It cannot be repeated often enough, the High End in Munich has long been recognized as the most important hi-fi fair in the world - and by a considerable margin. Even if some people from the industry in this country have apparently not yet realized this and are staying away from the event with reference to the long and laborious journey and the appointment on the long weekend. Sure, you can understand, because after all, Munich Airport, which can be reached from anywhere in Germany in less than an hour, is at least 10 km from the exhibition center. The several thousand international visitors have it easier, of course, because if you come from Australia, Japan, India, China, the USA, Russia or the rest of Europe especially for the trade fair, the flight is at least worth it ... Okay, kidding (and Head-shaking incomprehension) aside, for us the High End in Munich was and is of course a must, because only here can we cultivate our national and international contacts so effectively, and only here can we find out first hand what ideas, trends and new currents the HiFi - Moving the industry today and especially in the future. Here is our small and certainly somewhat subjective trade fair report:
The international rank of a trade fair can also be recognized by the fact that companies launch certain announcements punctually at the start of the event. In connection with this year's High End, there were two well-timed reports that dominated the general trade fair gossip.
For almost two years now, Meridian founder Bob Stuart has been promoting the MQA music format he developed, which is supposed to enable high-resolution sound with minimal file size. This could indeed revolutionize the market for sophisticated sounding music, because it would make it possible to stream high-resolution music (almost) independently of the speed of the connection, data volume and bandwidth. In the past, MQA content that was actually available was rather scarce, but that could change very quickly now. As MQA and Warner jointly announced on, the two companies have signed a long-term contract so that Warner Music will soon begin to make its extensive music catalog available in MQA format. It is not yet known when exactly it will start, whether it will initially only be about downloads, or whether the long-announced MQA streaming from Tidal will also be within reach. Above all, however, one can hope that other large labels will now follow Warner's example and also jump on the MQA bandwagon.
Even if the MQA / Warner deal is certainly interesting, the takeover of the traditional British company B&W by the hitherto practically unknown start-up company EVA Automation from California made much bigger waves. However, if you look at the background of the sale, this surprising step seems quite exciting. Because behind EVA is Harvard graduate Gideon Yu, an extremely successful Silicon Valley manager who previously worked at Yahoo, Youtube and Facebook, is a co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers, and with EVA a revolutionary new concept for the sound system want to develop in the future. According to his own statement, he is now finished with this very concept and was looking for a technically strong partner to convert it into real products. He has definitely found it with B&W, and we can look forward to the first results of this unusual marriage announced for the end of 2016 / beginning of 2017.
But of course there was also a lot of news to marvel at on site in Munich, including a true high-end offensive from Audionet, the new Contour series from Dynaudio, amplifier premieres from Chord Electronics and much more. For an overview of the most important news, simply click through the following picture gallery. By the way, we do not claim to be complete in any way; there was simply too much to see, hear and discover in Munich for that.