Munich High End 2024 - The Greatest Show On Earth - Part 3

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Munich High End 2024 was an absolute delight for many reasons, one of which was sound quality. I don’t remember an audio show with as much good sound as I heard this year, and I didn’t even make it to several great sounding rooms! I saw photos of many rooms, and heard from friends about what they’d heard, and thought to myself, how did I miss those rooms? It’s crazy that four days isn’t enough to fully enjoy what Munich High End has to offer. What a show!

Note: Part 1 | Part 2

This year I settled on four rooms that really did it for me. There were many more rooms worthy of in-depth write-ups, but a guy has to have limits and I will always avoid giving participation trophies. Here are my four favorites from Munich High End 2024, concluding with my Best of Show award.

Cessaro - I was 100% unprepared for what I heard in the Cessaro room in Munich. I’ve been a fan of horn loudspeakers for many years. I even considered purchasing Avantgarde horns to replace my TAD CR1 speakers, opting instead for Wilson Audio Alexia 2 speakers in the end. I like what horns can do sonically, and I love the look of horns aesthetically.

Walking into the Cessaro room, I immediately noticed the size of the soundstage. The presentation was huge and produced the most concert-like experience I’ve ever heard. I sat through entire orchestral pieces, thinking it was just like listening to my hometown Minnesota Orchestra live at Orchestra Hall.

My one complaint about the Cessaro room is the fact that it featured vinyl playback only. I’m not the biggest fan of the sound of vinyl and can’t stop hearing the flaws of the format. I know many people love it, and I’m happy that they are happy, but it just isn’t for me. Fortunately I found one of my favorite albums of all time in the room, Moon Ray by the Yoshio Otomo Quartet with Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, on the Three Blind Mice record label. I played track one, Moonray, and loved what I heard. The sound was absolutely luscious and larger than life.

Sitting through a few other demonstrations of unfamiliar music, I was stunned by the dynamics and texture reproduced by the Cessaro horns. A drum kit playing through this system sounded like an actual drum kit was in the room. It was powerful and a touch scary. This system was capable of reproducing certain musical aspects like no other system I heard at the show.

I really couldn’t assess other sonic attributes and nuances very well without my own selection of music. In fact, I was very close to purchasing Pearl Jam’s Yield album from a vendor in the main Hall, just so I could hear familiar music through this system, but he wanted $120 for the album. The album is worth $120, as it’s the only Pearl Jam album to feature drummer Jack Irons, but given my general distaste of vinyl, I just couldn’t stomach the purchase for a single demo listen at the show.

Overall I was surprised, delighted, and a bit scared by what this system could reproduce. Well done Cessaro.

Taiko - Finally! After years of missing each other by minutes, I finally had the opportunity to meet Taiko’s Emile Bok in person, and to talk “shop” with his team. The pleasure was all mine. Hearing about the lengths this company goes to, to extract extreme performance from its music servers, was music to my ears. These guys consider everything, then figure out how to make it better. Heck, even the crystal oscillators from well known companies aren’t good enough for Taiko. Taiko goes further upstream to get better crystals!

Anyway, thanks to the Taiko team for letting me be the DJ for a little bit near the end of the day on Friday. Listening to my own music, through the new Taiko Olympus server was a very memorable experience. I played a little Lady Blackbird, in addition to several other artists, and fell right into the sonic trap laid by this system. I say sonic trap in the best sense of the word. Once I started listening, I was hooked / trapped. In a similar, but quite different, way as the Cessaro horn system, this Taiko / Pilium / Alsyvox system had a larger than life soundstage. The delicacy and vulnerability of Lady Blackbird’s voice was on full display for all to hear, as long as they weren’t talking over it in the back of the room.

At previous Munich shows I spent very little time in this room, thinking I would circle back and wait for Emile, then listen to my own music selections. It never worked out, until this year. I’m happy the team gave me some time to really soak-in this system. I now understand 100% why some of my friends have raved about this room for years. The sound has an “it” factor, as in, this is “it” or these guys get “it.”  Thoroughly enjoyable.

Pure Accurate Sound - The Pure Accurate Sound room at Munich High End 2024 was absolutely amazing. Surely these guys had a component list, price sheet, and dealer locator in large print on the door right? Nope. The Pure Accurate Sound team wasn’t selling anything but an idea.

