Last September, it was officially announced to the press and consumers that the High End exhibition would be relocated.
It had changed location several times in its forty-two-year history, but this particular move came as a big surprise. As it seemed, with more than 30,000 sq. m. of exhibition space, the M.O.C. (Munich Order Center), with more than 20 years of tradition, fused into one with the name of the exhibition and “High End” was pronounced in the same breath with “Munich,” and, if someone didn’t run out of steam, also with “M.O.C.” The exhibition hosted additional events prepared by the organizer, as well as side events in the form of a hi-fi deluxe exhibition at the Marriott Hotel or several equipment rooms located in buildings with vintage cars across the road. It’s a thing of the past now.
High End 2025
Date: 15-18 May
Address: M.O.C. München
Lilienthalallee 40
80939 Munich ⸜ GERMANY
Organizer:
HIGH END SOCIETY Service GmbH
We will publish a full report on the event, by Janusz Tuchowski, on June 16. In the following column you will read about what to expect from the new venue, what exhibitors think about it and how we see it. We will also tell you about small pleasures and big money. Finally, we will talk about the Krakow Sonic Society and the Compact Disc format.
text WOJCIECH PACUŁA
pictures Tomasz Folta, “High Fidelity”, Emile Bok
In 2026, the High End exhibition is going to change its location. The event organizer, German company High End Society Service, writes:
This move from Munich to Vienna signals a groundbreaking step and was announced by the HIGH END SOCIETY at today’s annual general meeting of the Association for High Quality Audio and Video Reproduction. With the decision, the organizer is marking an important milestone on the future path of the world’s leading trade show for enthusiasts of high-quality audio technology. (This means) offering the best conditions for shows and exhibitions and setting new standards.
Next year, from May 28 to May 31, the exhibition will take place for the first time at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV). The organizer writes the following about the new venue for the best audio products in the world:
The first-class event venue in the heart of Austria’s capital has undergone extensive remodelling in recent years and was equipped with the latest digital technology. The venue offers a variety of modern rooms in different sizes for exhibitors to best showcase their products and technologies. Additional rooms and spacious halls are available for exhibitors to set up their individual stands.
The ACV has a total of 26,000 square meters of exhibition space on several levels in the main building as well as the adjoining halls, enabling exhibitors to find optimal conditions for their various needs”.
⸜ One of the highlights of this year’s exhibition for me was the presentation of medals of the Krakow Sonic Society; the photos feature Dirk Sommer from hifistatement.net → meeting № 94, August 2014 – pict. Tomasz Folta
That’s as much as 4,000 sq.m. less than at the MOC in Munich, which couldn’t accommodate all the interested parties. Does this mean it will be an even more elite event? What does this, anyway, mean for exhibitors and visitors? To tell you the truth, no one knows. I’ve talked to several companies about it and, as far as I can see, they have mixed feelings. There was a fair amount of optimism, especially among those who complained about Munich from the very beginning. For them, any change, even a leap into the unknown, will be a change for the better. Also, industry people who are not directly involved in the preparation of the event, i.e., distributors and the press, seem to be curious rather than worried.
From my perspective, I might add that this could be a way to revive the High End formula. After all, the existing one seems heavily worn out. I will tell you in confidence that for the past few years, while in Munich, I have spent some of my time outside the event, visiting the Alte Pinakothek museum, where they have a beautiful Self-Portrait with a Fur-Collared Robe by Albrecht Dürer and an early da Vinci (Madonna of the Carnation), wandering around the market square with the City Hall and the best record store I’ve been to so far, located on the corner of Marienplatz in the Ludwig Beck store, dropping into the Cafe Glockenspiel, a restaurant located on the third floor, overlooking the tower of the medieval St. Peter’s Church, or just sitting in my favorite restaurant Weisses Bräuhaus im Tal, owned by a well-known brewery that brews wheat beer. I do this because it gives me so much more joy than walking the same halls, corridors, rooms, etc., over and over again.
⸜ The “150” KTS medal for Dirk Räke from the Transrotor company → meeting № 68, 2013 & meeting № 123, December 2019 – pict. Tomasz Folta
The exhibition has been held in Munich every year since 2004, which is when our magazine was founded. That’s twenty-one years ago. Therefore, the change of environment can be stimulating for us. However, what is potentially beneficial for us, industry visitors, may prove to be a challenge for exhibitors. From conversations I’ve had, a problematic picture emerges. One acquaintance, who wishes to remain anonymous, and who is a representative of one of the major companies taking part in the event, speaks primarily of completely different venue conditions.
