Whole Lotta Analog at High End Munich 2023

The CH Precision P10 is a major but evolutionary step up from the single-chassis P1, which could be upgraded with the optional outboard X1 power supply. The P10 is a two-box design with a “mandatory” outboard power supply. Among the performance improvements are a 5dB quieter noise floor compared to the already exceptional quiet P1’s. Gain has been increased to 78dB in 3dB steps, and there are now four independently adjustable inputs: two voltage-gain (instead of a single one) and two current-sensing inputs. Also new is stereo/mono switching, selectable local/global feedback, and a remote control. There are now seven optional EQ curves in addition to the (mythical) so-called “Neumann pole,” selectable for all EQs. The P1/P10 comparison at High End 2023 made obvious the improved sonic performance. There’s also a 4-chassis dual-mono version. If you must ask the price, you can’t afford it.

Madnick’s feature-filled dual-chassis-in-a-single-box design includes selectable front panel 40, 50, 60, and 70dB gain settings, nine selectable loading choices, plus a roll-your-own-resistor option via convenient rear-panel RCA jacks, subsonic and mono buttons, and a front-panel meter pair for output monitoring and azimuth setting. The MasterPhono features both voltage-gain and current-sensing inputs via RCA or XLR jacks (three in total), as well as single-ended RCA and balanced XLR outputs. A remote control selects inputs, gain, mono, metering, subsonic filter, and mute.

Wilson Benesch debuted and spun vinyl on the final iteration of its “assault on the state of the art” GMT One turntable that featured a new integral W-B phono cartridge (there will be two new W-B cartridges). Company co-founder Craig Milnes delivered an impressive presentation covering all the tech behind the direct-drive motor (measured torque ripple is 0.001342Nm) and the Graviton tonearm (video available on the TAS and TrackingAngle YouTube channels). The turntable’s base price is “around” $215,000. The Graviton Ti Titanium tonearm is $34,000, the aluminum version is $26,000. Add the $26,000 isolation stand and the total approaches $277,000. The cartridges have yet to be priced.

Thorens introduced in early May its brute of a “New Reference” turntable to celebrate the company’s 140^th anniversary, designed by a team headed by industry veteran Helmut Thiele. The company brought two to the Munich show: one to display and one to play in a soundproof room on the show floor featuring new Thorens speakers designed by Thiele and Audio Physic-founder Joachim Gerhard. The turntable features a sophisticated Seismion active isolation system, a three-phase German-made motor, a hydrodynamic bearing, and a massive POM-and-aluminum platter, among other design attributes. Cost with two tonearms—the Thorens TP 16 and one from Thiele—is 220,000 Euro.

Japanese air-bearing-turntable specialist TechDAS introduced its eye-catching pivoted air-bearing Air Force 10 tonearm, shown for the first time in Munich, that’s been in development for three years. The working prototype features a hybrid bearing mechanism in which horizontal movement is via an air bearing and vertical movement uses a more conventional tungsten pivot and ceramic-ball bearing design, which provides an effective mechanical ground. The arm’s bearing-containing structure is of tungsten and titanium, while the detachable tapered arm tube is a hybrid two-layer design featuring an inner CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) construction and an outer one of DLC-coated magnesium alloy. The approximately five-pound arm will be available in both 10” and 12” versions. Cost including the small pump required to pressurize the bearing will be approximately $40,000.

Oswalds Mill Audio introduced the new Richard Krebs-designed OMA K5 turntable with a new Frank Schröder aluminum tonearm created specifically for the K5. The table was on static display last year without arm. The table is a more compact, less costly version of the circa $300,000 K3 introduced last year, though it uses the same sophisticated “bespoke” direct-drive motor and control system in a shinier, chrome-like package. Price without arm is $119,000. The arm price is TBA, as is the price of the handsome optional isolation base that contains the three speed-choice buttons. OMA’s Jonathan Weiss pointed out the table can accommodate any tonearm. An outboard linear power supply is standard. OMA’s tube-based PSU standard on the K3 is available on the K5 as an extra-cost option.

