Of fellow journos, I spotted Michael Lavorgna of AudioStream, Steve Rochlin of EnjoyTheMusic, Clement Perry of StereoTimes, a gentleman representing Gene Pitts' The Audiophile Voice, John Darko of DigitalAudioReview, Edgar Kramer, Doug Schneider and Jeff Fritz of The SoundStage Network, Dawid Grzyb of HifiKnights and his Polish colleagues of Sound Rebels. Stereophile was conspicuously absent. Whilst still on our press beat, it's of no use for a manufacturer to have his engineer man a room if he speaks no English and is so people phobic as to betray trembling hands when asked for a simple business card. It's equally of no use to use as marketing managers "passionate friends" who are clueless about the industry. They do more harm than good and make you look very amateurish. I read a few of those the riot act not because I'm arrogant but because they needed an instant course correction to actually help their friends who hosted an exhibit. Asking the first guy with a reviewer badge for a review is not how one manages a brand's campaign. Nor does it help to play Bach's organ partita or that dude with the out-of-tune upright bass which no normal person ever listens to for pleasure. It even drives our harder-boiled writer kind out of a room in a hurry. None of this is rocket science!

Here we see Vincent Brient's TotalDac horn speakers at the alternate hifideluxe show. An interesting tidbit? Founding father Volker Bohlmeier of Einstein has long since abandoned this venue to show at the MOC again. Nothing beats their much higher traffic!

Shattering the über-speaker paradigm were Canada's Paradigm with their Persona flagship's 1" tweeter and 7" midrange Beryllium drivers mated to a differential quad of powered 8.5" woofers. Whilst the brand doesn't enjoy the über cachet of the super-speaker marques, they deliver it sonically far more within reach; premium fare for the 10-percenters perhaps?

With their new Adante range, Elac play the same game but put it even more within reach. This is stuff John Darko's "man of the street" can aspire to. That even career audiophiles ought to, perhaps, is another matter entirely. They simply don't believe us. So go ahead. Spend more!

Playing to a packed house were Avantgarde Acoustic who, unlike WIM, didn't go for the classical piano demo. Instead they had invited a drummer to remind folks of live sound. Avantgarde get it!

Playing at the bleeding edge again but delivering on sound as well were Kondo with Kawero!, with their smaller system featuring the LessLoss Laminar Streamer...

... whilst the XL rig had these hulking paralleled 211 monos.

Now we arrive at Final's bow of their upcoming AFD planarmagnetic headphone. It was a humbling presentation by reminding one and all how proper engineering relies on intense research, goes back to first principles and wrestles with real problems to the point of capitulation. Final went back to the breed's earliest examples in the 1950s to identify strengths and weaknesses; compared those to later iterations; then asked themselves what they could contribute to the art with modern materials and manufacturing techniques. The presenter explained the interconnectedness of magnetic field strength, excursion, proximity between membrane and magnetics, efficiency, dynamics and the influence of the diaphragm's resonant frequency on the bandwidth. Their final solution —pun intended—derives from a condenser microphone technique called thin air film resistance. In the below chart, we see how it cancels the high 200Hz spike of the F0 without otherwise affecting FR.

Here we see the test jig whereby Final confirm each diaphragm's tension against input test signals. Unit-to-unit variability of planar membranes is a potential bugaboo of this breed. It leads to units sounding quite different one from the other. Final have that sorted with their sorting jig.

The production version is envisioned to look like this...

... and the AFD technology will eventually spawn an entire range expected to start at €300/pr and max out at €5'000/pr quite like the existing Sonorous series. This exploded rendering shows how Final's driver assembly goes together. Their floor booth had working demonstrator samples. Based on my ears-on time, this will be something very special indeed. And president Mitsuru Hosoo confirmed that final-ly there will be optional higher-grade cables including balanced versions. Hurray!

And there you have it; my cherry-picked Munich 2017 show report. A number of readers introduced themselves to express their enjoyment over our efforts. That was gratifying. Whoever you all were: thank you. It's for you and others like you that we keep doing this wacky thing. My favourite quote of the entire gig? I asked Flemming Rasmussen of Gryphon how he enjoyed what I'd thought was just a little getaway cottage by the lake. "I actually live there. Music is great and I love it. But it's the silence there which speaks to me the most." Said like a true mystic. Next time you listen to music, see how much or little the performer says with the silences between and around the notes. Many just flash with how many notes they can cram into a second. Occasionally, a true master says a lot more with far less. That's when you find yourself in your own little cabin deep in them thar woods, with a small boat docked upfront beckoning you to float out on the water and listen to the sounds of silence as the breeze turns the leaves and casts ripples. Cue Basho. Ancient pond. Frog jumps in. Plop! Here's a Basho moment for your own musical amusement: the opening track of Erkan Oğur's Dokunmak album. Plop...
 
Facts and figgies: According to show management, this installment had 538 exhibitors from 44 countries, up 4% over last year. Attendee numbers were up by 10% for 21'412. Industry visitors from 78 countries amounted to 8'002, up by 13%. Saturday visitor numbers for the busiest day of the event were up by 30%. The top countries for representation of international hifi brands were the USA, UK, Italy, France, Switzerland, Denmark, China, Japan, Holland, Canada and Taiwan. Display footage amounted to 29'000m². 541 accredited journalists visited. We contributed just one of those...