Munich High End 2011

“Hey, look&#151Jeff Joseph’s speakers arrived!” Rosemarie exclaimed.

“Oh, cool. Let’s take a picture,” I said. “Go over there and look pretty.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘You look so pretty.’ Geez. Come on, stand next to the speakers. Please?”

“Alright.”

“I said, ‘Stand next to them.’ I didn’t say, ‘Lean all over them like they’re yours.’”

Unfortunately, Jeff Joseph’s shipment of gear was delayed due to a short FedEx strike which occurred in Paris. Joseph was understandably tired and frustrated, but he hadn’t lost his great sense of humor.

“I can still play the speakers,” he said with a straight face.

I thought for a moment that he would employ some powerful new wireless technology; Joseph was an early proponent for computer-based audio.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. What would you like to hear?”

He covered his face with the press release for his lovely Pulsar ($7000/pair) and began to sing.

I can’t remember what song we listened to, but it really was like hearing live music. There was almost nothing separating us from the song.

JA would have lost his mind.

KEF’s Julia Davidson gave an excellent presentation, discussing the company’s efforts in bringing the Blade concept to life.

We listened to Radiohead’s “All I Need” from the great In Rainbows, and the song seemed to have more swagger than I’m used to, more grip, more pull, a way of reaching out and reeling in.

“That sounds good,” smiled Julia.

“You’re one of the designers?” I asked.

Harbeth’s Alan Shaw holds his Monitor 20.1 loudspeaker.

I enjoyed a stimulating conversation about the priorities of a loudspeaker designer, the applications in which a speaker is used, and the difficulties of sound- and video-editing.

The first question Shaw wants answered about any particular loudspeaker is: “What loudness level is it optimized for?” From that, he can tell a lot about a speaker’s abilities and the priorities of its designer.

“If I get a strange look, as though [the designer] is wondering why I would want to know such a thing, then I start to feel anxious….”

I was drawn to the smoky, nearly sunburst finish of the Luxman D-30u CD player, which offers a choice between solid-state and ECC82 vacuum tube playback. The matching SQ-30u vacuum tube integrated amp offers 30Wpc and has a selectable MM/MC phono stage; MC cartridges are handled by a step-up trannie. Cool.

Jim Richards poses beside his MD 806 WiFi tuner ($2500; sitting on the shelf below the sweet turntable).

In development for over two years, the MD 806 provides access to FM, DAB, and DAB+, as well as Internet radio stations via its onboard WiFi antenna or LAN, and locally connected music collections (MP3, AAC, FLAC, WMA, Real). Its 3.5” touchscreen displays metadata, genre, bit rate, codec, and sampling rate for the playing track, while personal audio collections (accessed through a local network or USB connection) are navigable by artist name, album name, or musical genre.

Optical and RCA digital outputs are also included for use with an external DAC.

MBL’s 101 Xtreme loudspeaker system ($260,000) combines mirror-imaged pairs of the company’s 101 loudspeaker with outboard active subwoofers. A pair of MBL 9011s drove the lower omnis, while a pair of 9008s handled the upper omnis.

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” sounded appropriately thrilling, and it was cool to hear how well the system managed to depict Christina Aguilera as a petite woman with an enormous voice.

Drama, scale, impact, resolution, speed, speed, speed, three-dimensional images on a massive soundstage. This system produced music with a sort of muscular physicality and confidence. Another one of my favorite sounds at the show, though completely different from all others.

Rosemarie agreed, for once. She liked it, too. (Thank goodness! It obviously only takes half a million dollars to impress this woman.)