Back in less rarified air, Design Build Listen’s Simon Brown, inventor of “The Wand”—a moderately priced ($1995 and up with the 12** top-of-the-line edition wired with Nordost cable costing around $3000), high-performance, carbon-fiber unipivot tonearm—showed a prototype of a new, highly sophisticated, fully adjustable, tapered carbon-fiber tube tonearm that he said would be priced similar to the “Kuzma 4Point.” Very cool-looking arm I’m keen to review once it’s been released! Brown also showed a new two-platform version of his turntable featuring a battery-powered motor supply built into the new lower platform, which sits on IsoAcoustics feet. Price will be around $8000. The table was nice, but the arm was worth repeated looks.

Speaking of moderately priced, innovative products, the Supatrac Blackbird is a new, unique, U.K. patented, sideways, “non-wobbling” unipivot tonearm design available in any length you choose. It’s sort of like a cross between a Kuzma 4 Point, with two vertically stacked points and a hanging suspension similar to a Well-Tempered arm, though there’s more to it than that, so look online (www.supatrac.com). Prices start at around $2600. I found this in the “Start-up” area and am eager to review. A few variants are on their way!

Brinkmann introduced its new 12.0 tonearm priced at $4490 versus the company’s 12.1, costing $6500. The lower cost is in part due to its unipivot design as opposed to the more costly gimbaled bearing arms.

Takumi sounds Japanese, but the new Takumi Turntable Level 3.1 introduced at the High End show is manufactured in The Netherlands. It features a thin-walled titanium armtube and a D.C. motor that drives an aluminum subplatter fitted with a Delrin platter. The fit ’n’ finish appears outstanding, and the 2495 Euro price makes this an attractive, moderately priced alternative to many better known similarly priced turntables. It’s not being imported to America at this time.

Acoustical Systems’ Dietrich Brakemaier introduced the finished version of his massive multi-level Astellar belt-drive turntable first shown at last year’s High End, featuring a “super-low resonant frequency,” air-spring suspended base, a Maxxon motor, and counterwheel located on another platform—a unique push/pull magnetic-bearing system that securely levitates the platter but prevents it from bouncing is located on yet another platform, and a top one that can accommodate four pivoted arms and one tangential-tracking one. The 44-pound platter features 36 layers of pressurized “organic material” within an aluminum platter topped with POM. As with almost everything described here, there’s much more to the design than we have space for. The approximately $88,800 Astellar is based on Brakemaier’s almost cartoonishly enormous 540-pound Apolyt turntable, one of which was on display in the A-S booth. Brakemaier says he sold six of those! The Astellar is yet another turntable I’m keen to review.

Mark Döhmann demoed the Mk 3 version of his Helix One turntable (appx. $100,000), which was introduced last fall and made its Munich debut this May. Upgrades include a new advanced composite bearing, a new D.C. power supply, a new drive system, improved platter design, a new composite arm board, and a new resonance-control record clamp that he says is a major advancement.

Acoustic Signature, which also manufactures in Germany some very large turntables, introduced the new Verona NEO, which will sell in the United States for approximately $12,500 without arm. It can accommodate two 9” to 12” arms and features a plinth of wood, aluminum, and brass. As with all Acoustic Signature turntables the price includes a 15-year warranty.

Pro-Ject introduced the circa $1200 Automat A2, an upgrade to its A1 fully automatic 3-speed turntable released last year and made in Germany at the same Black Forest factory Pro-Ject’s Heinz Lichtenegger purchased a few years ago that once manufactured the four-letter turntable beginning with the letter “D.” That factory also manufactures Rekkord turntables, which is an older design Lichtenegger also still manufactures and markets at lower price points. Pro-Ject also introduced a literal wall of affordable new tonearms, two dozen in total, though many are variations on a few themes, differing only in length and tube material.

E.A.T. (European Audio Team), owned and operated by Heinz’s wife Jozefina, introduced a new brass-and-concrete turntable priced at 8000 Euros that looked interesting, but I missed the name. She also showed an unusual grape or, as she called it, “resurrection”-colored turntable priced at 15,900 Euro. It was a one-off, but it was snapped up day one by someone with fanciful tastes. E.A.T. introduced a new line of balanced, vacuum-tube-based phono preamplifiers priced from 2500 Euros (“e-glo 2”) to 8000 Euros (“e-glo”). The “e-glo CB” at 4500 Euros sat in between.