A visit to the Austria Center Vienna left them stunned. It turns out that the place offers either small or very large rooms.Thus, there are no rooms similar to those in Munich, located in the atriums on the first and second floors, around central “squares.” The room offered to them was to be over… 500 m2. How to prepare listening rooms in something like this? That’s a key question and the answer is worth thousands of euros.
Perhaps, however, it won’t be so bad and there will be an adaptation process similar to the one the event had to go through after the change of location from the Kempinsky Hotel in Frankfurt to the MOC exhibition halls.
As I wrote in my coverage of the 2011 show, the initial reactions from the exhibiting companies, press, etc., were negative at the time; the entire coverage → HERE. At the time, I pointed out that it had to be looked at as a certain tradition, alive and well in the US, UK and Poland. Audio exhibitions, especially high-end ones, had until then been associated with hotel rooms, which were supposed to imitate visitors’ rooms, giving a sense of comfort and an illusion of luxury.
⸜ The “150” KTS medal for the Accuphase company, Mark Suzuki and Tatsuki Tozuka → meeting № 95, November 2015
Perhaps that is why the first year of the High End in Munich was not well received. The sound was very bad, people couldn’t get used to the new conditions and small manufacturers complained that they felt like they were in a delicatessen in the big halls downstairs. But the following year already showed that a large part of the problems were due to the fact that the exhibitors had not switched their thinking to the new conditions and that they tried to act as if they were at a hotel – whether it was acoustics, product positioning or dealing with the press.
And it wasn’t until 2006 – the third year of the Munich show – that everything “jumped into place”. It turned out that the huge space is an advantage, because not only can the equipment be set up as desired, in large numbers, but there is also room for something that always malfunctions at such events – meetings with dealers, with the press, etc. So, moving from the MOC to the AVA shouldn’t be that difficult, as it’s not the same as the paradigm shift of the whole exhibition that took place in 2004. I also think that after some time exhibitors will cope with both acoustics, logistics and stress.
⸜ The “150” KTS medal for the Estelon company, Mr. Alfred Vassilkov and Mr. Ilias Koutromanos → meeting № 143, January 2024 – pict. Tomasz Folta
⸜ The “150” KTS medal for the Aavik company, Mr. Michael Børresena and Mr. Morten Thyrrestrup → meeting № 146, May 2024 – pict. Tomasz Folta
I am curious how the organizer’s cooperation with its largest German contractors will work out. You see, audio exhibitions are usually prepared by local distributors. There are also manufacturers present at them, some of them are even the main exhibitors, but when they find a local distributor, they quite quickly allocate this duty to them. The High End was different. It’s an international event that manufacturers simply had to attend.
However, since Munich is in Germany, local distributors also participated. And one of the biggest of them is Audio Reference, the “home” of such brands as Wilson Audio Specialties, VTL, Dan D’Agostino, dCS, Krell and Western Electric, to mention the most recognizable ones. And it was there that the exhibition’s most expensive systems were usually shown, which might be interesting. Will it also be present in Vienna? Will German representatives of other brands do the same? Will it interest Austrian distributors? These are important questions, because on the one hand they will answer doubts about the event’s budget, and on the other hand they will show the industry’s commitment at the new venue.
⸜ The sound engineer Peter McGrath presenting his recordings on the Wilson Audio Specialties WAMM Master Chronosonic speakers – it was a wonderful, almost magical experience, especially since there were maybe ten of us listening.
And it could be really interesting, because another source close to the inner decision-making circles of the High End Society informed me that there is an apparent “concern” about the big role of Warsaw, not only when it comes to the Audio Video Show, but also its growing international power. If that was confirmed, geopolitics would also enter the audio domain.
At the time, the person was pointing to the Polish capital as the location of the main B2C (Business to Clients) audio event, where business and customers meet, and much of the business from Munich would move to the U.S., where AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) would operate more in a B2B (Business to Business) format, i.e. in a similar way to how Munich has operated so far. I think in the case of the show held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois, that won’t happen, especially in these times of Donald Trump’s jittery politics. But Warsaw – this is real, which would be a tremendous change.
⸜ Emile Bok from Taiko Audio (to the left) and the author – photo: Emile Bok
It was during these types of conversations, meetings, and events around the exhibition that I spent my time in Munich this year. I was relieved to get rid of my “patriotic duties”, so to speak, transferring this burden to Janusz Tuchowski. So, as I said, I devoted some time to the beer garden located in the exhibition area, feasting mainly with the people from Taiko Audio. Not only that, though – it’s a place where you can meet almost anyone and have a quiet chat with them.
