Munich 2018

This year it took the full four days of High End Munich to cover all of the new analog gear. Even then some might have been missed. Clearly the move is to vinyl and streaming audio. Turntables were playing throughout the show's demo rooms and more were on display in the ground floor halls. Digital die-hards couldn't escape the sound and so were confronted by the reality that today's vinyl playback sounds amazing.

Day one's video coverage at High End Munich 2018 finally uploaded. More than an hour's worth of edited video is embedded below. This year's show was bigger, better and more crowded than ever. As you'll see, the world's high performance audio designers and manufacturers have been busy creating exciting new and innovative audio gear, especially in the analog domain and at every price point.

Boulder introduced at High End Munich 2018 a new, compact phono preamplifier. The 508 is said to contain much of the circuitry of the company's 1008 phono preamp while retaining an even larger percentage of the 1008's sonic performance.

Day one High End Munich 2018 was as new analog gear-packed as you would hope it might be. The image at the top is of a new Kuzma turntable priced at around $8000 dollars (don't hold me to that amount) that uses the same drive system as the far more expensive Stabi M that I reviewed last year in Stereophile. The differences are explained by Franc Kuzma in the approximately hour and a half video covering all of day one's coverage.