Goldnote, which recently changed American distributors, introduced its new three-input Class A PH-1000 phonostage, to which you can add both an outboard PSU-1250 power supply and/or a Tube-1012 buffer stage. It’s also available with built in preamp. Both versions include a headphone amplifier. The configurability and the touchscreen operating system are identical to the Florence, Italy-based company’s less costly PH-10 phonostage, but the circuitry is completely new. The basic PH-1000 costs 11,000 Euros. Goldnote also introduced a new, beautiful “flagship” 10^th anniversary Mediteraneo X turntable featuring a triple-layer aluminum/stainless steel/walnut plinth, aluminum/POM platter, and adjustable-torque motor drive system. Cost is 11,000 Euros.

Lithuania-based Reed introduced the new Muse 3A, an approximately 15,000 Euro turntable available in red, white, or black and capable of accommodating three tonearms. It comes with a single motor, but a second can be added. Reed also introduced the new approximately $4500 2B tonearm.

Poland-based Pre-audio introduced the air-bearing tangential-tracking GL1102N turntable priced at 12,000 Euro. Speed can be controlled and precisely set using a computer interface. The company’s least expensive AU turntable is priced at under 5000 Euro.

Zavfino, based in Nova Scotia, Canada, had on static display the ZV11X turntable featuring a German-made motor-control system and a custom arm designed by the aforementioned Helmut Thiele. The company showed turntables priced at 4200, 6800 and 13,000 Euros. The individual manning the booth told me Zavfino specializes in tonearm wire, which it has supplied over the past 15 years to many arm manufacturers.

Vitus showed the Mk2 version of its SP-103 phono preamp, now with four inputs. It’s claimed to have an even lower noise floor than the original and is priced “around $30,000.” On static display and not wired up was the Mk III version of Vitus’ Masterpiece MP-P201 phono preamp, due out in June.

The Swiss-made HSE Masterline is among the most beautiful phono preamps currently being manufactured, though I’ve never heard one. The 75,000 Euro Mk2 version was introduced at the show, but it wasn’t being used. On the same rack was the new Whest Audio 60Se Pro, priced at £7600. Years ago, I reviewed one of the designer’s first efforts and was very impressed!

Bulgaria-based Thrax upgraded its Orpheus phonostage to a Mk3 Signature edition, using all triode tubes, a floating inner structure, and nano-crystalline inductors. The price is $24,000.

The term “game changer” is often used and most often abused when referring to high-performance audio gear, but it’s appropriately used to describe the new Adamant Namiki one-piece diamond cantilever/stylus assembly first introduced (that I know of) by Audio Technica in its limited edition $9000 MC-2022 moving-coil cartridge. More recently DS Audio introduced it in its $22,500 Grand Master EX optical cartridge, which was being used for the first time in Munich in a few High End rooms. I played records in the Marten room using the Grand Master EX and the sound was explosive, as it also is on the Audio Technica that I reviewed and bought to add to my cartridge arsenal. It’s a game changer!

Other new cartridges in use and on display at High End 2023 include the Acoustical Systems Palladian X Boron cartridge featuring a hollow boron cantilever filled with a damping liquid that’s, of course, sealed. The body is titanium, and the price is $12,000. Phasemation introduced the PP 5000 featuring a diamond cantilever and a natural diamond line-contact tip priced at $15k. DarTZeel debuted a pair of super-low internal impedance cartridges, though the spokesperson couldn’t give me either their names or prices. One is black, featuring a ruby cantilever and Geiger stylus, and the other is “darTZeel red” and features a titanium coil former and diamond cantilever with a “special tip.” Both sounded really good!

Finally, Soundsmith introduced a new series of cartridge variants to go along with its newly introduced transimpedance phono preamplifier: the Hyperion MKII ES-TI and Sussurro MKII ES-TI. Soundsmith’s Peter Ledermann also introduced two cartridges he claims are “unbreakable”: the IROX BLUE-ES and IROX ULTIMATE-ES. In addition, he introduced a new Hyperion iteration called the Hyperion MR “featuring not only additionally reduced internal moving mass but now a ‘Micro-Ridge’ stylus.”

Even more analog products were introduced at High End Munich 2023, but I’m out of space, so watch the videos on The Absolute Sound’s YouTube Channel!