Before I got there, together with Tom Folta, the host of the Krakow Sonic Society meetings, making his debut at the event with his company Tomasz Folta Audio Consulting, I made an honorary round of the exhibition, presenting medals to foreign members of the Krakow Sonic Society who, for obvious reasons, could not be present at the 150th anniversary meeting; more → HERE. It was great to thank them in this way for their commitment and time devoted to us.
On the back of the medal was the logo of the Jplay brand company, with which the event was organized, and we also met Marcin Ostapowicz, its owner – by chance, at the toilets, but the conversation was fruitful… We agreed that during the Audio Video Show 2025 we will prepare a joint meeting for you. It will take place at the Tulip Hotel, in the Ayon Audio room. The head of the company, Gerhart Hirt, will also be present, along with a new inexpensive (for high end) file transport. We agreed that we will prepare the tracks with which Marcin designs, and I will test the devices and comment on them. The presence of the head of Jplay will be important, as from now on all Ayon Audio players and file transports will be certified by him and eventually sold with his control program.
⸜ The Ludwig Beck record store at Marienplatz 11 is one of the best places of this type that I know
After all, files have already come out of the chaos phase, they are past the post-IT fog phase, and they have also survived childhood diseases and even the madness of teenage hormones. I think they are in a good place. So, it’s no surprise that one of the STATEMENT of High Fidelity awards in the 2025 German Edition went to Taiko Audio for its top-of-the-line Olympus XDMI Server + XDMI I/O file transport; more → HERE.
Munich was one of the two places, along with Warsaw (Polish Edition), where we presented these awards, together with Dirk Sommer of the hifistatemen.net magazine (we will report on this event separately). But we too will have to discuss the change of location of the High End exhibition. After all, it will no longer be a German Edition, but an Austrian Edition. And hifistatemen.net is a German magazine, right? So, we’ll have to think it over – the first ideas are already there, we’ll see how and what will emerge from them.
⸜ One of many top systems in which the sound source was partly, and often mostly, a CD player: the YG Acoustics Gemini speakers with electronics including a CD/file player, AVM and Sitlech cables
Not only is the quality of file players at a high level, but also their proliferation, as almost every company wants its own one. Some order them from subcontractors, and some rely on their own solutions. Like Esoteric, which this year showed the Grandioso E1 model, the first in the series, with its own Network Engine G4 system. In any case – everyone wants them in their portfolio, because that’s where the money lies at the moment.
So, systems for file playback were present in almost every High End room. But in an increasing number of cases, the important signal source is, once again, the Compact Disc or Super Audio CD player. I’ve signaled this in several recent reports on the event, but in the last two years this trend is becoming more than a curiosity – a “permanent” new reality.
Apparently, customers with hundreds or even thousands of digital records (per capita) in their collections are no longer ashamed of them and do not worry that they are inferior to vinyl lovers demonstrating their superiority at every turn, nor do they need to be ashamed of the backwardness that proponents of new technologies accuse them of. As it seems, both of these approaches are expressions of frustration, not a realistic description of reality.
It is because when a file popularizer like the French company Totaldac debuts with a CD transport, it means something is changing in audio. The d1-CD model uses the Austrian CD-PRO8 mechanism and, according to the company materials, inherits the years of research that went into developing Totaldac’s DACs, reclockers and streamers.
⸜ The Totaldac d1-CD CD transport
New CD and SACD transports, as well as players for these formats, were ubiquitous at the stands from China, which is understandable, since Asia still plays music from CDs. So far, however, these were models intended only for the local market, but now a dozen companies present in Munich showed entire lines of such devices. That means they see potential in the Western world.
Perhaps something else seemed even more important to me – the implementation of disc players in all-in-one systems. In Europe we have a company that has been doing this successfully for years – the British Ruark Audio. However, it was an exception. At High End 2025, however, I found quite a few companies with similar devices, half of which had a slot for the silver disc. Since these are products aimed at a wider audience, it can be assumed that manufacturers foresee the return of this format not only to audiophile systems, but also to the homes of people who have nothing to do with audio. It won’t be a triumphant return, that’s not the point, but it will be significant enough to bring the format back to the attention of record labels and manufacturers alike.
⸜ Is this a coincidence? – Immediately after my flight to Munich, I was able to fly to Vienna with the same airline
▌ Farewell, Munich!
