Thursday, better on Friday, and many were singing nicely on Saturday. Thursday seemed quieter than last year, but Saturday was properly busy, although with a degree of patience you could usually get a prime listening spot pretty quickly.
I really enjoyed some of the presentations and insights by those playing the music. Notable was the guy Dj'ing in the Stenheim / Dartzeel / CSPort room (sax player was cool too), Dave Chesky in the Stenheim / Nagra room talking about his recording process and how he thinks about "good sound", Laurence Dickie talking through the design principles of the new Moya M1 (ugly as sin but sounded good in an acoustically poor room). It's also great to be able to speak to many of the designers themselves, understand the engineering principles, and their passion for hifi and music. For me this is what makes Munich special.
Arrogance of the year award for the second year in a row goes to Tidal. Thursday and Friday were invite-only, and the room was still closed to mere mortals at 11am on Saturday, so I gave up. I fondly remember my first trip to Munich being handed the iPad by Jorn to play tunes for 15 minutes late Friday on the La Assoluta system they had - those days seem long-gone.
Offshoots outside of HifiDeluxe don't work imho - the main MOC show is a rush to get round and spend quality time in rooms even over 3 days, so the idea of going somewhere else, even if only 5-10 mins walk, on the off chance of hearing something interesting is a non-starter imho. And for me, HifiDeluxe only works because it remains open for 2 hours after the main show closes.
The headphone area was as big as last year's but seemed far less busy. I had plenty of opportunity to compare the likes of Susvara's, Meze Elite, Abyss etc on different amps. Have we seen peak headphone?
High End passes allow you to travel free on the trams - can't believe I didn't know this before!
The best thing about Munich is getting home and listening to your own system to remind you that taking time and care to build a system in tune with your room and tastes is worth its weight in gold!
True, but I suspect Munich has way more money thrown at it than any other show, with the intent of wowing the audience!
People looking at SOTA cone systems should really have a look at Brodmann loudspeakers
If i understand correctly brodmann was established somewhere in the 1700 / 1800 s .
Making piano's in Austria
It was then bought buy bosendorfer the well known piano manufacturer who extended the line with loudspeakers .
This part of the company was bought by the current owner who brought back the original name .
I spoke to him briefly , im no sales rep i just think the performance was better then Wilson Magico for example.
Active bass 230 K.
Good stuff imv
If i understand correctly brodmann was established somewhere in the 1700 / 1800 s .
Making piano's in Austria
It was then bought buy bosendorfer the well known piano manufacturer who extended the line with loudspeakers .
This part of the company was bought by the current owner who brought back the original name .
I spoke to him briefly , im no sales rep i just think the performance was better then Wilson Magico for example.
Active bass 230 K.
Good stuff imv
Last edited:
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