“The idea has been to combine the best in class loudspeaker drivers (Purifi), class-D amplifiers (Purifi), Digital-to-Analog converter (Okto Research), room acoustic treatment (GIK Acoustics), measurement technology (Klippel), software engineering (AudioVero), professional woodworks (ROSE Handwerk) and experience in speaker building (Joachim Gerhard). All this is applied to a generic speaker in an imperfect room and can achieve outstanding performance!”

I was predisposed to liking this room when I received the first email before the show, explaining what Pure Accurate Sound is all about. Most unique for an audio show, and most important to me, was the use of a good measurement microphone and digital room correction. I’ve done this at home for several years, and wouldn’t live without it. But, I’ve never understood why “nobody” uses it at audio shows. Until now. Well, the lack of understanding is still there, but “somebody” finally used digital technology to take a system to a level not possible in the analog domain.

The bottom line is sound quality, and these guys had it in spades. The less than desirable “cabin” for a room on the main floor of the Hall was actually a positive because it enabled the team to show how much can be done in nearly any room.

I spent quite a while listening to my own music selections in this room (Thank You!). I couldn’t get enough, until the line at the door grew to an imposing length and I felt like I was hogging the system.

An experience I’ll not soon forget was when I played Last Tango In Paris from the new Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio album A Shade of Blue. This track has an incredible drum solo, in addition to equally incredible musicianship. With the piano on the left, double bass in the center, and drum kit on the right, this trio sounded alive in the Pure Accurate Sound room. Through any lesser system the bass would’ve overwhelmed the room. On this system it was immediate, impactful, and incredibly impressive. We pushed the system about as hard as allowed, and it never flinched.

The tonality of Yamamoto’s piano was beautiful and unchanged by the digital crossover and room correction. I really couldn’t ask for more out of a system than what I heard in this far from ideal room.

I visited Pure Accurate Sound twice during the show, because I not only wanted more of what I heard, but I wanted to make sure I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing. The sound was just that good! These guys nailed it!

Bravo Pure Accurate Sound!

dCS -  My Best of Show award for Munich High End 2024 goes to dCS. This room captured me emotionally like no other room , and sonically it was better than every room I visited. The team at dCS outsmarted the competition this year in two ways. First, it brought the right system for the room, and second, it setup the system perfectly.

The least expensive components in the dCS lineup, Lina DAC and Lina Clock, drove a VTL stereo amplifier, which powered the Wilson Audio Sabrina X loudspeakers and a pair of Loke subwoofers. A simple system by any HiFi measure.

In addition, the speakers were masterfully setup, way out into the room compared to previous years’ installations and many other manufacturers’ systems this year.

The system, and its setup, combined with my own music, delivered the top sound quality and musical experience at the show. It was the pinnacle.

I played my newfound gem Autumn in New York from Chico Freeman’s album Spirit Sensitive (video below), and melted into my chair. Chico’s horn and all the associated nuances involved with playing the horn, were lush and readily apparent to every listener in the room.

Going for the knockout punch, I played Living Proof from The War On Drugs album I Don’t Live Here Anymore (video below). Not an audiophile standard by any means, but capable of pulling emotion out of all but the boss in Weekend at Bernie’s. That is, as long as the audio system is firing on all cylinders. This year, dCS had the winning formula and the system was flawless.

To close out my listening session, and possibly clear the room, I put on Pearl Jam’s Brain of J. from the album Yield (video below).  Dual electric guitars and towering drums from Jack Irons, combined with pointed vocals from Eddie Vedder, make this song a favorite of mine. This was one of those times, like after purchasing new speakers, when one has to hear his favorite music again for the first time. I just had to hear this track in the dCS room, this year. I had the volume cranked and the number of “F’s” given set to zero. Fortunately, I, and many others in the room, were thrilled with the sonic results. Pearl Jam for the win.

If there was such thing as Shazam for an entire system, with an add to cart option, it would’ve been on several mobile devices during my listening experience at dCS in Munich 2024.

This system shined above all others. Stellar system with stellar setup.

I’m already thinking and talking about Munich High End 2025. It’ll be hard to top 2024, but I’m ready to try.

Chico Freeman - Autumn in New York

The War On Drugs - Living Proof

Pearl Jam - Brain of J.

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