Off to Munich High End 2025—the Final Munich Show!

next year it moves to Vienna

That's my plane and I'm flying out of Newark, not concerned about the problems. Life's too short, and flying out of Newark, it could be further shortened! Not worried. This should be a great show if AXPONA is any indication of the industry's vibrancy and I believe it was.

Pre-show press releases are packed with interesting new products including a turntable from Soulution in which the platter moves and the arm is stationery. I hope the head shell has slots and not holes, or odds are most cartridges will produced tracking error across the entire record surface....by now you've probably seen the photos of the "cock-eyed" stylus insertions into cantilevers microscopy shows. The two major Japanese cantilever/stylus companies tolerances are ± 4 degrees and measurements often show far worse. Like this:

That's why I'm hoping to see head shell slots (not that this almost 8 degree error on a very costly cartridge could be compensated for)! And if the Soulution turntable doesn't have them, they should change production to include slots. End of sermon.

High End Munich should be a great show for turntables and tape decks, phono preamps and cartridges and of course records—though I hope to cover what's of interest in every area.

I'm running a panel on the X-Pert stage on sustainable vinyl production featuring a distinguished panel. Each year the High End Society chooses an artist as "Brand Ambassador". Last year it was Steven Wilson, in 2023 it was Al Di Meola and the previous year it was Alan Parsons. This year it's Norwegian singer/songwriter Anette Askvik who has a new EP release we'll be talking about. Below is the cover.

Fellow counterperson and Tracking Angle writer Jan Omdahl will be at the show so we're planning to meet following the Askvik interview. He's not planning on a formal show report, but might write something about the show "vibe".

I'll be joining saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh in the Acoustical Systems room for a presentation and have meetings planned with numerous manufacturers mapping out reviews for the rest of this year and well into next—something Ken Redmond did at AXPONA. He's got a mighty ambitious list!

And I'll be talking with Andy Whittle, one of the principals behind the re-introduction of the legendary Decca/London cartridges.

It will be a very busy Munich High End finale that we'll report about on Instagram, here and of course videos on YouTube.