Munich High End 2024 Show Highlights
Mal Valve
The Mal Valve system contained many components, and it was unclear which were connected. Of course, the most eye-catching elements of the room were the MalStat Four electrostatic + magnetostatic loudspeakers.
Featuring planar drivers in a coaxial dipole midrange high-frequency chassis, a polished flat-surface push-pull dynamic woofer, and external crossovers in tubular enclosures, the speakers produced a beautifully open, nimble, airy, neutral, linear, and expressive sound.
Sueskind Audio Kronos
These strange-looking Kronos speakers, driven by a Nadac front end and Naiu Laboratories Ella MkIII power amplifiers, produced a sound that was ultra-nimble and fast, clean, expressive, maybe a little dry at times, but in many ways, also startlingly realistic. With their visually emphasized treble/midrange arrangement, one might expect an overly bright sound but what I heard was anything but. Don’t let the visual aspects distract from a system that deserves closer inspection.
Thorens
The Thorens Reference turntable looked mightily impressive but surprisingly understated and subtle, given its massive size and heft.
Mounted are an active Reed tonearm and a Thorens tonearm.
Besides this all-out assault, Thorens also showcased turntables such as the TD 1601, TD 1500, and TD 403 DD, as well as products in other categories and across all price ranges.
These are the Thorens SoundWall HP 600 full-range dipole loudspeakers. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and could not hear this system, nor any of the other systems in the ground-floor halls.
The Knife-Edge-Bearing Thorens TP 160 tonearm, recently reviewed with a TD1600 turntable, was already available as an upgrade for existing TD 1600 and TD 1601 owners but is now also available as an OEM version fit for mounting on other turntable brands.
Thorens also showcased the new “PhonoConnect” analog cable range.
Above: the Silver Line, using pure silver conductors; below: the Copper Line, using pure copper conductors.
And that concludes the HFA Munich highlights for this year!
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Great coverage, Christiaan. Are you certain that the new Halcro preamplifier was hooked up and in the signal path? Several show photos show XLR in (analog source) and out on the back of the new MSB Cascade DAC. The volume display on the DAC also suggests that it was acting as both DAC and (passive) volume control.
Good question! As it turns out, the Equinox was indeed not used all the time. Part of the demos have been done with the volume control of the DAC directly connected to the monos. Alas, I can no longer ascertain if what I heard had the Equinox in the signal path or it it was the MSB Cascade DAC connected directly.