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High End 2007 or the Munich show has established itself as the best hi-fi show in Europe, thanks to a huge range of distinctly aspirational brands and one of the best venues on the show circuit at Munich's MOC. There are numerous brands that most of us will never have seen before and that includes those of us who've been in the industry for the best part of 20 years.
But all the big names go to Munich too, B&W, Pioneer, Cambridge Audio etc so if there is product to launch you will find it here. If there was a theme at this year's event it would have to be the continued revival of turntables, something the Germans seem to be drawn to like bees to honey.
Click on the pics to enlarge
B&W Signature Diamond loudspeaker
£11,000
First sighting of B&W's chic Signature Diamond with its marble tweeter housing and two-way configuration, this is the most stylish diamond domed design yet. It's about the size of an 804 but has a purist first order crossover and design by Kenneth Grange.
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B&W 600 loudspeaker
From £279
B&W also launched its totally revamped 600 series. These have all-new drive units including a bass unit made of paper, Kevlar and aluminium alongside the FST midrange drive units found in the 800 series. In fact the top model, 683, is practically an 804 in less grand cabinetwork.
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Rotel RC-1082 preamplifier
£645
Rotel had a slew of new components including the RC-1082 preamplifier with nine inputs including an MM/MC phono stage, a media player minijack on the front and relay switching.
It is joined by the RCC-1055 multi-disc carousel CD player (£495), RDV-1093 DVD-Audio/video player (£995), RB-1072 100-watt class D power amp (£595), RT-1082 DAB/FM/AM tuner £545, RSX-1058 surround receiver (£1495) and RX-1052 multizone AM/FM receiver (£795).
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KEF Muon monster loudspeaker
£70,000
KEF showed the fruit of its Austin project in the shapely Muon loudspeakers. With industrial design by Ross Lovegrove these curvy monsters are encased in superformed aluminium and weigh 115kg apiece. They have bass drivers in the rear which make them room tuneable and delivered a sound that was commensurate with their price. Well, almost.
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Esoteric AI-10 digital amplifier
£tba
Esoteric introduced a new entry level digital amplifier with 150 watts per channel and onboard upsampling for digital signals up to 1192 or 176.4kHz. Inputs include coaxial and optical digital as well as balanced and RCA phono analogue.
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Denon AVP-A1HD / POA-A1HD processor/preamp and power amp
£10,000
Denon launched its first separate processor/preamp and multichannel power amp for a decade with two suitably huge and feature-laden components. The AVP-A1HD does everything and it does it in HDMi 1.3a. It decodes all the significant compressed music formats and some of the lesser ones as well, plus it has six HDMi inputs and two outs and there's even internet radio. The power amp promises 10x 300 watts into 4 ohms or five times 500 watts for multizone or bi-amp systems.
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Mordaunt-Short Mezzo loudspeakers
From £400
Mordaunt-Short delivered the first two models in its Mezzo range, the floorstanding Mezzo 6 (£800) and standmount Mezzo 2. Both incorporate technology from its Performance series such as Aspirated Tweeters and 6.5inch CPC mid/bass drivers.
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Baasner turntable
£you name it
The vinyl nutballs on LP magazine bring along a reader's turntable to each High End show and this time around they had the most extreme example yet. The Baasner turntable is a festival of stainless and acrylic and features a parallel tracking arm that floats in water, a syringe is supplied in order to adjust VTA, naturally. Other features include shields to deflect air movement and nylon thread drive via pulleys too numerous to count.
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