We live in interesting times, not only in terms of politics and the economy, but also in audio. We’ve been seeing big money in our industry for several years, while more acquisitions and purchases, like Samsung’s $8 billion buyout of Harman International in 2017, are pumping new blood into our bloodstream with molecules of money, people and products. Long-lost brands like Sphinx are returning to the scene, along with the Siltech, Crystal Cable and HMS Elektronik, now owned by the International Audio Holding. The revived Polish Unitra and Diora brands were visible in Munich, too, and all this allows us to think about the future with a large dose of optimism.
A very interesting thing was meeting the German company Volpe Audio producing a new CD transport, a successor to Philips’ CD-Pro 2, but with better mechanical specifications. Great news!
How will the new – because that’s how it has to be considered, after all – exhibition in Vienna find itself in all this? If I had to bet on something, I’d say it will not be bad, but also that something is changing on the map of perfectionist audio and that its most important nodal points are shifting.
See you next year! We’re meeting on May 28 at the Austria Center Vienna. ●
▌ A quick guide to CD and SACD players
⸜ The Italian company Gold Note is an important promoter not only of LPs, but also CDs. At the exhibition it showed a three-piece CD-1000 player
⸜ CD / file player AVM MP 8.3
⸜ CD mechanics by Volpe Audio
⸜ Prof. Francesco Volpe, , the founder and constructor of the Volpe Audio company
⸜ The new (for me) British company Iotavx with the CD/file player NP3; price – €599
⸜ The French company Elipson has the CD300 player in their Performance series; price – €499
⸜ The German Tiglon and the Exxact CD player; price – €2700
⸜ The Fostex HP-V8 headphone amplifier required a solid source – here the SACD McIntosh MCD350 player
⸜ New devices from the French YBA, including a top-loader, SACD transport, model YT302
⸜ On top: a SACD transport by the Chinese Onyx Audio company, model XST20, developed in collaboration with the YBA company; price – 2,099 USD
⸜ A CD/file player by another Chinese company, Shanling, model CD-T35; price – from 16,000 USD
⸜ A cheap CD transport by Shanling, also suitable to be used as a ripper, model CR60; price – €269
⸜ Japan has never betrayed CD, but it has taken large companies a while to return to the format – now, however, they are faithful to it. The photo features the Technics SLG700 Mk2 SACD/file player
⸜ The Japanese TAD with a system featuring the SACD D1000tx transport as the source, with the D/A C1000 converter
⸜ One of the greatest surprises of the exhibition, a return of the Japanese Onkyo brand with stereo systems – the photo features the CD C-30 player
⸜ One more Japanese veteran, the Kenwood company with a DAB/FM CD/tuner, model M-925DAB
⸜ During the exhibition, it was also possible to buy or order a signed copy of a photo with a chosen musician, taken by Paul Bergen; price – €700 for a picture without a frame
⸜ Wilson Audio speakers, Dan D’Agostino electronics, Stormtank power supply and the APEX Mk II Vivaldi dCS SACD player
⸜ Seen from the bottom, from the mechanical side, the MP 3100 HV CD/file player by the German company T+A
⸜ Another T+A device of this type, the MP 200 model
⸜ In this system, the CD transport was the classic CDT-100 model by the Greek Ypsilon company
⸜ The wonderful Spanish Wadax, Studio Player model – a SACD player; this year, a clock has been added to the series, which gives us a three-piece system including an external power supply
⸜ A premiere of the new Fyne Audio speakers took place with two (!) CD players – the Unison Research CD Due (Italy) and Rega Isis
⸜ The German company MBL can always be relied on – the 1621 A CD transport
⸜ Another German company WBT used the Accustic Arts Player IV CD player for demonstrations
⸜ Vintage style – the American JBL offers a really cool CD player, model CD350
⸜ Styling is the same, while the country of origin (and even the continent) – different; the Polish Unitra CSH-801 CD player
⸜ A system with Marten speakers and Italian Audia Flight electronics; the SACD FSL20 player to the left
⸜ The latest SACD C10 transport from the Swiss CH Precision, with a wonderful CD chamber opening mechanism
⸜ The mechanics of CH Precision transports, MORSe, based on the flagship Denon/Marantz transport
⸜ The American Aesthetix company still sells the Romulus CD player
⸜ One of the most interesting symptoms of the return to CDs are integrated systems; the photo features the German Sonoro brand with the Elite (on top, €499) and Meisterstück (at the bottom, €1499) models; does one need more “evidence of existence” of the Compact Disc market?
→ www.HIGHENDSOCIETY.de
text WOJCIECH PACUŁA
pictures Tomasz Folta, “High Fidelity”, Emile Bok
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Krakowskie Towarzystwo Soniczne
