"Yes, the High End in Munich, Germany, is my favorite show for everything high end audio. There, we indeed find everything. As all the manufacturers are there and all the trends are on display, we always find ourselves facing the question: Where to start? That is great fun, as well as a challenge. The following is a report of our main findings for the year."
The paragraph above is how Ward Maas opened his report from the High End 2018 show in Munich, where he shared his findings in speaker design, amplification, turntables, and anything that showed innovations, an important improvement, better design, or simply because he couldn't resist it... Enjoy all his highlights while he walks the Munich Order Center (MOC) in this exciting edition, which was also complemented by a small but very enjoyable concurrent CanJam show in a nearby building.
For the 2018 High End Show, the weather outside was warm and summer-like, and the mood inside the show was also more relaxed. In previous years, I used the tactic of walking around the Munich Order Center (MOC) on the first day to try to get a feel for the layout and discuss with colleagues what was really interesting. The next two days I would spend following up on all the leads. I would use the last day to check if I missed something important. However, this year was different. It seemed everyone had something really special to showcase. Or better, everyone had multiple new products and was introducing multiple fascinating technologies. So, the 2018 show turned into a four-day marathon that concluded with an extreme thunderstorm, which washed away the sweat of a once again very exciting High End.
This article was originally published in audioXpress, August 2018.
Read the full report now available here.
